Shows With Jewish Targeted Humor?
Shows With Jewish Targeted Humor?
#1Shows With Jewish Targeted Humor?
Posted: 11/27/11 at 8:04pmI was talking with a friend of mine who is also into musicals, about shows with humor which is aimed at Jewish people, obviously The Producers is the one that springs to mind, was this the first show to make fun out of Jewish people? Can you think of any other shows and what they say?
ghostlight2
Broadway Legend Joined: 12/5/04
#2Shows With Jewish Targeted Humor?
Posted: 11/27/11 at 8:20pm
I'm not sure what you mean by " to make fun out of Jewish people". That sounds to me like making fun of Jewish people, which I don't think The Producers did. If you mean shows that use Jewish humor - well, hell, they've been around as long as the Jews have. The most recent one I can think of was The People in the Picture, which, despite its pathos, focussed quite a bit on the humor of Yiddish theater.
Though if you're looking for specific earlier examples, Gypsy is one.
Updated On: 11/27/11 at 08:20 PM
Mr Roxy
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/17/03
#2Shows With Jewish Targeted Humor?
Posted: 11/27/11 at 8:27pmAny Jackie Mason show.
Gaveston2
Broadway Legend Joined: 6/28/11
#3Shows With Jewish Targeted Humor?
Posted: 11/27/11 at 8:36pm
Jewish humor--like Jewish harmonies--is so central to the American musical, it would be easier to list shows that DON'T employ a Jewish comical sensibility.
(In case anyone wonders, this is by no means a complaint. As Mel Brooks once wrote, "Without Jews, fags and gypsies, there would be no theater." Substitute African-Americans for gypsies and you have the historical recipe of the American musical.)
bwaylvsong
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/28/05
#5Shows With Jewish Targeted Humor?
Posted: 11/27/11 at 8:47pmSpamalot
#6Shows With Jewish Targeted Humor?
Posted: 11/27/11 at 9:03pm
"You won't succeed on Broadway if you don't have any Jews."
New York City's theatre scene has a massive Jewish presence (actors, directors, writers, etc.) and Jewish jokes, culture, and tradition thus play a pretty major role in shaping the industry. I'm not saying it's positive or negative, it just is.
chewy5000
Broadway Legend Joined: 12/1/09
Gaveston2
Broadway Legend Joined: 6/28/11
#9Shows With Jewish Targeted Humor?
Posted: 11/27/11 at 9:06pmWell, I'm one goy who has no trouble saying the Jewish influence has been and continues to be very positive indeed.
#10Shows With Jewish Humor?
Posted: 11/27/11 at 9:08pm
Watch your phrasing! The word "targeted" in your subject line and the phrase "make fun out of" make your post seem to be offensive, at least to American ears.
Assuming your post was NOT anti-Jewish, the answer to your question is that Irving Berlin was probably the first, starting around 1910, with a series of songs he wrote for Jewish-dialect comedians, like the young Fanny Brice, with titles like "Yiddisha Nightingale," "Becky Is Back in De Ballet," "Jake! Jake! De Yiddisha Ball Player," and the classic "Sadie Salome, Go Home!"
In this clip from the 1936 movie The Great Ziegfeld, Fanny Brice sings the 1910 "Yidl, With Your Fiddle, Play Some Ragtime":
http://youtu.be/NTwq_Fxr5ak
Here's an interesting page on "Sadie Salome":
http://sadiesalome.com/about.html?KeepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=600&width=800
goober1632
Understudy Joined: 7/29/07
#11Shows With Jewish Humor?
Posted: 11/27/11 at 9:43pm
Falsettos - the whole show
Wedding Singer - Today You Are a Man, George's Prayer
Hairspray - Velma's Revenge
#12Shows With Jewish Humor?
Posted: 11/27/11 at 10:49pm
"A Broadway Musical" had a camp number called "Yenta Power," literally about the power Jewish matinee ladies had to control a show's success or failure.
#13Shows With Jewish Humor?
Posted: 11/27/11 at 10:59pmI'm scratching my head after reading the first post regarding The Producers ostensibly "making fun out of Jewish people." All I can come up with is that The Producers made fun of Hitler. Am I missing something here?
#14Shows With Jewish Humor?
Posted: 11/27/11 at 11:02pm
Jane- there were jokes throughout the producers about Jews like, "let's play a game where there's absolutely no sex: The Jewish princess and her husband."
I don't know if it was lines like this that made the OP think that.
#15Shows With Jewish Humor?
Posted: 11/27/11 at 11:13pmThanks Whizzer- and it just occurred to me that I saw the show so long ago, that I was referencing the films instead.
#16Shows With Jewish Humor?
Posted: 11/27/11 at 11:22pmRags had that Hamlet number that's rather cute.
gypsy4
Broadway Legend Joined: 8/14/07
#17Shows With Jewish Humor?
Posted: 11/27/11 at 11:45pm
Hairspray!- You're Timeless to me
Updated On: 11/27/11 at 11:45 PM
#18Shows With Jewish Humor?
Posted: 11/28/11 at 2:45amMake Me A Song, which is half revue and half Falsettos, has songs such as "Four Jews In A Room Bitching" and "Passover". William Finn is Jewish and a lot of his work has either traces of what can be called Jewish humor, or is just outright loud and proud of it's Jewish humor.
#19Shows With Jewish Humor?
Posted: 11/28/11 at 3:01amIt's not on Broadway but I saw Shoulda Been You at the George Street Playhouse. It was about the wedding of a Jewish woman and a Catholic man and their mothers (played by Tyne Daly and Harriet Harris respectively). The religious humor went both ways.
#20Shows With Jewish Humor?
Posted: 11/28/11 at 9:57amMy Mother's Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding (Not on Broadway - at Toronto Fringe and NYMF)
henrikegerman
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/29/05
#21Shows With Jewish Humor?
Posted: 11/28/11 at 12:11pm
Shows without Jewish humor (excluding, of course, the multitude of shows without any humor at all):
Me And My Girl
and, um....
Videos