Why Hollywood's Jewish guys fall in love with shiksas

October 21, 2009

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/the_big_picture/2009/10/why-hollywoods-jewish-guys-fall-in-love-with-shiksas-.html

From Diane Keaton to Mariel Hemingway to Scarlett Johansson, Woody Allen's favorite women have been WASPy blonds. [UPDATE: As many readers have noted, Johansson is actually Jewish, so perhaps I should call her a WASPy blonde Jewess.] At any rate, Allen is not alone. As Liel Leibovitz writes in a fascinating new essay in Tablet magazine, "Since the dawn of American entertainment, Jewish women were largely rendered invisible, absent everywhere from burlesque to Hollywood to prime-time television. Instead, they watched as their sons and brothers and husbands became successful producers, directors and impresarios, powerful men who then chose to populate their works with a parade of sexy, sultry shiksas who looked nothing like their female kin."

It's a big, bold accusation, but Leibovitz does a pretty persuasive job of proving it, digging all the way back to the earliest days of burlesque, when if you worked for the striptease kingpins the Minsky Brothers, you had to be a blond or a redhead, never a brunet. The early Hollywood moguls, eager to shed their shtetl roots, quickly dumped their first wives for Gentile trophy dames and largely banished both Jewish men and women from their all-American hymns to assimilation, forcing Jewish actors like John Garfield (Julie Garfinkle) and Danny Kaye (David Kaminsky) to change their names to far less ethnic-sounding monikers.

But Leibovitz argues that even today, long after Jewish TV execs allowed male characters to be named Seinfeld, Steinberg and Fisher, they still required the guys to lust after decidedly non-Jewish women. She points to a slew of shows, including "Mad About You," "Chicken Soup," "Flying Blonde" and "Anything But Love," that all feature neurotic Jewish (filmmaker/pajama salesman/biz exec/writer) men pining after gorgeous and free-spirited shiksas. Each show was designed around the idea of transformation, or more specifically, the power of a non-Jewish woman to extricate her Jewish lover from his suffocating, crass and unhealthy environment.

When it comes to being an onscreen presence in a Jewish guy's life, blonds clearly have more fun, whether it's Cheryl Hines playing opposite Larry David in "Curb Your Enthusiasm" or Drew Barrymore being Adam Sandler's love interest in "The Wedding Singer" and "50 First Dates." (Maybe I'm forgetting someone, but by my count, it wasn't until 2008's "You Don't Mess With the Zohan," where Sandler played an Israeli hairdresser, that he cast an actual Jewish actress -- Emmanuelle Chriqui -- as his romantic partner.)

Leibovitz could expand her critique, since when it comes to being invisible, African American women have it even worse than Jewish women, rarely if ever getting a meaty part playing opposite black mega-stars like Denzel Washington, Sam Jackson and Will Smith. But her point is well taken. In an era where Jewish women have cracked the glass ceiling time and again as producers and studio executives (from Sherry Lansing and Laura Ziskin to Gail Berman and Amy Pascal), it's slim pickings when it comes to parts for actresses looking to shine in the spotlight. In Hollywood, if you're a Jewish woman, your best career possibilities are still behind the camera, feeding all the good lines to the shiksa goddesses.

Hollywood Jewish guys [heart] shiksas: Part 2

October 23, 2009

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/the_big_picture/2009/10/hollywood-jewish-guys-heart-shiksas-part-two.html

I got a lot of heated feedback for my post this week riffing on a provocative story in Tablet magazine detailing how Hollywood's Jewish guys, from famous comedians to studio executives, have since time immemorial -- meaning since the days of burlesque -- preferred casting blond shiksas to dark, sultry Jewish women in leading roles. A host of commenters, led by "Jimbo" and "fman," thought my views on the issue were either offensive or blown out of proportion.

Fair enough. So as further support for my case, I offer this new post from Danielle Berrin's "Hollywood Jew" blog in the Jewish Journal. It's an appreciation of the gifted actress Rachel Weisz, whose new film, "Agora," just had a big opening in Spain. Berrin unearthed a 2001 interview Weisz did about being a Jewish actress in Hollywood that further proves my worst suspicions about Hollywood executives' discrimination against Jewish women. Here's an excerpt from the interview, conducted by Index magazine's Emma Forrest:

Emma: Is it limiting as an actress to be perceived as being too ethnic in any way?

Rachel: Well, I think you and I have always felt the same way--that we're Jewish but we can get away with just being exotic.... Hollywood's run by Jews. I was advised by an American agent when I was about 19 to change my surname. And I said, "Why? Jews run Hollywood." He said, "Exactly." He had a theory that all the executives think acting's a job for shiksas.

Emma: Of all the self-loathing Jews in the world, the most self-loathing are the Hollywood Jews. They don't want to see images of themselves on screen. That's why Lauren Bacall had to hide her identity, and Winona Ryder changed her name from Horowitz.

Rachel: In some way, acting is prostitution, and Hollywood Jews don't want their own women to participate. Also, there's an element of "Portnoy's Complaint." They all fancy Aryan blondes.