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Books: No New Yorkers, Mustaches or Jews
Liel Leibovitz
In their determination to keep their own kind off the small screen, Jewish network executives even made up findings saying viewers wouldn�t watch Jewish characters
A now-famous anecdote recounted in David Zurawik�s insightful and fascinating study of Jewish characters in prime-time American television involves two network executives and a comedian. The comedian, then a relative unknown from New York named Jerry Seinfeld, had produced a pilot for a sit-com he hoped to sell to NBC. The show, as anyone who has but caught a glimpse of TV in the last decade now knows, involved the lives of four friends in Manhattan, as they discuss the ephemera and ennui that constitute the fundamentals of urban life. Of the two NBC executives who were charged with deciding "Seinfeld�s" fate, one fiercely opposed it. It was "too Jewish," and viewers in the American heartland, he said, quoting alleged research on the matter, would be reluctant to invite Seinfeld, a stereotypical New York Jew if there ever was one, into their homes every week. His colleague disagreed. Seinfeld, he thought, was the stuff comic dreams are made of. He proposed the following: Let us, he said, buy just four episodes, and test the show with the audience.
The four episodes were produced, and the outcome is well documented: "Seinfeld" enjoyed a nine-year run on NBC, capturing the coveted No. 1 spot in the Nielsen ratings list for two of those years. Not only did it help NBC position itself as the leading network of its time, but the show became a cultural phenomenon, infecting viewers from Brooklyn to Boise.
What�s curious about the anecdote, however, is the identities of the two executives. The one who thought Seinfeld was too Jewish, the late Brandon Tartikoff, then NBC�s head of programming, was himself Jewish; the executive who fought for Seinfeld�s on-air life, Rick Ludwin, then NBC�s head of late-night programming, was not.
The anecdote is, in a way, a microcosm of Zurawik�s book. It tells the story of a Jewish executive reluctant to allow Jewish characters, created by Jewish producers, directors and writers, to enter TV�s prime territory. If anything, Seinfeld is the exception; as Zurawik meticulously argues in his study of over five decades of American broadcasting, Jewish characters were seldom so lucky as to be given a chance at all: Between 1954 and 1972, not a single leading Jewish character graced the tube.
Why was it that Jews could occupy center stage in literature, cinema and theater, yet be so blatantly absent from what was then rapidly becoming the most pervasive
of all entertainment media? The answer, as Zurawik deftly demonstrates, has to do with the psyches of the Jewish men who founded and owned the networks, in particular NBC�s David Sarnoff, and William Paley, of CBS. Both men, as well as the less-dominant ABC chief Leonard Goldenson, shared similar biographies, being either immigrants themselves or sons of immigrants. Both were Eastern European Jews, anxious to put their foreign, ethnic identity behind and recreate themselves as modern Americans in the WASP mold. Most important, both men had a phenomenal example to follow: that of luminaries like Adolph Zukor, Samuel Goldwyn or David Selznick, immigrant Jews who, decades before, created the Hollywood film industry as a means of assimilating themselves into mainstream U.S. culture, while concomitantly redefining what that culture represented through the movies they produced. The movie moguls made sure that their films offered little in the way of Jewish culture. Be too loud, went a common murmur, too proud, too Jewish, and the goyim will take it all away from us.
Paley and Sarnoff, Zurawik suggests, followed the Hollywood model to the letter, creating, from New York, mythologies for middle America, while avoiding the realities of their personal experiences.
Zurawik quotes one telling incident involving an adolescent Paley, who, after being shunned by Philadelphia�s Jewish aristocracy, promised his mother that he was "going to New York and I�ll not only make lots of money, I�ll marry a Vanderbilt." Paley never married a Vanderbilt, but he continued, throughout his life, to shy away from his own Jewish identity, making it known to subordinates that he considered Jewish characters personae non grata on CBS. And, as CBS, up until the 1970s, was the most powerful network, accounting, at one point, for almost 85 percent of the profits of all three networks combined, Paley�s psyche sentenced Jewish characters to decades of invisibility.
There were, of course, exceptions to the rule, shows such as "The Goldbergs" or "Bridget Loves Bernie," and Zurawik analyzes each one, unearthing prevalent negative stereotypes even in shows created by Jewish writers and producers, such as representations of Jews as pushy and crude or the recurring archetype of the effete Jewish male, such as the emotionally turbulent man-child Buddy Sorel (Morey Amsterdam) in the "Dick Van Dyke Show." Mainly, though, the book focuses on the era following the departure of the three founders, when, the networks now in the hands of large, national corporations, Jewish characters slowly seeped into prime time. Zurawik tracks those characters, pointing out the well-roundedness of some ("Thirtysomething�s" Michael Steadman, "Northern Exposure�s" Dr. Joel Fleischman), while scrutinizing others. He unearths stereotypical patterns concerning Jewish characters, mainly the attraction of males to sexual, confident gentile women. He also discusses the continuing legacy of identity concealment even in current days, as is manifested, for example, in NBC�s hit series "Friends": Despite a major character being named Rachel Green, hailing from Long Island, and having been engaged to a dentist named Barry, the audience is never provided with any clue concerning the ethnicity of the character, and thus is left to play a Jew-not-a-Jew guessing game.
ZURAWIK, THE BALTIMORE SUN�S veteran TV critic, stumbled into his topic almost by accident. In the early 1990s, he began pursuing a PhD in American studies at the University of Maryland. One day, in 1992, after writing a piece that alluded to Jewish self-censorship on the small screen, he returned home to find a message on the answering machine. "The voice," he writes, "sounded like that of an elderly woman speaking with a slight European accent. In an angry voice, she said, �You fool, how could you say such things in the newspaper? You have no idea what you have done with your stupid article, the ammunition you give to our enemies.�" While the message sent shivers down his spine, Zurawik knew he had found his dissertation topic.
As the story of Jewish characters in prime time is as much one of absence as it is of presence, Zurawik goes beyond the traditional, academic textual analysis. Instead, he decided to complement his exploration of the images with the more demanding production research, which meant interviewing as many executives, producers, creators and actors as he could, asking them questions that were often not flattering. "It was Vietnam," Zurawik told The Jerusalem Report, conjuring the metaphor of war to describe the process of pursuing the often-reluctant milieu of Jewish TV professionals. "I was in a swamp and thinking fast. It�s a lot of work, a lot of writing letters, a lot of getting rejected by some of them, of not getting answers, of following up." His efforts paid off. The book provides not only a plethora of well-described case studies, but also a wealth of interviews with men and women of influence, all of whom expand and elaborate on Zurawik�s findings. As Richard Rosenstock, one Hollywood producer puts it, "there�s a feeling that says, �Be careful. At any moment, they can take it away from you�. Be very careful not to put too much out there lest it give rise to anti-Semitism.�"
Zurawik allows his characters to speak in their own language, incorporating long quotes from relevant industry players. Often those players choose anecdotes as a means to make their point, the anecdote being the rhetorical device of choice in the industry. This provides the added gratification of prose peppered with fascinating tidbits. Here�s one: In an attempt to legitimize their anti-Jewish bias, Jewish network executives concocted a rumor of audience research that supposedly suggested that Americans are willing to watch shows with characters belonging to any but three subgroups -- New Yorkers, men with mustaches and Jews. Zurawik follows the evolution of the research in question, and, for the first time, finds it to be a hoax. Still, he points out, some executives believe in it till this day.
Zurawik�s analysis of the unique plight of Jewish women on television is especially good. In the entire history of American TV, he proves, there have been but three unquestionably Jewish female leading characters in a sitcom or a drama: Molly Goldberg, in "The Goldbergs," which ran in the 1940s and 50s on CBS; Rhoda Morgenstern, in "Rhoda"; and "The Nanny�s" Fran Fine.
As Zurawik was carrying out his research, he would present his findings at the Baltimore Jewish Community Center. "The Nanny," he said, in a recent interview, was "a lightning rod: Half of the people loved it, half of them hated it. Every time it came up, a fight almost broke out. Then, one woman said, �Well, at least she was a Jewish woman on TV.� In that way, the Jewish experience is very much like the African American experience: It�s a stereotype, but at least there�s a person on TV who looks like me."
No discussion of Jews on television, of course, would be complete without at least a mention of Charlotte York. York, the character played by Kristin Davis on HBO�s "Sex and the City," is the quintessential WASP, who falls in love with her divorce attorney, one Harry Goldenblatt. In an unprecedented move for TV, this time it is the shiksa goddess who converts to Judaism in order to unite with her Jewish lover. In a recent article in USA Today, Samuel G. Freedman wrote, "Until the HBO series, no television show had ever presented a conversion with such visual and theological detail. Even more important is what the approving portrayal represents: a reversal of the entertainment industry�s tradition of viewing Jewish identity as something to be shed in the quest to become American."
Interviewed for the same article, Zurawik himself noted "the enormous influence" the show has on viewers, "especially for young women trying to figure out how and where they fit into things. And in Charlotte�s case, we have the Jewish man, on one level, and Judaism, on a deeper level, being held up as possibilities for fulfillment.... That is profound."
No matter, then, what befalls "Sex and the City�s" three other bachelorettes, Charlotte York-Goldenblatt has helped to further raise the iron curtain from the small screen, making Jews not only visible but desirable. As the networks continue to flaunt Southern belles and blonde bombshells, more Sipowitzes and Lopezes and O�Malleys, this, as Zurawik�s retelling of the history of American TV will reaffirm, is no mean feat.
Liel Leibovitz is a writer living in New York.
December 29, 2003
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