Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof (66 page)

Topol traveled up and down
Topol,
Topol by Topol
, 120–24, and Topol interview.

the threat of extermination
Segev,
Seventh Million
, 392.

He had left London as a star
Altman and Kaufman,
Making of a Musical
, 167; Pilbrow,
A Theatre Project
, 157.

Robbins “should come over … and try to save the show”
Topol letter to Robbins, October 2, 1967, JRP6:1.

“
extremely good shape”
Pilbrow letter to Robbins, October 5, 1967, JRP6:1.

“since the rest of his behavior”
Prince letter to Robbins, October 19, 1967, JRP6:1.

“actually the worst offender”
Bock note to Robbins, November 8, 1967, JRP5:12.

“
history repeats itself”
Prince letter to Robbins, n.d. (enclosing Alfie Bass reviews), JRP6:5.

When Mirisch saw a notice
Mirisch,
I Thought
, 306; Jewison,
This Terrible Business
, 178–79; Jewison interview.

Jewison hadn’t liked [Mostel]
Jewison interview.

“must be rooted in truth”
Jewison letter to Mirisch, September 8, 1969, NJP32:14.

Tevye had to feel like a Russian Jew
Jewison interview.

“I identified very strongly with Israel”
Fiddler
post-screening Q&A, Film Society of Lincoln Center, Norman Jewison Retrospective, May 29, 2011.

“you could see him stiffen”
Lincoln Center Q&A.

“My grandfather was a sort of Tevye”
Topol quoted in McCandlish Phillips, “Topol, Film Tevye, Looks Back at Role,”
New York Times
, November 3, 1971, 38.

“collective incarnation of a new ethnic heroism”
Sachar,
A History of the Jews in America
, 713; see also S. Rosenthal,
Waning
.

“wondered if they had not neglected”
Sachar,
A History of the Jews in America
, 818.

CHAPTER 7:
FIDDLER
WHILE BROOKLYN BURNS

“We were in show business”
Piro-1 interview.

“where Jews can live as in the Old Country”
Sachar,
A History of the Jews in America
, 214.

rapidly deteriorating subdivided houses
See Podair,
Strike
, and Pritchett,
Brownsville
.

“notoriously, a place that measured”
Kazin,
Walker
, 12.

threatened to boycott
See Ravitch,
Great School Wars
, 270ff., and “Schools to Seek Rights Panel Aid,”
New York Times
, August 27, 1963.

surrounded by community protesters
Rubin interview.

“taste excellence”
Piro-1 and Rubin interviews.

“With your scores”
Piro-1 interview.

“We are not martyrs”
Piro, “Teaching the Disadvantaged,” letter to
Music Educators Journal
54:4 (December 1967): 16.

“For Mr. Piro”
Beverly Cannon Dorsey interview.

“the only place you could feel free”
Haskins interview.

Stephan Hirsch … found refuge there
Hirsch interview.

“time to get down to business”
McCullers interview.

“a big brother and father figure”
Maritza Figueroa Reynolds interview.

“don’t do assembly-type”
Piro,
Black Fiddler
(henceforth,
BF
), 18.

Bruce Birnel had just seen
Birnel interview.

“Maybe Black Power is what”
Clive Barnes, “Theater: All-Negro ‘Hello, Dolly!’ Has Its Premiere,”
New York Times
, November 13, 1967.

When they reopened, some 350 UFT teachers … stayed home
New York Times
coverage: “Admit Teachers, M’Coy Is Ordered,” May 24, 1968; “Classes Go On Despite District Woes,” June 11, 1968; “Donavan Says Schools in Ocean Hill–Brownsville District Will Remain Open,” June 17, 1968; “Ocean Hill Unit ‘Dismisses’ 350,” June 21, 1968.

“If community control … becomes a fact”
Shanker quoted in Rossner,
Year Without Autumn
, 39, and in Sol Stern, “‘Scab’ Teachers,”
Ramparts
, November 17, 1966, 21.

“coming into the ghetto to cripple”
letter to Shanker from parent/community negotiating committee for IS 201, quoted in Ravitch,
Great School Wars
, 306.

“educational genocide”
Reverend C. Herbert Oliver, quoted in Martin Mayer, “The Full and Sometimes Very Surprising Story of Ocean Hill, the Teachers’ Union and the Teacher Strike of 1968,”
New York Times
, February 2, 1969.

“hoodlum element” … “mob rule”
Shanker quoted in
New York Times
, “‘Hoodlum Element’ Said to Run Schools,” February 12, 1968, and, for example, UFT full-page
New York Times
ad for a “rally to protest mob rule and save our schools,” September 13, 1968.

“a white motherfucking Jew bastard”
Piro-1 interview, and Piro,
BF
, 27.

“Can’t you do
Guys and Dolls
?” … “unsettled” … “sensitive time”
Rubin interview.

a “queer old auntie”
quoted in Samantha Ellis,
“
Lionel Bart’s Oliver!, June 1960,”
Guardian
, June 18, 2003,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2003/jun/18/theatre.saman
thaellis.

James Baldwin
“Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They Are Anti-White,”
New York Times Magazine
, April 9, 1967.

“It’s called
Fiddler on the Roof”
Piro,
BF
, 28.

help Teddy “keep it together”
Dorsey interview.

“Gestapo tactics” … “Fuck you”
quoted in Gitlin,
Sixties
, 334.

Only a year earlier, the Anti-Defamation League
The ADL commissioned Gary T. Marx to conduct the study. He published it as
Protest and Prejudice: A Study of Belief in the Black Community
(New York: Harper & Row, 1967).

Variety
joked in September
clipping and note from Prince’s assistant, September 16, 1968, HPP109:1.

“Commie fascists,” “Black Nazi lovers,” and “nigger lovers”
quoted in Leonard Buder, “Parents Smash Windows, Doors to Open Schools,”
New York Times
, October 19, 1968, 1.

“racist pigs”
Leonard Buder, “Brooklyn Inquiry Begun on Threats in JHS 271 Crisis,”
New York Times
, October 16, 1968.

leaflet filled with Jew-hating invective
The leaflets are reproduced—and their use analyzed—in Fred Ferretti, “New York’s Black Anti-Semitism Scare,”
Columbia Journalism Review
8:3 (Fall 1969): 18–28.

temperate terms of the ADL
quoted in Bill Kovach, “Racist and Anti-Semite Charges Strain Old Negro-Jewish Ties,”
New York Times
, October 23, 1968, 1.

“perpetrated multiple fraud”
New York Civil Liberties Union report quoted in Ferretti, “New York’s Black Anti-Semitism Scare,” 18.

shocked to find himself jeered
Kovach, “Racist and Anti-Semite Charges,” 1.

Piro had voted with his union to strike
Piro-1 interview.

“a professional theater schedule”
Piro-2 interview.

“
it looked like a drag queen”
Piro-2 interview.

Sheila found quick identification
Haskins interview.

Olga thought about
Olga Carter Dais interview.

“Tevye—he’s a poor milkman”
Teddy quoted in Richard Schoenstein, “Kiddie Afro Fiddler Brownsville Smash,”
New York Magazine
, April 7, 1969, 44.

“all about getting into character”
Dais interview.

The afternoon work turned technical
Reynolds, Haskins, Dorsey, Dais, McCullers, Piro, Sicari interviews.

“I’m not going to do it like that”
Piro-1 interview.

“living and breathing your words”
Hirsch interview.

They called themselves the Maccabees
Piro, “Black Fiddler,”
Music Educators Journal
58:3 (November 1971): 54.

personal secrets blazoned
Piro,
BF,
130.

threatened to kill him
unpublished manuscript submitted to the
New York Times
in 1971 by colleague Dan O’Neil: “I was with Piro in the teacher’s cafeteria when one Jewish teacher threatened to kill him if the play went on.” Piro personal files, kindly shared.

On the day of the assembly
Piro,
BF
, 85–90; Piro-1, Birnel, Dorsey interviews.

“
It was real”
Dorsey interview.

“This show has been canceled”
“
those fucking Jews”
Piro,
BF
, 99, and McCullers interview.

“The girl giving me freedom”
Haskins interview.

That night, Olga’s mother
Piro,
BF
, 101; Dais interview; interview with Lillian Carter in Enders,
Black Fiddler
.

“That’s a good show”
Brown interview and Piro,
BF
, 107–10.

trying to “scratch out a simple tune”
Piro-2 interview.

“We urgently request”
council letter quoted in Piro,
BF
, 128, and Brown interview.

with fury and dread
Rubin interview.

It was Birnel
Birnel, Piro interviews.

It took Bock, Harnick, and Stein less than five minutes
Harnick-2 interview.

Robbins was away at the time
memo from Floria Lasky to Robbins, March 6, 1969, JRP8:8.

“embarrassing”
Harnick-2 interview.

“Hamlet can only be played”
Stein interview.

“quite a marvelous thing”
Stein quoted in WCBS report, Jean Parr.

had realized a profit of 1,300 percent
Betty Flynn, “Boy Were those critics wrong!”
Chicago Daily News
, February 22, 1969, 3.

the issue was a poem
Lester,
Lovesong
, and Ferretti, “New York’s Black Anti-Semitism Scare”; also Weusi interview.

Metropolitan Museum of Art was just opening
Schoener,
Harlem on My Mind
. For discussion and analysis of the exhibit and the protests, see Steven C. Dubin, “Crossing 125th Street:
Harlem on My Mind
Revisited,” in
Displays of Power: Memory and Amnesia in the American Museum
(New York: New York University Press, 1999), and Bridget R. Cooke, “Black Artists and Activism:
Harlem on My Mind
(1969),”
American Studies
48:1 (Spring 2007): 5–40.

“anti-Jewish feeling is a natural result”
Van Ellison, “Introduction,” in Schoener,
Harlem on My Mind
, 13–14. A further controversy erupted when it became clear that some of the inflammatory assertions were Van Ellison’s paraphrases from Glazer and Moynihan that went uncredited because Schoener had taken out the footnotes.

six o’clock news
Jeanne Parr Report
, WCBS-NY, aired January 30, 1969.

60 Minutes
Jane Nicholl, “Fiddler in the Ghetto,” aired June 10, 1969.

Enders’s hour-long film,
Black Fiddler: Prejudice and the Negro
broadcast on ABC, August 7, 1969.

Campbell’s cultural nationalism had been fostered
Weusi interview.

“the equivalent of an African griot”
Weusi interview.

Frances Brown’s enthusiasm
Brown interview.

“ensemble playing in the finest sense”
Piro,
BF
, 172.

That night he wrote the cast
Piro,
BF
, 172–74.

foraging trips along Pitkin and Belmont
Ampolsky interview.

birch trees to project
Birnel interview, video footage.

Mayor Lindsay assembled
James P. Sterba, “Mayor Names 13 to Calm Schools,”
New York Times
, March 13, 1969, 1.

“
demonstrations, rampages”
Martin Arnold, “Public-School Violence Spreads; 24 Students, 5 Adults Arrested,”
New York Times
, April 25, 1969, 1.

set upon and suffered a broken nose
Hirsch interview.

Beverly tried to organize
Dorsey interview; Piro,
BF
, 192–93.

“battle-zone atmosphere”
Piro,
BF
, 195.

two hundred high school kids broke twenty-five … windows
Michael T. Kaufman, “School Battered by Band of Youths,”
New York Times
, May 1, 1969, 38.

“That’s some way to attract an audience”
Piro,
BF
, 203.

from “optimistic universalism”
Rieder,
Canarsie
, 27.

“the Jewish passage”
Podair,
Strike
, 144.

breaking another twenty windows
“Brooklyn School Stoned by Youths,”
New York Times
, May 2, 1969, 28.

Rubin was out there talking to police brass
Rubin interview.

even Beverly’s mother
Dorsey interview.

“dedication to the idea”
Fiddler
program at Eiseman,
Fiddler
clips, New York Public Library.