“Making Trouble” Gives a Long Deserved Name and Recognition to Jewish Women in Comedy

30Jul2007 Filed under: Arts and Culture, Comedy, JVoices, Racism, Women, Yiddishkeit Author: Cole Krawitz

I can’t believe it, something Jewish was actually screened in the U.S. in places before New York? Yes, it’s true. It’s the first time I can say since leaving that I was excited I wasn’t in NY, because let me tell you, there’s nothing like Jewish life in New York, as is referenced through the whole film, “Making Trouble”. (I’m not biased or anything )

Unlike Sarah, I caught the film in Berkeley.

I have to commend Jewish Women’s Archive for putting together such an amazing film filled with archival treats, like old menus from Jewish restaurants. The idea of the film came after they did a fundraiser in 2005, where they screened a bunch of the archival footage and realized that this was incredibly rich material. From there, they got the support to turn it into a documentary film, as it definitely fits their mission of telling the untold stories of Jewish women in the United States.

Besides Molly Picon, Gilda Radner and Joan Rivers, I didn’t know much about the women being discussed in the film, so undoubtedly I learned a tremendous amount. The film features the stories of Molly Picon, Fannie Brice, Sophie Tucker, Gilda Radner, Joan Rivers and Wendy Wasserstein, who was the first woman to ever win a Tony Award in 1989. 1989–yes, less than twenty years ago.

To watch the film was definitely a delight, and to hear more of JWA’s work in crafting the film afterwards was interesting. Part of their overall goal was just to get people to expand what they think about when they think of Jewish comedy. Very rarely are Jewish women named as Jewish comedians, and yet here I sat in a room of mostly older Jews who couldn’t stop listing Jewish women comedians, and in a film that was also narrated by four contemporary Jewish women comedians: Jackie Hoffman, Judy Gold, Jessica Kirson and Cory Kahaney.

I must say I was the most surprised to learn about Joan Rivers. In my generation, we don’t think so highly of Joan. She’s often typecast as a somewhat ridiculous, Hollywood Squares, entertainment, washed out comedian who had lost her stuff. What I didn’t realize was how much this typecast had been placed on her because of her husband’s suicide. The film shows how she built her career, and was really telling provocative and brazen jokes at the same time that most of Jewish comedy was focused around borshvelt/male jokes mocking Jewish women.

But, when her husband killed himself, places started pulling her contracts left and right. She had to start all over, taking what she could, like being the MC on the red carpet for Hollywood stars. Honestly, she’s brilliant and funny and just fabulous. I’m so excited I got to learn more about her life.

The film isn’t without it’s problems. As the editors testified in the Q&A afterwards, one of the challenges was how to keep the movie flowing, with these six rich and dynamic women. So, some of the stories are less fully fleshed out then others (part of this also had to do with having less archival material for some people than others), and often times the editors made choices about how much they would go into some of the more uncomfortable aspects of these stories. For example, part of the story about Sophie Tucker was how she performed in blackface for six years. All of the commenters in the film kept saying how uncomfortable she was with doing this, but not because of the racism in performing in blackface, but because of how in doing so meant that she was hiding her whiteness and Jewishness. The editors talked about how they discussed this almost everyday, how to handle this part, but sadly the comments they chose to narrate it did a disservice and fell into reinforcing the idea that it was wrong to be Black. That Sophie would sneak in some Yiddish words and show her skin under her gloves so that she could be seen, not because it wasn’t OK to perform in blackface.

Sophie Tucker was incredible. It would be hard not to love her. She was brash, bold and sexually forthright. She was who she was and didn’t care what people thought. Here’s the thing though–she wasn’t alone in this. Rather, she was in the company of many woman, particularly Black blues singers like Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Mamie Smith who were doing the same thing, except they were Black women during the time of segregation. To me, JWA missed a really important moment here to talk about what it meant, yes to be as bold and provocative and self-defining as Sophie Tucker was, but also know that this was eclipsing the many Black women blues artists who were never going to get the same kind of recognition as Sophie Tucker did in popular culture at the time, even though they were the first women to be performing in this tradition.

This to me is a type of silencing, one that leaves us with more questions than answers. Answers I’d like to know. Is this a kind of appropriation, like we see today in Jewish communities (and no I don’t just mean white Jewish folks and hip-hop, but yes I’m including it). I want to know what Sophie Tucker knew at the time. Did she know about Bessie Smith? Was she inspired by Ma Rainey? Had she heard these artists before? I can’t say, because they didn’t go there in the film to let us know, but I want to know. Did she think it was bad that these women weren’t getting recognition the way she was? I want to hear this story. I feel like JWA took away a moment that was important, and particularly important in thinking about how women’s history is often retold without still evaluating how variance in race, sexuality, class impacts whose story is told and why. (Which reminds me I don’t think there was a queer Jewish woman comedian in the film).

The film talked some about Molly Picon and crossdressing, but not the way in which one of the reasons I even know about Molly Picon, which is because she’s somewhat of an icon in Jewish queer circles because she crossdressed. And while the film attempts to critique the way in which Jewish women comics were often battling the idea that they were funny, but not beautiful, the film fell short in not reinforcing these stories. There was even a moment where the film addressed Gilda Radner’s eating disorder, but didn’t actually say the word bulimia–they really glossed over it.

And, with all of that, I am excited that JWA did do this film. I am grateful that they are infusing history that has been left untold into popular culture. But I don’t want it to come at the expense of talking about some of the harder aspects of these women’s lives, and in the worlds in which they were living in. To do so is a disservice to their memory, and a disservice to history overall. Gail Reimer was also at the Q&A, and she said that she hoped the film was just a starting point for these important conversations to happen.

Over time, they hope to release more excerpts from the footage they put together for the film and put it on the website, some of which she said addressed things like Molly Picon’s playing of stereotypes later in her career, and more directly discussed Tucker and blackface. I’ll be interested to see these excerpts in time. They also want people to leave comments and stories of what these Jewish women comedians meant to them, so by all means, if you have memories you want to share, do share them.

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11 Responses to ““Making Trouble” Gives a Long Deserved Name and Recognition to Jewish Women in Comedy”

Jordan
July 31st, 2007 at 9:53 am

Cole, thanks so much for this thoughtful review. I, too, love the film and have enjoyed learning about the women featured, some of whomâ€”Sophie Tucker, for exampleâ€”I knew very little about. I was thinking about your comment in regards to Sophie Tucker in blackface:

â€œ… Part of the story about Sophie Tucker was how she performed in blackface for six years. All of the commenters in the film kept saying how uncomfortable she was with doing this, but not because of the racism in performing in blackface, but because of how in doing so meant that she was hiding her whiteness and Jewishness. The editors talked about how they discussed this almost everyday, how to handle this part, but sadly the comments they chose to narrate it did a disservice and fell into reinforcing the idea that it was wrong to be Black. That Sophie would sneak in some Yiddish words and show her skin under her gloves so that she could be seen, not because it wasnâ€™t OK to perform in blackface.â€?

I think itâ€™s very easy for us today to acknowledge the inherent racism of blackface. But in Sophie Tuckerâ€™s time, itâ€™s unlikely that those in the performing world (or Sophie Tucker herself) perceived blackface as promoting an iconic, racist American archetype. Blackface was an important performance tradition in the American theater for over 100 years and was also popular overseas. Clearly, the stereotypes embodied in the stock characters of blackface minstrelsy played a significant role in cementing and proliferating racist images, attitudes and perceptions worldwide. But it wasnâ€™t until the mid-20th centuryâ€”after Sophie Tuckerâ€™s blackface yearsâ€”that attitudes about race and racism began to change, effectively ending the prominence of blackface performance in the U.S. and elsewhere. In preserving the narratives of Jewish women throughout historyâ€”or any narratives, for that matterâ€”I think itâ€™s important to frame them within the context of their time. For Sophie Tucker, her discomfort with blackface had everything to do with â€œhiding her whiteness and Jewishnessâ€? and with the insistence of theatre managers who said she was â€œtoo fat and uglyâ€? to be accepted by an audience in any other context. Her discomfort with blackface was not, in fact, experienced as a result of contributing to a racist performance style.

As to queer representation in the film, Judy Gold is an out-and-proud lesbian (though not identified as such in the film) and discusses her sexuality quite openly in her stand-up acts.

Thanks for spreading the word about Making Trouble!
Cole Krawitz
August 1st, 2007 at 1:00 am

Thanks Jordan for your thoughts and your work at JWA.

I have to respectfully disagree though with your argument. In fact, the rise of blackface minstrelsy occurred at the same time as the rise of the abolitionist movement and intense rioting to end slavery in the U.S.. These were undoubtedly significant shifts in thinking about race and racism.

Thus, the rise of blackface is not isolated from a dominant culture’s inability to effectively address their actions in enslaving and dehumanizing millions of people. Honestly looking at Jewish participation in blackface is important, for many reasons, including evaluating our communal participation in U.S. racism, and our own internalized stuff. Many Jews at this time were not treated as white people, including Jews that weren’t, and aren’t white. So, I think I am honoring historical accuracy, when I’m asking for us to talk about Jews and race. And since I know you’re citing wikipedia, I know you also saw that Sophie Tucker interacted with Black folks during her career, hired folks to teach her how to perform and sing, and later recorded one of her greatest hits, “Some of These Days,” which was written by Shelton Brooks, an African-American songwriter, who according to the film got Sophie to sing the song because through Sophie Tucker’s maid.

These are all highly racialized interactions. Again, I think we do a disservice to ourselves by not confronting them, and by not being honest about their complexity.
Cole Krawitz
August 1st, 2007 at 1:03 am

While I’m at it, let me plug this really interesting piece on NPR on The Legacy of Blackface, in which the opening of the segment talks about Jews and Blackface.
Marisa
August 1st, 2007 at 11:25 am

I’d also highly recommend “How Jews became White Folks” by Karen Brodkin – well-written and deals with many of the complexities of race in America.
ephraim
August 1st, 2007 at 1:14 pm

it’s also important not to remove blackface minstrelsy from the context of minstrelsy in general, which included a variety of genres depicting racialized others, including jews (who were most often played by irish folks).

i think it’s misleading, when talking about this time period, to make the distinction between jews who were treated as non-white and jews who were non-white. legally, since the government determined race at the time, almost all jews (ashkenazish or otherwise) were white. socially, almost none of them were.
Cole Krawitz
August 2nd, 2007 at 12:13 am

ephraim, can you clarify? what i was referencing was that there were Jews who were racialized as non-white, and thus experienced the legal ramification of segregation, as much as there were Jews who legally and socially experienced being codified as white.

also, can you say more about the minstrelsy piece–from my understanding yes there were many other groups that were eventually depicted in minstrelsy, but that its origins are based in blackface minstrelsy, so that doesn’t take it out of context as much as say that from these racist depictions of blackface, other groups were stereotyped.
ephraim
August 2nd, 2007 at 7:08 am

ok, that makes sense then, cole. it sounded at first like you were distinguishing jews who were treated as non-white from jews who were ‘actually’ non-white, as if whiteness or lack thereof was/is something that stabily inheres in groups of people. if jewish racial history has anything to teach, it’s that race isn’t not stable or inherent or even always embodied.
it’s my impression (based on the work of Hasia Diner, mainly i think), that almost no jews in the late 19th/early 20th century urban, northeastern US (it’s possible that this was really different in the south) were socially coded as white, but almost all were legally classified as white, therefore exempt from the most extreem institutionalized forms of racism, such as segregation.

Well, pop culture at this time period was exploding. blackface minstrelsy did preceed the 1890s immigration boom, so one could say that all the other ‘ethnic’-face minstrel forms developed out of it. But, both that moment’s incarnation of blackface and the other minstrelsy genres also developed out of vaudville and the early recording industry. I think the (very reasonable) shock and outrage of seeing blackface leads people to think alot about the burnt cork mask at the expense of thinking about some of the underlying performance conventions of all the ethnic minstrelsy genres, and how race got heirarchized rather than dichotomized.

By the end of it’s mainstream popularity, blackface and minstrelsy became almost seperable. Jolson didn’t appear out of blackface, even at the end of his career, though he was wildly famous, and it’s popularity as a form was on the wane, and his performances strayed farther and farther from minstrelsy conventions and musical pieces. Was he doing minstrelsy then, if the only thing racialized about him was the mask? It’s hard to say. It doesn’t make it not racist or unproblematic, but it makes it alot more complicated. I’m not sure how much of this does or doesn’t apply to Tucker’s performances.
daniel
August 2nd, 2007 at 12:37 pm

just to put another piece in the ‘racialization of jews’ part of the thread.

one key way that legal whiteness was enacted in relation to immigrant populations was through the naturalization laws. the first such law, from 1790, made the basic criteria ones status as “a free white person”. the 15th amendment made it possible for africans and african-descended people to become citizens, but it wasn’t until 1943 that explicit prohibitions on asian immigration began to be removed.

as far as i know, no jews’ naturalizations were ever challenged on racial grounds. but the various immigration and naturalization restriction laws would have prevented pretty much any south asian, persian or central asian jew from getting to that point. north african jews and jews from the ottoman empire would’ve been in the same ambiguous position as other folks from those areas – there were contradictory court rulings in the various cases that dealt with them – and have a pretty strong incentive to pass as ‘ordinary’ european jews.

all of which is to back up ephraim’s point about legal whiteness preceding social non-whiteness.

on minstrelsy, though:

i don’t think the links between blackface minstrelsy and other ethnic performance are particularly close at all in the ways that both ephraim and cole have suggested. the stock irish, german and jewish characters and routines started to appear onstage in the u.s. much earlier than the mid-19th-century rise of blackface – and perhaps more to the point, they were in large part imported from the european, and especially british, popular theater, while blackface is a local innovation. hostile/entertaining caricatures of germans pre-date the revolutionary war, on paper at least; their irish parallels are already common by the 1840s; i have less sense of the jewish timeline in the u.s., but shylock is already a sophisticated rethinking of the ’stage-jew’ sterotype in the 1590s.

after blackface emerged as a major popular theater form, the two genres cross-pollinated in all kinds of ways, which i think is where the confusion of the two histories comes in. i mean, most borsht-belt shtik is a perfect blend of blackface minstrelsy, ‘yidface’ caricature, and yidishkayt. take a look at the “the country’s going to war” scene in the marx brothers’ duck soup for a fabulous, disturbing and funny example.

what i’d be most interested in, though, is contemporaneous african american responses to sophie tucker. anyone have a clue where to look?
Cole Krawitz
August 2nd, 2007 at 5:27 pm

daniel, thanks for the performance history! very interesting and useful.

…i don’t know if there is a contemporary analysis re: sophie tucker. i’d have to dig around more.
maurice schoenwald
April 18th, 2009 at 4:21 pm

The Hamas sent bombs over the wall. They do not hurt children and women. They only strike against soldiers.

Hamas are happy because they will remove all Jews with a nice new place to live.

The Jews doctors take sick Hamas persons. Why do they do that. They must be trying to kill the Hamas.
Cole
April 20th, 2009 at 2:03 pm

Maurice, this comment has nothing to do with this post, is strikingly incoherent and uninformed. I have a sneaking suspicion trolls are visiting the site again.