THE AMERICAN YIDDISH THEATER

A lot of people don't know it but there were two vaudevilles in America in the early 20th century. One was the vaudeville everybody knows about, exemplified in the posters above and below, and which may have (I'm guessing) arisen from the old minstrel shows in the 19th century. The other was the now almost forgotten Yiddish Theater which came over on the boat with east European Jewish immigrants .





The two vaudevilles co-existed for a while and each had their separate audiences, but eventually the native vaudeville won out. It could pay more and had a bigger talent pool to draw from. Yiddish Theater people used to ridicule the vaudevillians, who they considered low class and vulgar, but even the Yiddish Theater eventually turned to sex gags and Yiddish performers were more and more moonlighting in regularvaudeville.

What I've said about the Yiddish Theater probably sounds sad but it was immensely influential in American comedy and drama. My guess is that part of that influence comes from East European Jewish culture. That culture is innately funny. Anglo culture isn't.

Let's say you're an anglo writer and you want to write a story about a gentile boy who's attracted to a gentile girl, and wants to ask her out. If you're like me you're asking yourself, "Hmmm, what obstacle is there? Is the boy shy? Is there another boy the girl likes better?" You have a lot of thinking to do before you arrive at a plot.

Now let's say you're a Jewish writer writing about a Jewish boy who wants to ask a Jewish girl out. East European culture requires a mediator or a go-between for things like this, usually a friend. The friend has to overcome the guy's reluctance to act and talk him into asking the girl out. The girl has a friend who has to talk her into accepting. Everything has to be argued about.

But that's not all. The girl's mother, who's a real character, thinks the boy is a loser. The boy's mother thinks the girl is a gold-digger. Maybe the two mediating friends are starting to fall for each other. And what happens if the two sets of parents meet each other? See what I mean? You haven't even thought about the plot yet and your story is half written. It's easy to write for Jewish characters. Their culture is interesting all by itself, even without a plot!

Everybody benefited from the War of the Vaudevilles. Gentiles learned how to write better comedy and Jews learned how to write James Bond films.