Acting Jewish on the American stage and screen, 1947--1998

This dissertation analyzes the work of Jewish-American writers, directors, and actors in theater, film, and television in the United States, from 1947 to 1998. Performances created by Jews for consumption by a mass audience are prime sites for analyzing what I call acting Jewish, a critical formulation of Jewish-American identity in the latter half of the twentieth century. I use the term acting Jewish to indicate the liminal, fluid, and multi-real nature of this formulation, as well as to emphasize the importance of the performer-spectator interaction in generating it. My argument is based on the concept of double-coding; the specific means and mechanisms by which a performance can communicate one message to Jewish audiences, while simultaneously communicating another, often contradictory message to gentile audiences. Beginning with the film Gentleman's Agreement (1947) I trace, chronologically, the shifting formulation of acting Jewish as a response to an ongoing crisis in the representation of Jewish-American identity after the Holocaust. By analyzing selected plays, films, and television programs, I demonstrate how double-coding functions to negotiate between the desire to assert the specificity of the Jewish experience and the apparently competing desire to speak to the universal human condition.;While this basic dynamic remains the same throughout the period under consideration, the apparent thrust of double-coding shifts significantly. From the 1940s through the 1960s, the emphasis is on creating performances which are not "too Jewish" to be appreciated by a gentile audience; this predominantly universalist mode of acting Jewish reaches its apotheosis in the 1971 film version of Fiddler on the Roof. Beginning in the late 1960s, we see a shift toward the Jewish-specific end of the spectrum. While still seeking to appeal to a general audience, performances such as The Way We Were (1973), Manhattan (1979), and Yentl (1983) seem more concerned with communicating a specific message of Jewish continuity to a Jewish audience. By the late 1980s and the 1990s, the assertion of Jewish specificity in works such as Angels in America (1993) and Seinfeld is more explicit than ever before, though elements of acting Jewish are still couched within a double-coded framework.