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Entertaining America: Jews, Movies and Broadcasting at the Jewish Museum
by Jackie Farrell

Entertaining America: Jews, Movies and Broadcasting, an exhibit at the Jewish Museum, highlights the influence of Jews and Jewish culture on entertainment in the United States during the twentieth century. It also depicts the struggle to honor Jewish tradition and become oneself, and be accepted in modern American society. This exhibit shows how Jews experienced and were experienced in this process.

It's a multimedia walk-through exhibit that records this journey beginning with the influence of the early movie moguls Fox, Zukov and Loew, whose early theaters the Nickelodeons helped establish the importance of movies in American life. The next exhibit is the first "talkie" from 1927, The Jazz Singer, which is about the struggle of a singer choosing between his tradition and his need to find himself in a new world. I liked seeing the different versions of this story over the next 70+ years of entertainment, up to and including The Simpsons: Like Father, Like Clown.

The rest of the exhibit portrays the ways the Jewish people contributed to entertainment through ever medium of the twentieth century. Movies, radio and television are used to show their roles as producers, directors, writers, performers and actors, who also add the flavor or Jewishness to these performances. In humor, the Marx Brothers influenced the movies, as did Mel Brooks and Woody Allen who started on Your Show of Shows with Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, etc in the first Saturday night comedy show. Jerry Seinfeld has a whole room to himself, as does Molly Goldberg, who made her mark on radio and TV programming.

In the movies, Jewish actors and actresses like John Garfield and Barbra Streisand made their mark. There were also famous converts like Marilyn Monroe, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Elizabeth Taylor who were noted for their contributions to the entertainment industry.

The describes how the Holocaust, the Exodus, the creation of Israel and the experience of prejudice influenced entertainment. In a sense, this show represents the struggle of all cultures that make up the United States.