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Yiddish Goes Hollywood

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 30, 2008

"Animal Crackers" (1932) - Groucho Marx arrives at Margaret Dumont's mansion for a night of mooching. He's serenaded by a chorus singing, "Hooray for Captain Spaulding! The African explorer!" He says to the side: "Did someone call me shnorrer?" That's Yiddish for the ultimate, self-entitled mooch.

"Taxi!" (1932) - Jimmy Cagney starts as a Yiddish-speaking New York cabbie who is prowling for revenge. Producers at Warner Bros. rewrote the script to include Cagney's firing off Yiddish-isms after they learned the actor knew the language. The Irish-Catholic Cagney had grown up on the border of Irish and Jewish neighborhoods in New York and worked for a Yiddish-speaking older couple when he was a young man.

"The Producers" (1967) - In this Mel Brooks classic, Zero Mostel stars as the comically monstrous Max Bialystock. Bialystock was one the capitals of Yiddish-speaking Jewry in Eastern Europe.

"Blazing Saddles" (1973) - Brooks is at it again with this Western seen through the lens of the borscht belt. He plays an Indian chief who captures pioneers in a wagon train, then starts shpritzing (talking) in Yiddish. And, of course, there's the unforgettable Madeline Kahn as Lili Von Shtupp.

"Broadway Danny Rose" (1984) - Woody Allen plays a down-on-his-luck talent agent, who, whenever he's swearing to be honest, raises his right hand and says, "It's the emmis" (the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth).

"Once Upon a Time in America" (1984) - Robert De Niro and James Woods portray two best friends, whose lives are entangled for a generation - first as Prohibition gangsters, then as strangers, then finally when they are reunited as old men. There is a "l'chaim!" (To life!) for every toast and a "mazel tov" (congratulations) for wishes of good fortune.

"Bugsy" (1991) - Harvey Keitel plays Mickey Cohen, Bugsy Siegel's right-hand man in Los Angeles. Keitel insults Jack Dragna, the Italian mob boss who is being pushed out of the loop, with "Koosh mir in tuchus!" (Kiss my rear!)

What is the credo of Hollywood's most successful producers? "Think Yiddish, cast British." Here is a sampling of Yiddish's memorable moments on the silver screen. Information provided by Neal Karlen, author of "The Story of Yiddish"

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