Re: Jewish Wedding Video

[SICULAR <SICULAR...>]

Molly Picon had been doing cross-dressed roles since at least 1918, when she 
was a lot more svelte.  Her Yosl, little drummer boy, and other roles were 
predecessors to Yidl, and toured to stages around the world (speaking of 
video, you can see an example which had reached the movie screen as early as 
1923 in OST UND WEST - a Yiddish silent film made in Austria and released 
with the German title and Yiddish subtitles; Molly is notable here for 
Hasidic drag too).  She also did boxing and other acrobatics in theater and 
movie trouser roles, and even wore a tux to receive her lifetime achievement 
award from YIVO... plus a pinky ring.  So "convincing" was not the big issue 
for Molly's audiences by1936, when Yidl mitn fidl was made.  And that 
'shtetl' was Kazimierz, a popular location for Yiddish filmmaking which of 
course WAS invaded by the Nazis, but not the year after this film was made.  
In fact, the following year, Molly Picon returned to Poland to make Mamele 
with the same American (expatriate Polish) director, Joseph Green.  Green 
continued to make Yiddish films on location in Poland up til and including A 
brivele der mamen [1939].  

As to wedding videos, has anyone mentioned Uncle Moses, the 1932 classic 
which shows the live klezmer band actually playing for revellers in a Lower 
East Side tenement simkhe?  They start with Heyser Bulgar and then move on.  
The band gets just a quick camera pan, but they're definitely playing for 
real in that shot (although then the music track is looped over again and 
again).  You can't see all the players in the frame, though even so there's 
an interesting unamplified lineup.  Not bad audio for that era either.  
Maurice Schwartz in the title role as a sweatshop magnate with Judith 
Abarbanel as his unwilling trophy wife.  A good badkhn scene too at the 
banquet table.  Less nostalgic yet more authentic than 'Yidl' by far, except 
for the fact that Green's more pandering film DID have non-professional 
actors for its Polish Jewish extras; and those extras were glad to get to eat 
a real feast while filming the wedding scene.

Eve Sicular 

drummer/bandleader
Metropolitan Klezmer & Isle of Klezbos
151 First Avenue #145
New York, NY  10003  USA
tel:  212-475-4544
fax:  212-677-6304
sicular (at) aol(dot)com
www.metropolitanklezmer.com

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