My Brother and Jewish Broadway

 I’m currently working on a book about how Jews have enriched American culture and my life. There are millions of Americans, some of them even anti-Semitic, who are walking around with no idea how deeply they’ve been influenced by Mel Brooks, Mad magazine, Annie Leibovitz, Bennet Cerf, Leonard Bernstein and George S. Kaufman.

Kaufman was a giant in the American theater. He wrote comedies, dramas and political satire. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Of Thee I Sing, which he co-wrote with Morrie Ryskind and Ira Gershwin. He also won the Pulitzer for You Can’t Take It With You, co-written with Moss Hart. Jewish men like Kaufman made modern Broadway. Every Broadway season from 1921 through 1958 had a play written or directed by Kaufman. With Edna Ferber, he wrote The Royal Family, Dinner at Eight, and Stage Door; with Howard Teichmann, he wrote The Solid Gold Cadillac, and with Moss Hart, Once in a Lifetime, Merrily We Roll Along, The Man Who Came to Dinner and You Can’t Take It with You. Brothers George and Ira Gershwin teamed up and wrote the music for 12 shows and four films including Showgirl; Girl Crazy with the songs “Embraceable You” (which made a star of Ginger Rogers) and “I Got Rhythm” (which made a star of Ethyl Merman); Porgy and Bess; and An American in Paris.