by Lawrence Bush on April 26, 2012
White Christmas, the box-office smash hit of 1954, premiered at Radio City Music Hall in New York on this date. Its music was by Irving Berlin (Israel Baline); its director was Michael Curtiz (Kertész Kaminer Manó), a Hungarian Jew who also directed Casablanca, Mildred Pierce, Yankee Doodle Dandy and many other classic films; its co-star was Danny Kaye (David Kaminsky); and it was written by three Jewish screenwriters, Norman Krasna, Norman Panama, and Melvin Frank.
“I’m dreaming of a White Christmas, just like the ones I used to know . . .” —Irving Berlin
by Lawrence Bush on April 22, 2012
The first movies shown in the U.S. to a paying audience were presented on this date in 1896 at Koster and Bial’s Music Hall on 34th Street in New York City (the current site of Macy’s). Shown on Thomas Edison’s new Vitascope, the shorts were described in the New York Times as showing “two precious blonde young persons of the variety stage in pink and blue dresses, doing the umbrella dance with commendable celerity,” followed by “a view of an angry surf breaking on a sandy beach near a stone pier,” followed by “a burlesque boxing match between a tall, thin comedian and a short, fat one . . . a comic allegory called ‘The Monroe Doctrine’ . . . and a skirt dance by a tall blonde . . . which were all wonderfully real and singularly exhilarating.” Koster and Bial’s was a major vaudeville theater owned by two German Jews that was demolished in 1901.
“God wants a man who will cheer the hearts of men and remove sorrow from them.” —Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler quoting Talmud at the funeral of Albert Bial, New York Times
by Lawrence Bush on March 9, 2012
Frederick Jay “Rick” Rubin, named by Time magazine as one of the world’s 100 most influential people in 2007 because of his role as co-founder of Def Jam Records, as a brilliant music producer, and as a key popularizer of hip hop music, was born in Long Beach, New York on this date in 1963. Among the musicians Rubin has worked with are LL Cool J, Run-D.M.C., Public Enemy, Johnny Cash, Tom Petty, Black Sabbath, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against the Machine, Neil Diamond, Mick Jagger, Slayer, and many others on a very diverse arc of musical genres. Now a co-president of Columbia Records, Rubin founded Def Jam while he was a high school student and began a partnership with Russell Simmons to get the company off the ground while Rubin was still a college student at NYU. In 1993, after the word “def” (rhythmic, danceable) appeared in a standardized dictionary, Rubin held a public funeral for the word, complete with coffin and gravesite.
“When advertisers and the fashion world co-opted the image of hippies, a group of the original hippies in San Francisco literally buried the image of the hippie. When ‘def’ went from street lingo to mainstream, it defeated its purpose.” —Rick Rubin
by Lawrence Bush on March 7, 2012
Dorothy Fields, who wrote lyrics for more than 400 songs for Broadway and Hollywood, became the first woman among inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame on this date in 1971. The daughter of vaudeville comedian Lew Fields (of Weber & Fields fame), Fields got going at the age of 23 by teaming up with Jimmy McHugh to write “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby,” “Exactly Like You,” and “On the Sunny Side of the Street.” She also teamed up with Jerome Kern to write the songs for Swing Time (Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers), one of which, “The Way You Look Tonight,” won a 1936 Academy Award. Fields had a 50-year career that hardly flagged. Among her other hit Broadway songs are “I’m in the Mood for Love,” “Big Spender,” and “Pick Yourself Up.”
“Nothing’s impossible I have found/for when my chin is on the ground/I pick myself up dust myself off/Start all over again.” —Dorothy Fields
