n the century-and-change since

DW Griffith’s A Child of the Ghetto

introduced goyishe moviegoers

to the shtetl of New York’s Lower

East Side, on-screen Jewishness

has undergone a staggering

metamorphosis. It has seen a shift from

harried peasants and hairy-knuckled tough

guys to “cosmopolitan” intellectuals and

anxiety-riddled white collar professionals.

But a buzzworthy holiday release has already

begun to upset this supposed forward

march. With Uncut Gems, the Big Apple-

based Safdie brothers have reintroduced

to our collective consciousness a bygone

model of Jewish masculinity: the conniving

low-life, long used by stunted bigots as

a foolproof bit of ammo in their ongoing

culture war. 

The anti-hero at the centre of Uncut Gems,

played with ingratiating smarminess by

comedian and uber-Jew Adam Sandler, is

a wheeler-dealer of the grand old school.

Yet despite the early critical praise, there are

still a handful of us who remain less than

enthused by Sandler’s casting as diamond

merchant Howard Ratner. Naftali Botwin,

editor of leftist publication The Jewish

Worker, responded to Uncut Gems’ Twitter-

breaking trailer drop with a since-deleted

spicy take: “What America truly needed

at a time of surging antisemitism [sic] is

a film about a crooked Jewish diamond

merchant. Thank you, Jewish Republican

@AdamSandler.” It is unclear whether

Botwin, or Gems’ detractors, have

actually seen the film – but in today’s

climate of resurgent anti-semitism and

rampant rumour-spreading, the yiddishkeit

commentariat are entitled to their concern. 

You’ve got to laugh to keep from crying,

as is our custom. Instead of raising my

fist (and blood pressure) against Sandler’s

money-grubbing caricature, I’ve chosen

instead to embrace it – and re-examine

those unsavoury depictions we’ve long

sought to keep under wraps. To understand

the magnitude of Sandler’s supposedly

distasteful character, we need only look

at Hollywood’s own history. Mainstream

examples of on-screen Jewishness tend

toward the harmless – the “nice Jewish

boys” you could bring to a Seder, rather than

a Golden Gloves match. Today’s modern

Jewish archetype is a lover (if he’s lucky),

not a fighter: bookish, like “Babe” Levy in

Marathon Man – or, at the very least, an

armchair intellectual devoid of romantic

“game”, as exemplified by Woody Allen’s

entire filmography. Hollywood studios

historically tailored their output to as wide

an audience as possible – and I can say,

with confidence, that the “real America”

of Hollywood’s Golden Age wasn’t too

interested in a nuanced look at the Jewish

experience. Rather, they sought to have

their own regard for us tribesmen – good

or bad, true or false – reflected back from

the silver screen. 

Nevermind that the American film industry

–  as opposed to “science” or “art” – as

we know it was founded by a handful of

Mittleuropean girdle manufacturers, or that

above-and-below-the-line credits boast any

number of “-steins” and “-bergs.” When

one considers the hardscrabble early

lives of Hollywood’s founding fathers, this

aversion to portraying the darker side of

Jewish life makes a certain amount of

sense: MGM wunderkind Irving Thalberg

was born to a poor family in Brooklyn, his

childhood beset by illness and privation.

Thalberg’s mentor, the highly successful

and influential producer Louis B Mayer,

honed his yiddishekopf for business

in his family’s scrap metal concern.

Only Joseph Schenck, founder of 20th

Century Fox, got his start in anything

resembling an entertainment industry: it

was amid the beer-and-sawdust-scented

caravans of New York’s penny-amusement

halls that he learned to ply his trade. Jewish

immigrants may have codified the Fordian

(heh) process by which mainstream films

were produced, but don’t think for a second

that we put ourselves first and foremost.

At the risk of retroactively psychoanalysing:

who could blame these would be elders

for their wholesale aversion to Jewish life

on screen? Outside the fecund Yiddish-

language film industry, the life of our

people is largely absent from early studio

filmmaking. Universal Pictures, founded by

the German-born advertising magnate Carl

Laemmle, counts only two such titles in the

studio’s still-extant filmography. One outing,

the 1925 release His People, exemplifies

this tug-of-war between the Old and New

worlds with a little Old Testament action:

Sammy Comminsky, a child of religious

immigrants, bucks tradition by becoming a

low-rent prizefighter – while his older brother

Morris seeks entry into the legitimate

sphere vis-á-vis the legal profession. 

Let’s not overlook the rich irony in Morry’s

chosen path: is there any Jewish stereotype

more recognisable – and pernicious – than

the shyster lawyer? Eight years after His

People, Universal entrusted future Oscar-

winner William Wyler with the 1933

melodrama Counsellor at Law. Snappy

pre-Code megastar John Barrymore

plays George Simon, a publicity-seeking

criminal defence attorney torn between

his long-suffering Jewish mother and his

golden-haired new shiksa bride. The role is

playful, a little schticky, and hardly devoid of

stereotyping – but ultimately, sympathetic,

no doubt the imprimatur of scenarist Elmer

Rice (née Reizenstein), who adapted his

own play for the screen.

Jewish playwrights like Rice, Clifford Odets,

and George S Kaufman earned considerable

acclaim after ditching the footlights of

Broadway for Hollywood’s backlots. Trading

in intimate stories of working-class folk,

their portrayals of American Jewish life were

often of a subtler kind. It’s telling that Rice,

Odets, Kaufman and their ilk produced the

lion’s share of their work prior to the World

War Two – a time when Jewish protagonists

understandably faded into the background.

Generations of assimilation and shared

trauma may have dimmed the silvery

stereotype of the Jewish low-life, but a brief

revival during the New Hollywood era hinted

at our colourful past. Slackening standards

for on-screen violence breathed new life into

the gangster picture, offering an in-road

through which American Jews could engage

with their unsavoury shared past. Budd

Boetticher’s 1960 drama The Rise and Fall

of Legs Diamond brought revived attention

to the real-life scandal of gangster Arnold

Rothstein and his ambitious lackey, while

that same year Burt Balaban and Stuart

Rosenberg’s Murder Inc. made a household

name of mobster “Lepke” Buchalter.

Like its Depression-era predecessor,

American cinema in the 1970s – a time of

economic uncertainty, increased organised

I

038 The Uncut Gems Issue