THE notion of the Jewish studio head, network executive, or record label owner has become something of a cliche. No-one even bats an eyelid anymore when the line “he’s Jewish you know?” is trotted out in relation to some giant of stage and screen.
It is commonly known that Hollywood, as it exists today, was born out of the ashes of the Yiddish theatre scene and the influence of Jews on television is no less far-reaching.
Jewish-themed films and characters are too numerous to mention, while several of the biggest TV shows of all time, including Seinfeld, The West Wing and Will and Grace, all had Jewish central characters.
The theatre is not exempt either. Broadway honour boards read like a shul roll call on a yom tov, while two Broadway perennials, Fiddler on the Roof and The Producers, are as Jewish as kneidlach.
But there is a corner of the entertainment industry where the sphere of Jewish influence is not as well known, despite being arguably the most Jewish of them all – comic books.
No matter who your favourites are, if they wear tights on the outside, have a secret identity, superhuman powers and a penchant for saving the day, chances are his or her parents are Jewish.
And comic books are enjoying a renaissance sparked by a tidal wave of adaptations for the silver screen, including Superman, Batman, The Incredible Hulk, X-Men, The Fantastic Four, Spiderman and Iron Man.
These films have collectively earned billions at the box office in recent years for their respective studios and Jewish creators.
The latest incarnation of the Batman franchise, The Dark Knight, exploded onto screens around the world last week to rave reviews and Oscar buzz for the late Heath Ledger, who reprises the role of the Joker.
The film is just one of many introducing a new generation to the tights-clad, morally upright and decidedly heimishe masked protectors of truth and justice, who first graced comic books in the 1930s.
Melbourne comic book devotee and former fanzine (a DIY publication released by a fan) editor Lazarus Dobelsky says for immigrant Jews in the 1930s, “normal” jobs were hard to come by.
“When most of these people started, they struggled to get into the WASP-ish advertising agencies, but they had to earn a living somehow and working on comic books was about as good as they could get at the time,” Dobelsky said.
“It does beggar belief that in the early years, about 70 per cent of the industry was Jewish.
“Jews have a vast treasure trove of legends that are passed on to us by our parents and our culture. Also, it’s undeniable that as a Jew you like to tell stories,” Dobelsky said.
The two Jews responsible for the birth of the comic book were a couple of New York gangsters. Harry Donnenfeld and Jack Liebowitz bought a company that produced pulp magazines, which ran trashy stories about detectives and crime fighters with sensational cover art and comic strips taken from the daily papers.
The pair used their newfound business to launder their ill-gotten gains and eventually came up with the idea of laying out the comic strips side-by-side and in magazine format so they read like the comic books we know today.
Donnenfeld, the accountant behind the business, worked out that it would be cheaper to run the presses 24 hours a day as opposed to turning them off at night and re-starting them during the day.
The company needed more titles, which led to the first issue of Detective Comics – which eventually became known as DC – in 1937 and Action Comics, which introduced the most famous of superheroes Superman, less than a year later.
Superman, arguably the most Jewish of all the superheroes, was created by a couple of good Jewish boys American Jerry Siegel and Canadian Joe Shuster. Superman was an alien from another planet and had a dual identity to keep his true nature a secret.
Superhero themes of alienation, dual identities and the fight against evil were recurring and reflected the struggles of their creators, who were masking their Judaism in 1930s New York in the face of an anti-Semitic undercurrent.
Dobelsky says Superman, who was the defining character of what is known in comic book circles as the “Golden Age” (1930-42), is as Jewish as it gets.
“There was something in Action Comics number one that captured the imagination of the nation and sold really well for a comic book at the time,” Dobelsky said.
“It was enough to convince the editor that there was something in Action number one that had caused kids across America to buy it and he narrowed it down to the Superman character. It was being an alien in a foreign land, struggling to fit in ... all that sort of stuff was what [the Jewish creators] were going through.”
But when the film version of Superman came out in 1978, Shuster and Siegel were penniless after being bullied out of the rights to the iconic character by Donnenfeld and Leibowitz in the early 1940s.
And it wasn’t long before DC had competition from Timely Comics, which would eventually become the comic book superpower Marvel and EC comics.
Timely was created by Martin Goodman and gave rise to some of the most recognisable superheroes of all time, while EC was also helmed by Jews Harvey Kurtzman and William Gaines.
EC spawned the hugely successful Mad Magazine, one of the longest-running American satire publications. The pair used the magazine to tackle themes of racism and segregation with humour.
Giants of the comic book industry, such as Timely/Marvel’s Jack Kirby (originally Jacob Kurtzberg and creator of Captain America), DC’s Bob Kane (originally Robert Kahn and creator of Batman) and later Marvel’s Stan Lee (originally Stanley Martin Lieber and creator of The Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, X-Men and Iron Man) all infused their characters with distinctly Jewish sensibilities.
The Hulk, a rage-filled green protector of the weak and the subject of two films in the past five years, was based on the Golem, while the most recent of the three X-Men films, which came out in 2006, tells the story of a group of mutant heroes shunned by society and hunted by evil forces – a thinly-veiled reference to Holocaust survivors.
The Fantastic Four’s Thing, a wisecracking mutant hero made entirely of orange rock and with a penchant for “clobbering”, recently discovered his Jewish roots and celebrated his bar mitzvah in the comic.
Magneto, one of the villains bent on destroying the X-Men, is the son of Auschwitz victims, whose bent for world domination stems from his sense of injustice at his parents’ murder. Captain America’s ex-girlfriend is called Bernie Rosenthal – and the list goes on. continues here
It is commonly known that Hollywood, as it exists today, was born out of the ashes of the Yiddish theatre scene and the influence of Jews on television is no less far-reaching.
Jewish-themed films and characters are too numerous to mention, while several of the biggest TV shows of all time, including Seinfeld, The West Wing and Will and Grace, all had Jewish central characters.
The theatre is not exempt either. Broadway honour boards read like a shul roll call on a yom tov, while two Broadway perennials, Fiddler on the Roof and The Producers, are as Jewish as kneidlach.
But there is a corner of the entertainment industry where the sphere of Jewish influence is not as well known, despite being arguably the most Jewish of them all – comic books.
No matter who your favourites are, if they wear tights on the outside, have a secret identity, superhuman powers and a penchant for saving the day, chances are his or her parents are Jewish.
And comic books are enjoying a renaissance sparked by a tidal wave of adaptations for the silver screen, including Superman, Batman, The Incredible Hulk, X-Men, The Fantastic Four, Spiderman and Iron Man.
These films have collectively earned billions at the box office in recent years for their respective studios and Jewish creators.
The latest incarnation of the Batman franchise, The Dark Knight, exploded onto screens around the world last week to rave reviews and Oscar buzz for the late Heath Ledger, who reprises the role of the Joker.
The film is just one of many introducing a new generation to the tights-clad, morally upright and decidedly heimishe masked protectors of truth and justice, who first graced comic books in the 1930s.
Melbourne comic book devotee and former fanzine (a DIY publication released by a fan) editor Lazarus Dobelsky says for immigrant Jews in the 1930s, “normal” jobs were hard to come by.
“When most of these people started, they struggled to get into the WASP-ish advertising agencies, but they had to earn a living somehow and working on comic books was about as good as they could get at the time,” Dobelsky said.
“It does beggar belief that in the early years, about 70 per cent of the industry was Jewish.
“Jews have a vast treasure trove of legends that are passed on to us by our parents and our culture. Also, it’s undeniable that as a Jew you like to tell stories,” Dobelsky said.
The two Jews responsible for the birth of the comic book were a couple of New York gangsters. Harry Donnenfeld and Jack Liebowitz bought a company that produced pulp magazines, which ran trashy stories about detectives and crime fighters with sensational cover art and comic strips taken from the daily papers.
The pair used their newfound business to launder their ill-gotten gains and eventually came up with the idea of laying out the comic strips side-by-side and in magazine format so they read like the comic books we know today.
Donnenfeld, the accountant behind the business, worked out that it would be cheaper to run the presses 24 hours a day as opposed to turning them off at night and re-starting them during the day.
The company needed more titles, which led to the first issue of Detective Comics – which eventually became known as DC – in 1937 and Action Comics, which introduced the most famous of superheroes Superman, less than a year later.
Superman, arguably the most Jewish of all the superheroes, was created by a couple of good Jewish boys American Jerry Siegel and Canadian Joe Shuster. Superman was an alien from another planet and had a dual identity to keep his true nature a secret.
Superhero themes of alienation, dual identities and the fight against evil were recurring and reflected the struggles of their creators, who were masking their Judaism in 1930s New York in the face of an anti-Semitic undercurrent.
Dobelsky says Superman, who was the defining character of what is known in comic book circles as the “Golden Age” (1930-42), is as Jewish as it gets.
“There was something in Action Comics number one that captured the imagination of the nation and sold really well for a comic book at the time,” Dobelsky said.
“It was enough to convince the editor that there was something in Action number one that had caused kids across America to buy it and he narrowed it down to the Superman character. It was being an alien in a foreign land, struggling to fit in ... all that sort of stuff was what [the Jewish creators] were going through.”
But when the film version of Superman came out in 1978, Shuster and Siegel were penniless after being bullied out of the rights to the iconic character by Donnenfeld and Leibowitz in the early 1940s.
And it wasn’t long before DC had competition from Timely Comics, which would eventually become the comic book superpower Marvel and EC comics.
Timely was created by Martin Goodman and gave rise to some of the most recognisable superheroes of all time, while EC was also helmed by Jews Harvey Kurtzman and William Gaines.
EC spawned the hugely successful Mad Magazine, one of the longest-running American satire publications. The pair used the magazine to tackle themes of racism and segregation with humour.
Giants of the comic book industry, such as Timely/Marvel’s Jack Kirby (originally Jacob Kurtzberg and creator of Captain America), DC’s Bob Kane (originally Robert Kahn and creator of Batman) and later Marvel’s Stan Lee (originally Stanley Martin Lieber and creator of The Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, X-Men and Iron Man) all infused their characters with distinctly Jewish sensibilities.
The Hulk, a rage-filled green protector of the weak and the subject of two films in the past five years, was based on the Golem, while the most recent of the three X-Men films, which came out in 2006, tells the story of a group of mutant heroes shunned by society and hunted by evil forces – a thinly-veiled reference to Holocaust survivors.
The Fantastic Four’s Thing, a wisecracking mutant hero made entirely of orange rock and with a penchant for “clobbering”, recently discovered his Jewish roots and celebrated his bar mitzvah in the comic.
Magneto, one of the villains bent on destroying the X-Men, is the son of Auschwitz victims, whose bent for world domination stems from his sense of injustice at his parents’ murder. Captain America’s ex-girlfriend is called Bernie Rosenthal – and the list goes on. continues here
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