|
The Cast: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Leo Fuchs |
... |
Nat Silver/Uncle Shya |
 |
Judith Abarbanel |
... |
Judith Aarons |
 |
Yudl Dubinsky |
... |
Maurice |
 |
Anna Guskin |
... |
Elvie Silver |
 |
Celia Boodkin |
... |
Nat's Mother |
 |
Rosetta Bialis |
... |
Mrs. Aarons |
 |
Abraham Lax |
... |
Simon P. Schwalbenrock |
|
|
Esther Adler |
... |
|
|
|
M. Henig |
... |
|
|
|
Helen Appel |
... |
|
 |
Sarah Krohner |
... |
|
|
|
I. Arco |
... |
|
|
|
M. Lerner |
... |
|
|
|
Misha Boodkin |
... |
|
 |
Vera Luboff |
... |
|
|
Charles Cohen |
... |
|
|
|
William Mercur |
... |
|
 |
Bernard Gailing |
... |
|
 |
Jacob Mestel |
... |
|
|
|
S. Gold |
... |
|
 |
Maurice Schwartz |
... |
|
 |
Abe Gross |
... |
|
 |
Arthur Winters |
... |
|
|
|
Miriam Grossman |
... |
|
|
|
Arianne Ulmer |
... |
|
|
AMERIKANER SHATKHN
(AMERICAN MATCHMAKER)
1940, 87 minutes, B & W
Produced and
Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer
Screenplay by S. Castle
Music and Lyrics by Sam Morgenstern and William Mercur
Filmed in Bronx, New York
First released in the United States
on May 6, 1940
|
Leo Fuchs, known on Second Avenue as
"the Yiddish Fred Astaire," plays an elegant and eligible
bachelor who can never seem to close the marriage deal.
Edgar G. Ulmer's last Yiddish movie was also his most
modern, an art deco romantic comedy about male ambivalence
and Jewish assimilation. With its urbane, neurotic hero,
American Matchmaker looks ahead to the films of Woody Allen
...
-- The National Center for Jewish Film
Nat Silver has been engaged seven times
already. This time, his eighth, he's really going to get
married. But a visitor shows up, Shirley's old boyfriend.
With a gun ! He'll kill himself unless he can have Shirley
back, and Nat graciously gives in. According to Nat's
mother, his Uncle Shya was unlucky at love but lucky as a
matchmaker, and Nat is just like Shya. Nat tells his family
he's going to Italy. But he remains in New York and sets
himself up with a new name and new business, Nat Gold,
Advisor in Human Relations...
-- Written by David Steele for
www.imdb.com.
This, the last of Ulmer's Yiddish
quartet, is probably the funniest of all Yiddish comedies
and the humor holds up quite well even today. With the
German Blitzkrieg occupation of Poland in 1939 Jewish film
production there came to a screeching halt but there was
still a large Yiddish audience in New York and what they
wanted was escape, not realism. American Shadchen fit the
bill perfectly and was the last Yiddish box-office hit
although a few more Yiddish films were still to be made. |
|
|
The basic situation is that of a very handsome
and well-off Mama's boy, Nat Silver, whose mother has been trying to
get him married off without success, because the fastidious young
man always finds some fatal fault with every potential marriage
prospect. He is also afraid, although he is classically tall, dark,
and handsome, a true Jewish Adonis -- that women are only interested
in him for his money. The life style we see in the film is that of
upper crust nouveau-riche New York Jewish society with all the
trappings -- butlers, maids, chauffeurs, and luxurious apartments in
the best part of town. The Jews depicted in the film are the
"all-rightnik" type trying to act as American as possible by
liberally salting their down-home Yiddish with the latest English
slang. The butchered English we hear throughout is in fact one of
the main sources of the humor of the film, which still works today,
probably even for non-Jewish audiences. Moreover, even though this
is basically a Yiddish language picture, there is enough English --
or rather "Yinglish" -- scattered throughout, so that the story line
is pretty much clear even without the information supplied by the
English sub-titles.
The hero, Nathan, or "Nat" Silver, decides that he is so experienced
in matchmaking -- having been involved in so many mismatches himself
--the he would probably make a pretty good Shadchen, or matchmaker,
on his own. So, he changes his name from Silver to Gold! -- sets up
a matchmaking office, puts out a classy Yiddish shingle, and goes
into business. This is also a way of escaping from the clutches of
his overbearing Jewish mother.
He is indeed very successful and soon acquires
a reputation as the best Jewish matchmaker in New York City -- so
successful, in fact, that the other envious shadchens picket his
office with protest signs in Yiddish claiming that he is
monopolizing the trade! |
