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Chapter Forty:
“Young People Are Playing in the Comedy, Not Old
Men.”
Blessed or
cursed with an overabundance of energy at 65, the age of retirement
for many, and mindful of his demeaning misadventures in Movieland,
Maurice was impelled towards an experience that can only be
described as ill-conceived and domed to failure. In January 1953, he
leased the old Century theatre on North La Cienega Boulevard in West
Hollywood, for the purpose of doing classics of both Yiddish and
world theatre, and introducing fresh, worthy material. Exactly his
goals at the inception of the Yiddish Art Theatre in 1918, except
all the productions would be in English.
The rent was
far from prohibitive: a paltry $150 a week for the first year,
escalating the next to $200, with an option to buy the premises for
$125,000. Schwartz envisioned a rebirth of sorts, though not in the
language he loved, but in the kind of quality productions he'd
devoted his life to. Three times before, Maurice had brought the Art
Theatre to the Angelinos and felt certain of a large following, even
among the non-Yiddish Jews, most of them tied in some manner to the
film business, and originally from New York. Their parents had seen
the genuine article on Second Avenue, or wherever the Art Theatre
happened to be that particular year, or perhaps they themselves had
been taken by the hand to see the incomparable Maurice Schwartz.
The Century
was converted into the Civic Playhouse—seating capacity a very
limited 755—with a stage that would do nicely for the season’s
schedule of non-musical, non-spectacular productions, including two
Sholem Aleichem comedies, Moliere’s The Miser, Gordin’s
God, Man and Devil, Tolstoy’s Redemption, Ibsen’s An
Enemy of the People, Shakespeare’s King Lear (which
Maurice always had a hankering to do), and O’Neill’s Desire Under
the Elms.
This attempted
return to the past was Schwartz’s most ambitious undertaking in
years, 3000 miles from the center of his former universe. He would
begin however with an original modern piece, to entice as large and
varied an audience as possible: Take Now Thy Son, by Camille
Honig, an advisor to General Dwight D. Eisenhower during the war.
Stage, film and TV rights were secured by an optimistic Schwartz
within a one-page, hand-written, lawyer-excluded document. Her first
produced play, Ms. Honig would receive the munificent sum of $100 a
week, regardless of the number of performances, when the piece was
presented in English, anywhere in America and Canada, except New
York City (that particular market unpredictable), where the terms
would be five percent of gross.
Prior to
selecting a crew, Maurice had to come to terms with Actors Equity,
the American equivalent of the Hebrew Actors Union. Equity signed
Schwartz to its Little Theatre contract, whereby the number of
actors required and the wages paid depended on the maximum potential
weekly gross. Maurice tried to keep payroll low by estimating low
receipts, $4500 a week. Equity agreed, permitting a minimum of seven
actors, each of whom would receive not less than $50 weekly, roughly
half what he’d paid his top actors 30 years ago. Not to be outfoxed,
Equity tacked a 15 percent bonus to wages on a take of over $2700,
which really couldn’t have amounted to much, split seven ways. But
the arrangement allowed small theatres like the Civic to exist and
beginning actors to gain experience and, more importantly, to be
seen.
Theatre
parties, the West Coast version of the Yiddish organizational
benefits, were offered 40 percent discounts on seats ranging from
$1.20 to $3.00. These parties would prove to be the same mixed
blessing as on Second Avenue for the Art Theatre, where profits were
either razor-thin or non-existent because of it.
Six relative
unknowns—Hollywood bit players or those trying to break into
films—constituted the cast of Take Now Thy Son. Maurice
directed and also took the lead role as Benjamin Levine, a
concentration camp survivor, who brings with him to America, a young
female relative. Levine hopes to arrange a match with his American
son. But to Benjamin’s dismay, the son turns out to be a slick
gangster. The Honig work didn’t fare well with the Los Angeles
critics, though opening night was a gala affair attended by
Maurice’s ample Hollywood following, and by civic, religious and
social leaders, who gave the former Yiddish, presently American,
actor a rousing ovation. Wrote one reviewer: “Schwartz dominated the
stage, his fine voice adding depth to the good delineation he gives
the character. [. . .] His direction, however, is more in the
heavy-handed Yiddish Theatre style and most of the cast has
difficulty with it” (Variety 16 Mar. 1953).
Unperturbed by
the generally negative comments from the press, Maurice forged ahead
with his next production, It’s Hard to Be a Jew, the
English-language form prepared first in 1931 by Tamara Berkowitz,
Sholem Aleichem’s granddaughter (who, by 1953, had become Tamara
Kahn). One of the major roles for It’s Hard to Be a Jew, that
of Ivanov, the Christian who trades places with his Jewish friend,
was up for grabs. Oscar Ostroff, the former manager of the Douglas
Park Theatre in Chicago and Schwartz’s current manager in Los
Angeles, recommended a 22-year-old tyro named Leonard Nimoy (the
future Dr. Spock from Star Trek). Showing up for an audition
at the Civic, Nimoy apprehensively made his way down the aisle to
the stage, preparing himself emotionally to meet the iconic Maurice
Schwartz. Anna and Maurice were by the footlights, observing the
young man sauntering down to meet them. The son of Jewish
immigrants, Nimoy understood Anna’s comment in Yiddish: “He looks
like a ‘goy.’ Maybe he’ll be good for the part.”
Leonard Nimoy
was thrilled to share a stage with Schwartz, in the role originated
by Paul Muni some 30 years earlier. “Schwartz was everything I’d
hoped he would be. He was an extremely hard worker. Intense,
dedicated, with an enormous range, he could simper across the stage,
light as a feather, then suddenly become a thunderingly foul
character” (Nimoy 25 Jan. 1999). He also saw a sad and tragic
figure in the former theatrical giant, who’d fallen on hard times:
“He was struggling to hold on to his Yiddish following, while trying
to reach out to a wider audience. A futile attempt. Young people
would pull up to the Civic in their cars, drop off their elderly
parents, then drive away” (Nimoy 25 Jan. 1999).
The Schwartzes
ran the Civic like a family grocery store, with Anna in charge of
the box office, handling money her forte. Marvin would do some
acting, while also handling the candy concession with Frances, who
also performed as an extra on stage and helped the cast change
costumes backstage. Maurice did everything else, which included
riding herd on the children as actors, demanding more from them than
from the rest of the cast, a kind of reverse discrimination, because
they were his children, therefore subject to the same high
standards he set for himself.
It’s Hard
to Be a Jew ran 14 weeks, an eternity for a Los Angeles-based
play. Interspersed, were untried, original plays in which
inexperienced actors cut their teeth. The next major work was the
Art Theatre chestnut, Sender Blank. For the hip California
crowd, Maurice called it Mr. Blank’s Family. “I think it will
be a success,” he wrote to Mercur in New York, “because young people
are playing in the comedy, not old men” (Schwartz letter 6 Sept.
1953). This was an unkind reference to those old reliables he’d used
year after year, and who may have outgrown their roles, but not the
brilliance they brought to the productions, players such as veterans
as Serebrov, Dubinsky and Julius Adler, who’d found less to do in
Yiddish Theatre, and when doing it, in smaller and smaller parts.
Opening the
second half of the Civic’s 1953 season early in October, Mr.
Blank’s Family was a solid hit (many organizations
booking entire blocks of seats), running well until the first week
of December. The cast was large, over 20 willing but green players.
The Miser was supposed to take over and run into 1954, to be
followed by a batch of excellent pieces, but Maurice chose to fold
the Civic and not extend the lease. Just as he’d delivered a lot
less than promised over and again in the past, so he repeated the
same pattern now. He sent the actors away and put a lock on the
playhouse door.
A glance at
Anna and Maurice’s Federal Tax Return for 1953 perhaps provides the
explanation. They reported a sizeable loss of $25,000 for the year.
Expenses for the shoestring operation were a manageable $68,000, but
receipts barely reached $42,000. Only the candy counter made money
for the Schwartzes. Sold out performances meant little, Maurice was
reminded (as if that was necessary), because the seats snapped up by
the theatre parties were practically given away. Even as Mr.
Blank’s Family was doing SRO business, Maurice contemplated a
return to New York. On November 17th, he telegraphed
Mercur to find him a playhouse on Broadway, and that he wasn’t
interested in anything on Second Avenue, where theatre seating was
too limited to cover expenses.
The Uptown
house he had his eye on was the President, on W. 48th
Street, and his scheme was to bring It’s Hard to Be a Jew to
it, but under its third American title Let’s Change
Places. Opening night was scheduled for January 14, 1954. The
deal, like so many others, failed to materialize, and he told Mercur
that he’d be arriving back in New York on the 9th of
December to gather a company for another tour.
At about the
same time, Maurice signed his first contract to tour South Africa,
the Lou Irwin Agency brokering the deal. The African Consolidated
Theatre Limited of Johannesburg agreed to pay Schwartz $1500 a week
to play His Majesty’s Theatre and other playhouses in South Africa.
The tour would commence on July 9, 1954, and he’d be doing a dozen
or so plays with actors whose salaries (and other operating
expenses) would be paid by African Consolidated, thus relieving him
of that tiresome burden, and leaving Maurice the room to do his
productions with a clear head, as he’d never been able to do before.
But until then, he had half a year at his disposal. Perhaps he’d
spend another spring in South America, though Yiddish Theatre there
was drying up too. It couldn’t possibly be the same as before, but
with the children along as part of the troupe, he might make a happy
go of it.
Chapter Forty-One:
“I
Detected a Warm Friendly Feeling.”
The deal for
the President Theatre and Maurice’s attempt to reintroduce Sholem
Aleichem to Broadway in the dismal winter of 1954, fell flat because
the current tenant, the Negro Dramatic Group wasn’t ready to vacate
the premises. Its production of Born Yesterday was running
better than expected, with a cast that included Edna Mae Robinson,
the wife of the former middleweight boxing champ. Instead, Schwartz
made ready for another circumnavigation of the East Coast and
Canada, with a group of whoever was available. One of those
candidates was David Denk, who’d done a spot of acting for the Art
Theatre in the past.
Denk received
a phone call early one February morning from his former employer,
with the offer of a role. They arranged to meet next day at 10 AM at
the Hebrew Actors Union building on E. 7th Street, near
Cooper Union and just down the block from McSorley’s, the oldest pub
in Manhattan. On its second floor, contracts between actor and
manager were often signed, and rehearsals were held by directors, if
no theatre was available at the moment.
Not having
seen Maurice in years, Denk was astounded at how life had taken its
toll on the often bluff, usually unbending theatre titan. “I
detected a warm friendly feeling in the way he spoke to me, It
seemed that I’d met a new Maurice Schwartz. What Hollywood can do to
a person!” (Denk 238).
He was only
partially correct: attributing the softened Schwartz to the humbling
effect the film industry can have on the most independent and
rigorous of artists and other creative minds. Mellowed like fine old
wine, yet with a tinge of sadness, Denk couldn’t help but notice,
though it was more the steady erosion from disbanding the Art
Theatre, and from his failure the year before to make a go of the
Civic Theatre.
The part
offered Denk was as Levine’s gangster son in Take Now Thy Son.
The play was scheduled to open in Montreal the following week. “Was
this the director of the Yiddish Art Theatre? I could never have
imagined that he would be talking to me about a play involving
modern gangsters in his theatre. ‘How did that happen?’ I asked. I
was sure he’d answer me sharply. I didn’t mean anything by it. The
words just slipped out” (Denk 240).
Bolts of
lightning didn’t descend on David Denk for the temerity to question
the great master’s decisions. Instead, Schwartz reached into his
briefcase, withdrew the bound pages of the script, and handed it to
the actor. Maurice then left the building, promising to return in an
hour to begin rehearsal. Alone in the large second floor room, Denk
realized that he’d accepted the role without a glance at the
manuscript and without discussing how much Schwartz was willing to
pay him. Part of his silent approval was out of curiosity. He simply
had to see more of the greatly altered Maurice Schwartz, to learn if
he could still command a crew.
A week later,
in the early evening cold, the train containing Schwartz’s hastily
gathered troupe pulled into Windsor Station in Montreal. Schwartz
was already there, having flown in the day before to welcome the
group and inform them of a 9 AM rehearsal tomorrow at the Monument
National Theatre on St. Catherine Street. Next morning, Schwartz was
waiting as the company arrived on time. He’d gotten in hours earlier
to supervise the carpenters and the electricians. If Maurice had
seemed almost unrecognizable at the Hebrew Actors Union building,
patently enervated from fighting a never-ending war against the Art
Theatre’s demise, he was now the hyperactive manager of old,
magically everywhere at the same time, barking orders, moving
scenery, positioning lights and dashing about like a man half his
age.
The cast was
thoroughly drilled by the patient but demanding director, and hours
later, they broke for lunch. Schwartz remained behind, still running
at top speed, finding all manner of minutiae to require his personal
attention. On the street, Denk parted from the troupe and went his
own way, slowly negotiating the slushy streets of the Jewish
district, once thriving, now rife with abandoned and decaying
buildings. He took a brief lunch at Woolworth’s, then returned to
the theatre with coffee and a donut for Schwartz.
A grateful
Maurice Schwartz wolfed it down, on his feet, on the go, at the same
high octane pace as in the early morning. The small repast was
probably unnecessary; preparing for a performance seemed to be all
the sustenance he needed. The woes, the calamities of the past, the
disappointments, the plans gone awry—all were cast aside in the holy
service of theatre. He worked the actors relentlessly through the
afternoon, but with loving care and kind consideration—the new
Schwartz—until dinnertime, when he sent his crew out once more, but
remained behind, with so much as yet undone. Denk brought back a
sandwich for Maurice from the Imperial, the lone remaining Jewish
restaurant in the area.
By dusk,
content with what he’d hammered together in a single day, Maurice
retired to his dressing room, where he applied his makeup and got
into costume. The curtain rose at 8:30 sharp that evening on Take
Now Thy Son. The door, stage right, sprung open. A bright light
shone in and Schwartz entered. At once, he began joking with the
other characters on stage, setting the tone. To Denk and the rest of
the actors, worn thin by a full day of intense rehearsing, it seemed
as though they’d done the piece dozens of times, instead of its
premiere presentation.
Denk declared
his performance to be stunningly brilliant, but after the curtain
fell and Maurice received his ovation and was congratulated by
everyone in the cast, he reverted back to the pathetic old warrior
seen at the union headquarters. “My best performance,” he told the
troupe morosely, “was my first. After that, every other one was
imperfect” (Denk 254).
Schwartz was
back in Manhattan by early March, preparing his rather convoluted
tour arrangements: Brazil and Argentina for three months, then South
Africa for three more, ending with a revisit to South America for
another two weeks. He hoped to be back in New York by early fall,
far too late to find a place for himself on Second Avenue. Such an
untoward consideration had actually crossed his mind despite the
unhealthy state of Yiddish Theatre. Even his undeclared rival for
the crown, Menasha Skulnik, had fled the kingdom for Broadway,
achieving great success in The Fifth Season, and Odets’s
The Flowering Peach, co-starring Bertha Gersten. Notwithstanding
as well the lack of still extant Yiddish playhouses in Manhattan.
It’s a profound tribute to the man’s tenacity that Schwartz would
even consider strapping on the harness of leasing a house and hiring
a company once more.
And yet, before
departing for South America, he made inquiries about leasing a
location for next season. With the union’s blessing and cooperation,
Maurice began negotiations with Isadore Edelstein, Joseph’s son, to
use the Second Avenue Theatre for 1954-1955, though only under
certain circumstances. Maurice demanded extensive renovations and a
sharp cut in rent. He also let it be known that he intended to
present a string of Yiddish plays, followed by a program of
English-language works like the format for the Civic in Los Angeles.
But the team of actor/producer Irving Jacobson and actor Edmund
Zayenda were also dickering with Izzy Edelstein for the same
playhouse. The year before, they’d scored a direct hit at the
playhouse with the light comedy Second Marriage.
“I didn’t want
to take the theatre from them,” wrote Maurice, a tad too
magnanimously. “This goes to show that for being a gentleman, you
get paid only with gossip” (Schwartz letter 1 May 1954).
The Schwartzes
arrived in Sao Paulo, Brazil, at the end of March, Maurice
complaining that en route some of his special theatrical lamps had
been broken. (He’d neglected to insure them and demanded the
shipping company pay for damages.) There, he banded together a group
of about 20 local Yiddish actors and formed a troupe he called The
Overseas Yiddish Art Company, which they certainly were not by any
stretch of the imagination. Among the works presented was a fairly
new piece, The Struggle For the Negev, by the brilliant
Israeli, Yigal Mosenson. The piece, written by a young man who’d
lived the story, deals with the defense of a kibbutz against Arab
marauders. It was not too dissimilar from the Elias Gilner play,
The Voice of Israel. The Mosenson work was originally
presented at the Habima in Tel Aviv and was used to open the
Folksbiene’s 40th season on December 14, 1953, at the
Radin Auditorium in Lower Manhattan.
In May, it was
on to South Africa. Maurice took the entire staff along, even if the
original contract with African Consolidated had consigned that task
to itself. The Overseas Yiddish Art Theatre would open at His
Majesty’s Theatre in Johannesburg on July 19 in The Brothers
Ashkenazi, the first of many old favorites. The tour would
conclude with two weeks at the Alhambra in Capetown. Everywhere the
company played, the red carpet was rolled out for them, and the
troupe responded in kind, performing very well indeed, even with
players not up to the original troupe’s standards.
At the
reception tendered them by the Consolidated, at which
representatives from the Johannesburg media were present, Schwartz
delivered a lecture that he’d given so many times before, whenever
he had an important audience. He opened with the call for a new
approach to live theatre that would compete successfully with movies
and television. He brought up the enormous costs of mounting a
modern stage production as compared to the economics of moviemaking,
where a million- dollar investment can reap many more millions in
profit. “These facts must be taken into account when we look upon
the poor financial state of the legitimate theatre. Its managers,
actors and dramatists are waiting for a messiah to lead them back to
the successful days when the stage was the champion of the amusement
world. Can that messiah appear in our century?”
The savior
Schwartz never ceased to stump for wore the tattered raiment of
subsidy and he served it up to the South Africans with renewed
passion. But he should have been more careful about what he pleaded
for, as the following year he got it, and the result would be the
most ignoble and destructive experience of his entire career, very
nearly ending it.
Chapter Forty-Two:
A King in
Surgical Stockings.
The serious
problem of what Maurice Schwartz was to do with the rest of his
life, once back in New York, seemed to have been felicitously solved
by a deal with the Russell-Farrow production company, to do
strictly English-language theatre at the tradition-encrusted
Downtown National Theatre. Located on E. Houston Street, where
Second Avenue begins, it had a capacity of 1425 seats. Over $60,000
had been pored into renovations by the company. Three works were
planed by Maurice, the same three he’d scheduled for the Civic:
Hard to Be a Jew (under its fourth title, The Grass is Always
Greener), slated to open on February 16th, The
Miser, from March 24th to April 28th, and
King Lear, to complete the season.
The mostly
English-language cast consisted of Michael Tolan, Nancy R. Pollack,
Martin Brooks and Joan Copeland—all rising stars on Broadway and in
television. Maurice took his usual role as David Shapiro, and
Marvin, now 16, played the lad who changes place with the non-Jew, a
part he knew well. Anatol Vinogradoff, by this point well
experienced in both Yiddish Theatre and Broadway, was the only other
Schwartz alumnus engaged.
Maurice’s
faithful American reviewer, Atkinson, came through for him: “It is
impossible to take The Grass is Always Greener seriously as
dramatic art. But it is also impossible to be impervious to the
family hubbub it manages to get on the stage and the feeling of
theatre excitement Mr. Schwartz generates out of long experience
with audiences” (Times 16 Feb. 1955). John McClain of the
Journal-American, Jeanette Wilken of the Daily News,
Robert Coleman of the Daily Mirror, William Hawkins of the
World Telegram and Sun, and Richard Watts Jr. of the Post—all
concurred in their own idiosyncratic prose.
Joan Copeland,
who played Betty, the Shapiros’ modest but romantic daughter, knew
little about the Yiddish theatre legend she’d be working with, but
was quick to find him quite approachable, without the lofty put-on
airs expected of a legend. “He called me ‘the little one’ because I
was the youngest in the company. And I called him ‘Papa Schwartz.’
He was kind to me, very protective and never harsh” (Copeland 19
Oct. 1998).
The Miser
opened Thursday evening, March 17th. Atkinson and the
rest of the press hated the production, especially Schwartz’s clumsy
direction of the Moliere farce: “It consists of reducing The
Miser to the level of Second Avenue stock company
improvisation” (Times 18 Mar. 1955). More succinctly,
McClain of the Journal-American stated: “It seemed to me it
was improperly adapted and interpreted; it emerged as an
embarrassing bore” (18 Mar. 1955).
By their second
stint together, Joan Copeland could be more objective about ‘Papa
Schwartz’: “He seemed terrified of The Miser. He really
didn’t know the work, having never done it before. He appeared to be
afraid to get onstage and demonstrate his ineptness with the part.
He never studied the lines, never rehearsed them with the other
actors. The day before we opened, he still didn’t know them”
(Copeland 19 Oct. 1998). After six poorly attended performances,
The Miser closed. So did the Downtown National. King Lear
was jettisoned, ending Maurice’s constant yearning to do the darkest
of Shakespeare’s plays, though he intended having at it the
following year, he informed the press with unwarranted optimism.
Joan
Copeland’s characterization of a man out of his depth with Moliere
may not have been totally on target. Schwartz had much to distract
and addle him. For the cheek to go strictly English-language, the
Hebrew Actors Union banned him forever from doing Yiddish theatre.
It exercised its excommunicative power by denying him the future
services of Yiddish actors, and the use of Yiddish playhouses, both
of which were within the union’s jurisdiction.
Schwartz
considered himself the injured party. While in South Africa, during
the previous summer, he and Nathan Goldberg, current head of the
union, kept up an ongoing exchange of letters in an attempt to
reactivate the Yiddish Art Theatre, but on a firm foundation of
subsidies. Their idea was to form an umbrella of Jewish institutions
that would ensure the necessary funds. Schwartz and Goldberg were
united on the importance of Yiddish Theatre in the cultural life of
American Jews, each for his own reason. They seemed to be on the
same page in their correspondence and close to a joint action. When
nothing concrete resulted, and Maurice was about to return to New
York in the fall of 1954, he simply had to take care of himself by
signing with Russell-Farrow. Then Goldberg acted swiftly with his
edict.
Maurice was
furious: “This doesn’t mean that by playing three pieces in English
I’ve committed such a crime that the union should come out with such
a hysterical decision against me, that I should never again be
allowed to play Yiddish Theatre” (Schwartz interview 4 Mar. 1955).
The union, looking after its own in the lean year of 1955, argued
that Schwartz should have resisted temptation and refuse to perform
in anything but Yiddish Theatre.
The ban fuss,
for all its charges and countercharges, proved to be a tempest in a
teapot, lasting but a short while. Schwartz and Goldberg kissed and
made up, and by April, Maurice had signed to do Yiddish plays in
Yiddish for Israel Rosenberg and his dancer-wife Vera Rosanka,
proprietors of the Elsmere Theatre on Tremont Avenue in the Bronx.
Maurice had agreed to do five shows a weekend—beginning on April 29th
and ending late in May—of Yoshe Kalb (in which Frances
made her New York debut), My Darling Children (aka Sender
Blank), and Kiddush Hashem.
For three
sharply curtailed productions, Maurice was fortunate to obtain the
services of a few still-active Art Theatre stalwarts: Serebrov,
Vinogradoff, Appel, Gustav Berger and Jacob Mestel. Joining as well
was William Mercur, who received the highest salary in the company,
$125 a week, because his union was the AFL’s Association of
Theatrical Agents and Managers, not the Hebrew Actors Union, its
scale much lower. Schwartz’s entire payroll ran less than $1700,
even with such spectacles as Yoshe Kalb.
The origin of
the subsidy arrangement that finally came to fruition in 1955 is
uncertain. Schwartz claimed that his dear friend and earlier backer
Louis Gordon was the prime force that spring in setting everything
in motion. Herman Yablokoff presented a different scenario: “Louis
Segal, General Secretary, and Sam Bonchek, Vice President, of the
Farband—a National Zionist Labor Organization—called a conference of
labor, culture and social leaders to revive the Yiddish Art Theatre,
with Maurice Schwartz as artistic director” (Yablokoff 482).
In reality,
the plan was Maurice’s, what he’d never given up on for what seemed
like a millennium. Regardless of who lit the fuse, Segal and Bonchek
called their meeting for the purpose of weaving a secure safety net
for Schwartz. Yablokoff attended as the union’s representative and
was elected Executive Secretary. A large committee of over 30
prominent New York Jews, coming from organized labor and the
newspapers, was chosen as the governing body. At once, Herman
immersed himself in the daunting project of raising the necessary
capital. The Yiddish Art Theatre Association was registered as a
non-profit, tax-exempt corporation, and rented the Downtown National
for $1250 a week, with another $10,000 anted up for the security
deposit. They money was raised by an assortment of committee heads
through donations and benefit dinners.
Yablokoff
informed Maurice that the multiple strands related to the business
of theatre, once handled at the Art Theatre by a single individual,
would now be divided among a handful of subcommittees. Under the new
arrangements, Schwartz should concern himself only with directing
and acting. As for what plays were to be selected, this would be
decided by the Repertory Committee composed of Yiddish journalist
Dr. B. Margoshes, Day Morning-Journal publisher Morris
Weinberg and his editor David Mechler, General Manager of the
Forward Alexander Kahn and his editor Hillel Rogoff; and from
the field of labor, Jacob Pat, B. Sheffner, Joseph Breslow and
Abraham Miller. Businessman Louis Gordon was asked to serve, perhaps
in recognition of the key role he’d played in initiating the
project. Herman and Maurice were also included, the only theatre
professionals on the committee.
Schwartz had
been used to one-man rule, a dictatorship rather than a democracy,
at his Art Theatre, making his selections fearlessly and without
influence. But now he was forced to accept many hands on the wheel.
Yablokoff advised him to send each manuscript he perused to the
Repertory Committee for final approval. That after all was their
job. “Well, what do you think I’ve been doing” Maurice told him.
“The Committee is already swamped with scripts. They haven’t
recommended anything. But I’ve heard that an original drama, written
by an unknown, Lazar Treister, has already won an award. Maybe you
can contact the author and have him send me a copy” (Yablokoff
484).
Herman phoned
Treister, who dispatched a set of publisher galleys, which were read
soon after by Schwartz and approved, then read and accepted by the
Repertory Committee. Later, Maurice would claim that the committee
had foisted the work on him. On the other hand, his friend and
confidante Seymour Rexsite maintains that Schwartz was delighted
with the selection because it was about a king, and Maurice always
had a special affection for regal roles.
The monarch in
question was Saul. Once before, in 1925, Maurice had tackled the
part of Israel’s first king. The truth of who chose the work aside,
Maurice sunk his teeth into adapting The Shepherd King over
the steamy New York summer in his tiny apartment on E. 10th
Street. Anna and the children were sent Upstate at the end of June
to the Workmen’s Circle camp. As was his working habits, Maurice
applied himself furiously and fanatically, 14 to 16 hours a day, in
the process wearing out Yablokoff (no slouch himself), who was
busily engaged in trying to raise the funds needed.
One scorching
July day melted into another, until a manic Maurice Schwartz
summoned Yablokoff and Sholem Secunda (who was writing the music for
The Shepherd King) to his apartment. He’d completed a first
draft and would like an opinion. In the airless, sweltering living
room, Maurice read what had been consuming him completely for half a
month. Afterwards, the two seasoned pros didn’t break out in
hosannas, as Maurice expected, each withholding his opinion, each
declaring himself a novice in the area of biblical dramas. They
deferred instead to the Repertory Committee, when total unflinching
honesty would have been the better choice and might have averted the
fiasco to come. Privately, Herman and Sholem expressed their doubts
to each other.
Yablokoff had
his own serious problems to deal with. Reports from his treasurer
were not encouraging despite Mercur’s best efforts at promotion. A
paltry 400 subscribers had signed up, and from those honoring their
pledges, only $17,000 was collected. Another $40,000 in benefit
sales were raised. The Association sponsors had added its own
$48,000, as the result of fundraising within their individual
organizations. Who would have believed that with all the interest
and commotion stirred up by the press and within the various groups,
there’d been such little response, so few dollars in the coffers?
A week before
the opening, as luck would have it, Maurice fell ill. His legs blew
up to nearly twice their normal size, indicating a problem with his
heart or kidneys, or perhaps both. Without a word to anyone but
Anna, he consulted a doctor, who recommended immediate surgery. With
The Shepherd King close to premiere, and so much time, money
and sweat invested, Herman had to be informed. He took Maurice for a
second opinion. The specialist, after a long and comprehensive
examination, confirmed that an operation was indeed needed, but not
at once. Maurice’s condition was not dire, though he was ordered to
wear surgical stockings.
In the spirit
of fresh starts, an excellent cast was engaged. To Schwartz’s King
Saul, Edmund Zayenda would play David. Frances Schwartz, in her
second New York role, would be Michal, David’s first wife, and
Miriam Kressyn, Maurice’s leading lady in Esterke, would play
Ritzpah, the king’s lovely concubine. In one scene, Ritzpah, prone
at Saul’s feet, clutches his legs. She feels Maurice’s elastic hose,
then flinches in surprise. “What’s the matter?” whispers Schwartz in
mock disdain. “Haven’t you ever seen a king in surgical stockings?”
(Rexsite 15 Jan. 2000).
All Jewish New
York crossed its fingers and held its breath on opening night. That
special evening, the audience was mainly comprised of Association
members, their families and friends, city officials, the drama
departments of Yiddish and English-language dailies, and most of the
disappointingly minuscule corps of subscribers. Before the first act
was over, Yablokoff knew they had a bomb on their hands. Part of the
audience walked out in a huff during the second act. To their many
and pointed jibes, Herman said nothing, just as he’d kept silent in
Maurice’s apartment during the first reading. “I wouldn’t even
defend myself with the explanation that I had nothing whatever to do
with choosing a play because a special repertory committee had been
designated for that purpose” (Yablokoff 487).
This
self-serving absolution was patent nonsense. As a member of that
committee, he hadn’t spoken up when he’d had the chance. Failure,
being the orphan that it is, found no father in him. After the final
curtain descended to only a smattering of applause, Maurice made the
weakest of obligatory speeches. He dissolved back into the wings to
find only a few close friends who’d hung around out of loyalty. The
usual coterie of back-slappers and hangers-on had already gone home.
This was
Murray Schumach’s first Schwartz review for the Times. An
avid follower of Maurice’s career, he didn’t shrink however from
stating that “Lazar Treister’s play wallowed in dialogue that was
somewhere between Italian and soap opera” (13 Oct. 1955). Yiddish
critics also lambasted the play. Maurice didn’t panic. He’d been
through this too many times to disintegrate over hideous reviews. It
was on to the next production, The Brothers Ashkenazi,
with its cast of 30, including Frances and Marvin. It was the first
time the three Schwartzes would appear together on the same stage.
The family affair gave a much- needed boost to Maurice’s wounded
psyche.
The critics
reversed gears and saluted the production: “The Brothers
Ashkenazi proved last night that though its tale of avarice and
industrial and military strife may have lost much of its pertinence
in this post-Hitler world, it still carries the bite of deep
tragedy” (Schumach 12 Nov. 1955). Though a hit, the second
production by the Yiddish Art Theatre Association wasn’t successful
enough to cover the bloated weekly expenses. Grosses for The
Shepherd King were running about $7500 a week, which barely
covered payroll. By the play’s close, they’d lost over $37,000. For
The Brothers Ashkenazi, though a winner, the profit and loss
statement was no rosier. With receipts averaging about $8000 and
expenses close to $10,000, each and every week, there was little
hope of maintaining Schwartz’s impossible dream. His constant
albatross of spending more than he earned, as usual, had doomed him.
After 12 weeks
that began with the highest hopes and deteriorated into despair,
Yablokoff and the Association decided they’d had enough. On December
4th, the Downtown National shut operations. As he’d had
after many a prematurely shortened and losing season on Second
Avenue, Maurice packed the troupe and left town for his usual
Christmas week in Canada. If he’d expected Paradise through the boon
of subsidies, he was forced, in very short order, to settle for the
usual exile in Siberia.
Chapter Forty-Three:
“Papa Works Too
Hard.”
“There’s no
more hope in London or in Paris for the Yiddish Theatre, even with a
subsidy,” declared Maurice glumly, in a letter to William Mercur
from England (29 Feb. 1956). He’d arrived from Paris, having
recently completed a series of one-man shows with limited success.
The month before, he’d initiated the new year in the States, at the
Shubert Theatre in Washington, DC, doing Hard to Be a Jew in
Yiddish, and using a lighter than usual crew that included his
children. A week later, it had been The Brothers Ashkenazi at
the Palace in Brooklyn.
Though London
and Paris were lost causes in his estimation, and despite the
degrading debacle at the Downtown National the previous autumn, he
hadn’t as yet given up on Yiddish Theatre in New York. A glutton for
punishment (or an incorrigible addict), he instructed Mercur to
scout the possibility of obtaining a playhouse, one that has been
decently renovated: “I’d have to take a ten-year lease for them to
fix it up. But I don’t want to crawl into a sickbed. Each actor and
actress will have to be financially involved. I cannot and do not
want to go through that hellish torture again, and I don’t want so
many bosses over me again either” (Schwartz letter 29 Feb. 1956).
But regardless
of a great deal of shadowboxing and a tepid courtship between
Maurice and Nathan Goldberg, and between Maurice and the Yiddish
playhouse owners, nothing materialized. Schwartz would play Second
Avenue only once more, two years later, and with unfortunate
results. Perhaps he’d subconsciously tried to sink his own plan with
unreasonable demands, especially the economically unfeasible one
requiring other performers to put money into the project. Only the
major stars such as Picon and Skulnik did that years ago and without
serious profits resulting.
The rather
brief European tour was made without Anna and the children, the
three having grown accustomed to a normal family life in Manhattan,
Marvin attending Stuyvesant High School in the neighborhood, Frances
at Washington Irving closeby. But on April 18th, mother
and daughter booked passage to Buenos Aires and left early in May to
join Maurice, who’d signed to play the Corrientes Theatre from April
25th to July 29th, employing a handful of
Buenos Aires performers. Where they’d be in August and beyond, was
unclear to Schwartz, best left for fortune and the gods of Theatre
to decide. Maurice kept his options open, in no position to reject
any decent offer. For certain, Second Avenue wasn’t beckoning to him
for the 1956-1957 season.
Marvin would
not be accompanying Anna and Frances. He was at the tail end of his
junior year, preparing for finals and mulling over which college to
apply to. Though he’d become a fairly facile actor and an even
better lighting technician, he yearned for a career in engineering.
The truth was, he craved a steady profession and a life less hectic
and uncertain than Yiddish Theatre, which was rapidly becoming
extinct and which sucked the very marrow from the bones of its
slaves. This independent streak, and his unwillingness to tie
himself to the vagaries of the acting life and its guarantee of
genteel poverty, had set him on a collision course with his adoptive
father. Frances, on the other hand and much to Maurice’s delight,
had tasted the heady wine of the stage, and didn’t object to being
yanked from school to accompany Schwartz on tour.
After much
discussion and copious tears from Anna, the Schwartzes had decided
to go on without Marvin, leaving him in the care of Morris
Strassberg and his wife Mae. Strassberg was a dear and trusted
friend, as well as almost an original Art Theatre player. He’d grown
to love the two little Belgian refugees. Marvin moved in with the
couple.
Like Lord
Chesterfield, Maurice wrote a letter to his son containing some
valuable advice, after the two women had left for Argentina: “Be
careful. Remember that the Almighty is with you. Don’t take
liberties because Mother and I aren’t closeby. Drink four glasses of
milk a day, eat well, and bathe twice a week. Brush your teeth after
every meal and drink plenty of juices” (Schwartz letter 7 May
1956).
As if to
reassure Mamushka and Papushka that he could be depended upon,
Marvin wrote back: “Monday, I had a regular breakfast like at home,
with orange juice, eggs and milk. We also had a wonderful supper
with steak, herring, potatoes, peas, applesauce and prunes. It is
very pleasant to be with Strassberg. We share everything and get
along well” (18 May 1956).
Never mind that
Morris and Mae were having domestic problems, their marriage on the
rocks, with Mae moving out soon after Marvin moved in. The Schwartz
apartment on E. 10th Street became vacant, and Anna had
put it up for subletting. She’d assigned the 18-year-old the job of
getting a tenant—besides his other obligations to eat sensibly, stay
healthy, pay the utility bills and do the banking chores such as
deposits, withdrawals and mailing the monthly statements to her.
From London,
Maurice had gone in March to Israel, for a month of single
performances, before rendezvousing with Anna and Frances in
Argentina. He’d thought seriously of planting an Art Theatre in Tel
Aviv or Jerusalem, but quickly gave up the idea, at least for the
present. Playhouses were few and engagements were often for a single
night, which was much too strenuous even for youngsters.
Nevertheless, he was happy to have come and performed in a land
where “the Theatre means honor with bread” (Schwartz letter 14 Mar.
1956).
By the first
week of May, the family minus one was reunited in Buenos Aires.
Maurice had come a few weeks before to prepare the Corrientes for
his engagement, and worked his customary non-stop pace with the new
company. He was ecstatic to embrace his wife and daughter again,
marveling at how Frances, nearly 16, had blossomed in the three
months. The theatre manager in him figured her for a wider range of
roles, not merely as the troupe’s ingenue.
At once,
Maurice provided his daughter with a tutor for regular schooling and
assigned her a large number of parts. And worried, like any ordinary
father about the flocks of handsome native boys she would be certain
to attract, like hummingbirds to nectar. More often than not, her
roles involved singing, dancing and acting, and she’d have to
rehearse from early morning until evening. However, under Maurice’s
relentless tutelage—parental feelings aside—she would receive the
most florid praise from critics and audiences alike. Making her
South American debut on May 29th, in Hard to Be a Jew,
Anna exclaimed in a letter to Marvin: “She was really good” (31 May
1956).
In Manhattan,
Marvin was enjoying his bachelor life. Though out of his parents’
orbit, the boy ate properly, attained good grades, paid the bills,
mailed off the statements each month—and sublet the apartment for
the balance of the year to a Mr. Friedman, an apparently decent
sort, who paid $70 in rent every two weeks and assumed
responsibility for the furniture and utilities. This concern for the
apartment, its occupancy and welfare, would be part of almost every
letter from Anna, who revealed a near pathological fear of being
tenantless, of doing without the $140 a month in rent. Also, each
communication with Marvin, loving though it was, would contain some
mention of money, sent to or received from Marvin out of the
family’s meager checking account. Or, Anna would agonize over why
the current statement was late, or incomplete. While Maurice’s
letters to his son never broached the subject of money. In this way,
he and Anna were being themselves.
For the
summer, Marvin and Strassberg would be Upstate, at the Farband’s
Camp Unzer, Marvin as a junior counselor, Morris in charge of its
amateur theatre. In a letter to Maurice that also included a
Father’s Day card, Marvin advised his father to remain in South
America a while longer, as Yiddish Theatre was in the doldrums. He
also informed Schwartz that he intended to go to either City College
or Cooper Union in the fall, on a scholarship, if his marks were
high enough. He wouldn’t be following in Maurice’s
impossible-to-fill footsteps, though “the Theatre was very good to
me. It taught me to be productive and responsible for both myself
and the things I do. I think that is the best thing I have learned
in the Theatre” (15 June 1956).
Maurice’s
return letter was a heartfelt expression of love for his son and
gratitude for the Father’s Day card: “I was moved to tears [. . .]
that we have such a precious son. A father is, one can say in
theatre language, the epilogue of a play,” wrote the actor who
thought of life only in theatrical terms. “The mother is the
prologue and the three acts. The father is the one who ends the
play. But I can’t complain. You are a devoted son” (18 June 1956).
The tour that
year was only moderately successful, as Yiddish Theatre continued
its steep decline, TV and the movies luring away what little
audience remained. The month of July was made memorable for the
Schwartzes by Frances’s emergency appendectomy, then slow recovery.
Maurice and the troupe strongly felt her absence. She’d become a
major attraction, a star. In Maurice’s letter to Marvin about the
operation, he informed the boy that he was taking his advice and
would remain abroad for another full season. Marvin should prepare
himself for a second year with Strassberg.
By the latter
part of August, Frances sufficiently healthy, the troupe crossed the
Rio de la Plata to Montevideo for a short engagement at the Artigas
theatre. Schwartz brought along a cast of five, including himself
and his daughter. They performed excerpts from Prager’s hauntingly
mystical The Water Carrier, from Abraham Reisen’s The
Field Marshal, from Rudelsky’s The Dancer, and from
Tevye and His Daughters (a pared down version of his big hit).
Upon his
return to Buenos Aires, the first week of September, Maurice
addressed a gathering of Yiddish-Argentine theatre bigwigs, with an
audacious plan to revive Yiddish Theatre by turning it into an
institution, a dream that he wouldn’t let die. Issuing what amounted
to a challenge, perhaps even an ultimatum, he outlined a program for
a cultural complex along the same lines he’d proposed to Jewish
community leaders in 1941. In a statement reminiscent of his 1918
manifesto, he first of all, demanded that the actors’ union sign
contracts with its members far in advance of the new season, to lock
them in place. He also would require cast listings in alphabetical
order to squelch the star system, though he’d tried this repertory
arrangement 40 years before, until it proved unworkable in highly
competitive Manhattan. Moreover, he intended to found a dramatic
school like the one he’d begun in the playhouse Louis Jaffe had
constructed for him. He insisted on fixed wages for his actors to
keep the payroll from consuming the profits. Another demand was a
free hand in doing spectaculars, as it was a sure-fire method of
attracting large audiences. The income from one of them would be
handed over to the union, from another to be divided among the
performers in direct proportion to their salaries.
“For my
participation, which will be the largest,” he told the Buenos Aires
theatre representatives: “I’ll take full responsibility. In the Art
Theatre in New York, in good times and even bad times, actors never
had to wait an extra hour to receive their pay. And that is how it
will always be here.”
Of course,
this was a blatant untruth, but despite the bluster, the bravado and
the breadth of vision, nothing was done because there was no real
interest in the scheme. The Jewish community of Buenos Aires really
didn’t care to nurture such a dinosaur. This wasn’t 1918, the start
of the Second Golden Age of Yiddish Theatre, and though quality
productions may have been more valued in Argentina than New York, it
wasn’t enough to warrant the investment.
With his
contract’s conclusion, Maurice took the company to the provinces—as
he’d often done in America--, a two-month swing through the smaller
cities of Brazil, Argentina and Chile. Departing Buenos Aires by
railway, the crew was in Porto Alegre, Brazil by October 2nd.
The trip was nightmarish, four days and three nights of hot, dusty
cars with no sleeping accommodations and inedible food. The bustling
coastal metropolis proved to be a dispiriting way to begin the tour.
Wrote Maurice to his son: “It was a mistake to go into a town where
you do a play just one time. You have to do so many plays. [. . .]
There was no lighting here, so I had to paste sections of colored
paper to change effects” (2 Oct. 1956).
Neither
Frances nor Anna had come wholeheartedly. Frances chafed over the
many hardships she’d have to endure, going town to town. She hadn’t
fully recovered from the operation, would tire easily, and was
without an appetite. To make matters worse, she developed a rash
that the rugged conditions of travel would only make worse.
Anna had more
serious concerns. She yearned desperately to go home to America and
Marvin, and was torn between him and Maurice, who after all was
approaching 70, and working at a killing pace, his swollen legs
encased in surgical hose. “I told mother to go home,” wrote Maurice
to his son. “It’s not easy to be alone, but I’m an adult while
you’re still a young boy, needing her care” (2 Oct. 1956). His
plans, he told Marvin, were first to complete the tour, then, if
nothing developed after, he’d be back in America in December to test
the waters, maybe do a play in Miami Beach. Most likely however,
he’d be spending another season in Buenos Aires. Then he hit the boy
with a loaded question: “Mother wants a truthful answer from you. Do
you want her to come home? Will you be okay in New York alone? She’s
in doubt as to who comes first, you or me. Please be honest and let
us know” (2 Oct. 1956).
Phrased in
that manner, of course the answer would be the one Maurice wanted.
His needs were always primary, a given in the family. If Marvin had
any objections, his cheery, newsy letters didn’t reflect it. Perhaps
he was delighted to continue being on his own, without the loving
tyrant overseeing his every action and thought. School had resumed
in the fall, and Marvin applied himself diligently, studying hard
and looking forward to graduation.
The company
packed up and left Porto Alegre on October 9th, for Sao
Paulo, 500 miles up the coast. Maurice took a plane to arrive early
and set things in motion. The troupe, including Anna and Frances,
went by rail, another three days of torment. In Sao Paulo, they
checked into the Hotel Florida and prepared for a month’s stay in
the thoroughly modern seaport. Advance sales were very good,
standing room only on weekends. Indeed, the itinerant company did
exceptionally well, though Anna couldn’t stop worrying about her
husband, who never rested for a moment, making do with three hours
sleep, hardly pausing for meals. “Papa works too hard,” she
complained in a letter to Marvin. “In order to do good business, he
has to put on two new plays a week. Last Saturday and Sunday we
played Yosele Solowey, and this coming Thursday we’re putting
on Yoshe Kalb” (18 Oct. 1956).
In November,
they played the Argentine boondocks. First stop was Rosario, in the
east central part of the country, 200 miles from Buenos Aires, with
a population of 800,000, some 15,00 of them Jews. Then due north to
Santa Fe, with a quarter million souls, but only 4000 Jews. Bemoaned
Anna to Marvin: “It was a mistake to play in these small cities. We
didn’t lose money, but Papa worked too hard for nothing. Frances
also worked very hard” (26 Nov. 1956).
Cordoba, in
the deepest heart of Argentina, was nearly a million strong, a
thriving pampas city, with a small but active Jewish community. The
troupe put on five performances and did well. Next, they traveled
west to the foothills of the Andes, to Mendoza near the Chilean
border. It was an especially arduous journey. In Mendoza, they did
two shows then crossed mountains 23,000 feet high, descending into
Santiago, Chile, end of the line for the tour. At long last.
There was
something special to celebrate on both continents in December,
besides the expected meeting of Maurice and Marvin in Miami. On the
3rd, Marvin Schwartz, born Moses Englander, officially
became an American citizen. At the Federal Courthouse in Foley
Square, he was sworn in by a judge, who recounted his own father’s
citizenship ceremony. Marvin wrote of this moving experience to the
family: “While the judge was speaking, I saw my whole life passing
before me like a moving picture. My early life in Antwerp, then the
orphanage. Then when you, Papushka and Mamushka, came to the
orphanage to adopt a child [. . .]. I thought how proud you would
have been if you could see me standing there in court and becoming a
citizen” (5 Dec. 1956).
Maurice
touched down in Miami Beach around Christmas. Marvin went south to
visit him. They spent joyous hours getting reacquainted and going
over what had of necessity been omitted from their correspondence.
They took long meals together and went swimming each day in the
bathtub-warm ocean. In between, they toiled over the
English-language version of Riverside Drive. Maurice had
wrapped up a deal to play the Varsity Theatre for two weeks, from
January 8th to the 22nd. Together, they
labored over the translation, the publicity required, the ads, the
posters, and selecting the cast. If Marvin had been only a minor aid
to his father in the past, he’d matured into a most capable young
man, a source of immense pride to his father.
On the last day of 1956,
Marvin left Miami Beach for New York. Besides returning to his busy
life, he had to purchase the plane tickets for the entire troupe and
withdraw $1000 from his own bank account to tide Maurice over until
the play opened. The son was more than impressed at how his father
had been treated: celebrated on the local Yiddish radio station,
honored with a luncheon attended by the city’s notables, feted at a
cocktail party for the Miami press—all part of the necessary hoopla,
he knew, yet it had warmed Marvin as much as the Floridian sun. Like
a peppy manager—like the Ed Relkin of old—Marvin forwarded his
upbeat opinion to Anna and Frances resting in Buenos Aires after the
debilitating tour: “I think Papa should do ten to twelve thousand a
week and make a nice few thousand for himself” (31 Dec. 1956). |
