Yiddishe Mamas (20 page)

“And as for my father, the day before he suddenly died, I got an agent. He and mom celebrated that major early career step—which was nice. For the next sixteen years, Mom attended my performances whenever she could, and kept scrapbooks.”

Few were more intense than Minnie Marx, matriarch of the Marx Brothers, and Sadie Berle, Milton’s mom.

Minnie Marx, sister to vaudevillian Al Shean, started Groucho as a boy soprano. By 1912, all her boys were into the musical act, which turned to comedy, and Minnie kicked off a dynasty. In the early twentieth century, after New York, Chicago was the major vaudeville center—so Minnie the manager, shlepped the family there in 1909. Shortly after they arrived, Minnie Marx “became” theatrical entrepreneur “Minnie Palmer.” At the time, there
was
a famous singer by that name but Mama Marx didn’t seem to mind the confusion. This new “Minnie Palmer” billed herself as “Chicago’s only woman producer,” and produced several acts apart from her sons.

Groucho, a brilliant comedian, especially with the ad-lib, was a difficult curmudgeon in his personal life. He had troubled relationships with women, no doubt, due in part to his own troubled relationship with the aggressive Minnie. Her pet was her eldest son, Chico. She thought of Groucho as unattractive—and let him know it.

Minnie’s influence was so enormous that in 1970, the story was brought to Broadway in
Minnie’s Boys.

When it came to “advice” (OK, pushing), few Jewish mamas could compare to Milton Berle’s mother Sarah. “She wanted to be [in show business], but her parents wouldn’t allow her because they thought it was too racy,” Berle once recalled. Under the watchful eye of his mom (a former department store detective), young Milton modeled, was dragged to New Jersey’s Edison Movie Studios in 1914 to do extra work, and was then finessed by her into supporting roles—including the part of a newsboy in the first-ever feature-length comedy,
Tillie’s Punctured Romance
(1914). Under Sarah’s mighty management, Berle moved into vaudeville, making his debut at the prestigious Palace Theatre in 1921.

When he became the first TV superstar in the forties, Sarah was his one woman band—which included paying people to sit in the audience and laugh at her sonny’s jokes. Aspiring comic Henny Youngman once made fifty cents chuckling at Milty. She also warmed up the audience by laughing and applauding wildly. She adored being mom to the star and would literally say in public, “This is my son the star,
Milton Berle!”

Sarah’s influence extended to Milton Berle’s personal life as well. In 1941, when he married a chorus girl (Joyce Matthews)—Mama Berle played the back room—on their honeymoon! (The couple divorced twice after two unsuccessful tries. Are we surprised?)

Woody Allen is terrified of losing his trademark glasses, he has said, because he’d look like a clone of his mother.

Love or loathe him, if there’s one comic, writer, and producer who has imprinted the Jewish mother image to the world, it would have to be Woody Allen (Konigsberg).

When Allan Stewart Konigsberg was born on December 1, 1935, he looked just like his mother—replete with carrot-red hair, big ears, and milky skin.

Nettie Cherry, Allen’s mother, the daughter of an immigrant Austrian Jew, was born and raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Yet, she embraced shtetl thinking. Yiddish and German were her first languages.

When she married Marty Konigsberg in 1930, the couple had trouble putting food on the table. Marty was a dreamer and a drifter. He told everyone that he was a butter-and-egg salesman, but went from job to job, while planning get-rich-quick schemes— and spending his days at Ebbets Field, pool halls, or buying new suits he couldn’t afford.

The elder Konigsbergs had a rocky marriage. Because of Nettie’s constant belittling and Marty’s itinerant habits the two became angry antagonists—at least as depicted in Woody’s later work.

During his childhood, Woody would witness the rancor and warfare between his parents. He, too, was not immune to hostility. According to reports, his mother had a hot temper and was always taking a whack at him, yet, he never cried. He had an amazing ability to restrain his emotions, but the experience left him believing he was truly unwanted.

Shortly after his first birthday, Nettie found work as a bookkeeper for a florist, leaving her son with a succession of ignorant caretakers. Woody claimed to remember one horrifying incident when one of them shoved a blanket over his face and almost suffocated him.

Even when Nettie returned from work, she wasn’t exactly a “cuddler.”

During the 1960s Woody used these childhood recollections in his routines. He’d say, for example, his mother left a live teddy bear in his crib, or, if anybody with candy beckoned him into a car, he was “advised” to hop right in.

Allen’s parents recalled that, at age six, their son became “sour and depressed,” setting the scene for his later films.

In
Annie Hall
(1977), for example, the protagonist, Alvy Singer, flashes back to his childhood to seek cosmic answers. In one scene, his panicked Jewish mother has brought her precocious, but dour, bespectacled nine-year-old son to a doctor. She explains his obsession with death and the doom of humankind because of the impending expansion of the universe. Alvy’s mother, completely out of tune with her sensitive, neurotic child, tries to explain, “Brooklyn is not expanding.”

Later, as she peels carrots at the camera, Alvy’s mother still “hocks” her adult son, telling him he always only saw the worst in people. He never could get along with anyone in school and was always out of step with the world. Even when he became famous, he still mistrusted the world.

Over time, Allen mellowed and presented Nettie and Marty almost nostalgically in
Radio Days.

Dr. Bruno Halioua, author of
Mères Juives des Hommes Célèbres (Jewish Mothers of Famous Men),
has sympathy for Nettie, writing that she bore the brunt of family responsibilities, morally, and often financially, for decades.

Y
es, true. Certainly a generation ago, the Jewish child was expected to marry. And not just marry, but marry “in.” As a teenager, for example, I wasn’t allowed to date a non-Jew.

“When they come to get us, on which side will your husband stand?” was the admonition from many Jewish mothers. Now there are those who would consider those words paranoiac and
insular. Yet in the context of recent history, for these parents, the Holocaust wasn’t merely a horrific memory, but an experience they lived through—that could happen again.

And marriage to a Jewish mate has long been a religious duty, a way to preserve and protect our faith and our heritage.

As we’ve become more secular, there are those who consider intermarriage an acceptable view.

In looking at the last few generations within my own family, all of my father’s siblings married Jewish mates. Any other choice simply wasn’t on their radar.

Among their children, some married non-Jews who converted.

Today, some of the grandchildren are marrying non-Jews who haven’t converted. The change is clear and reflective of many assimilated Jewish families.

“When my mother [Shari Lewis] met my future husband, she was horrified!” says Mallory Lewis. “A
sheygets
(non-Jewish male) skydiver? Not the Jewish doctor she envisioned.

“When I had a small skin cancer on my lip, my mother and my future husband sat for two hours together while plastic surgery was being performed. After the surgery, the first thing she said was, ‘He’s a wonderful man,’ to which I replied, ‘Give me a mirror.’ I knew even if he was the prince of England, I would have to look pretty bad for my mother to be sanguine about a non-Jewish guy. I looked so bad after surgery, she figured this is it. Ultimately, she did see what a wonderful man my husband is.

“Our kids will be raised Jewish. My husband said whatever it takes (maybe to sleep with me). I believe it’s more important that our son is raised Jewish because he’s half not-Jewish.”

“In the 1960s I met a Danish man, a non-Jew,” says Jody Lopatin. “We moved to Israel, as he was a student. He converted before we were married. Nevertheless, my grandparents said ‘We’ll stick our heads in the oven.’”

When I was in my early twenties, I was hospitalized for a blood clot. By this stage, my grandmother was sitting
shiva
(the mourning ritual) for me already. One day she called and said, “So
nu,
you’re in a hospital, just lying there. Did you meet a doctor yet?” Actually, I had. An ophthalmologist. “Oy,” she moaned. “From
eyes?
Vat kind doctor is that?! No. You want a doctor from brains and hearts! Now dat’s a doctor!”

“Oy” is right.

In the hysterical book and CDs,
Amy’s Answering Machine
(
SendAmy.com
), Amy Borkowsky presents this message from her mom:

Referring to her single status, the late Wendy Wasserstein told the
Los Angeles Jewish Journal,
“I am a walking
shanda
—a disgrace.”

And some Jewish mothers will help the process along.