Transformations of a Jewish Princess: Salome and the Remaking of the Jewish Female Body from Sarah Bernhardt to Betty Boop
2013; University of Iowa; Volume: 92; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0031-7977
Autores Tópico(s)Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies
ResumoIN SEPTEMBER 1908, FANNY BRICE (BIRTHNAME: FANIA BORACH) took the stage at a Friar's Club benefit in Arverne, Rockaway--the far reaches of the distant borough of Queens. Although the venue was hardly first-rank, the stakes were high. (1) Fanny had reached something of a career impasse: having been dismissed from the chorus line at her most prestigious job to date, George M. Cohan's New Follies Review, she realized that a terpsichorean future was probably not in the offing. She needed to land more than a bit part; while she had been hired in that capacity for the burlesque variety show Fanny aspired to a more prominent role. The producer, Max Speigel, offered her a chance at a lead, and asked her to perform a specialty--her own trademark act--as an audition. This was the big break that Brice was looking for. There was only one problem: she didn't have a specialty to perform. Resourceful as ever, Brice turned to a friend, an up-and-coming Tin Pan Alley tunesmith by the name of Irving Berlin. Berlin offered Fanny a newly composed song and insisted that she learn to sing it with a Yiddish accent (the Borachses, Hungarian in origin, were of a class that didn't speak Yiddish). Sporting a Yiddish accent that she picked up from an ethnic comedian and perfected with the help of Berlin, she flounced and writhed her way through the song, a ditty called Salome, Go Home. Performing first as a Jewish boy named Mose (of course) lamenting the career path of his girlfriend-- Don't do that dance, Sadie Dat's not business for a lady Most everybody knows that I'm your loving Mose, Oy, oy, oy where is your clothes, Sadie Salome please go home-- [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Fanny then switched roles, performing Sadie's version of Salomes Dance of the Seven Veils in a sailor suit that rode uncomfortably up into her crotch. Whether because of the wardrobe malfunction or her comic talent, Fanny brought down the house, which got her the lead and propelled her to stardom. When she returned from her tour with College Girls, a contract from the Ziegfeld Follies was waiting for her--as a comedienne, not a showgirl. She never looked back. I see three separate nodes of significance in this moment, the coalescence of which is the occasion for this essay. The first is suggested by the choice of Salome as the subject of a specialty. For Berlin's song emerges at the moment of, and enthusiastically contributes to, an enormous American vogue for all things Salome which began in 1907 with the arrival of Richard Strauss's opera, translated into German from the original French (Oscar Wilde's play, banned from the stage in the 1890s, served as Strauss's libretto). Added to the repertory at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Strauss's Salome was performed exactly once before the horrified daughter of J. Pierpont Morgan prevailed upon her father, who owned the lease on the building, to strong-arm management into canceling the remainder of the engagement. Oscar Hammerstein, who owned a chain of burlesque houses but was seeking respectability by opening the New York City Opera House, pounced on the Met's self-censorship, engaging British soprano Mary Garden to perform Strauss's fiendishly difficult role, and premiering it to critical acclaim and public excitement. It was however the burgeoning mass culture that saw the greatest burst of excitement. Bianca Froelich, who had performed Salomes dances at the Met (a 250-pound soprano named Olive Fremsted handled Strauss's very demanding vocals but refrained from any further exertion), took the act to the Lincoln Square Variety Theater, where her rendition of the Dance of the Seven Veils became a sensation. Savvy entrepreneurs followed: Florence Ziegfeld added a wildly popular parodic Salome number to his Follies of 1907; the next year, Willie Hammerstein did the same at his father's burlesque house, after sending one of his dancers, Gertrude Hoffman, to London to study the Salome performances of dancer Maud Allen. …
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