'Broadway Musicals: Jewish Legacy' review: smart stuff

Or so says Michael Kantor's 90-minute documentary about Jewish influence on the most beloved musical theater. Using interviews, archival clips and musical examples, narrator Joel Grey traces one of America's greatest contributions to world culture to a big handful of Jewish songwriters -- including Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, the Gershwins, Lorenz Hart, Richard Rodgers, Kurt Weill, Jule Styne and Jerry Herman.

Except for the work of Cole Porter, the formative 50 years of the so-called "golden age" of American musicals and popular music can be traced to the Yiddish sounds and social conscience of Jewish immigrants and children of immigrants from the Lower East Side at the turn of the 20th century.

Jamie Bernstein, daughter of Leonard, calls them "misfits, outsiders overcoming obstacles in melodies from Jewish prayers." These were Jews writing for non-Jewish audiences, and the hunger to assimilate was disguised -- for example, as the half-black woman in "Show Boat," music by Kern, book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein (raised Episcopalian but the grandson of a German-Jewish impresario).

Berlin, who came through Ellis Island at 5 years old and remembered standing there "in our Jew clothes," went on to write "White Christmas" and "Easter Parade." It wasn't until "Fiddler on the Roof" in 1964, then "Cabaret" two years later, that Broadway told Jewish stories. Director Hal Prince recalls the "Fiddler" backers' audition, when he had to insist the show was "going to be fun, not just pogroms and exile."

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