by Ron Kaplan
NJJN Features Editor

February 21, 2008

A rabbi, a minister, and a priest walk into a hearing…. Sounds like the start of a joke, but in this case it’s a scene from the 1951 motion picture Angels in the Outfield. The three clergymen are “witnesses” at a hearing to determine whether the crotchety manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates is actually hearing the voice of an angel or if he’s just plain nuts.

It is worth noting that the rabbi — played by an uncredited Lawrence Dobkin — does not seem particularly rabbinic: He has no accent, no beard, no kipa or hat, nothing that might identify him as Jewish. (The priest, on the other hand, with his thick brogue and bushy eyebrows, is as Irish as a pint of Guinness.)

Rob Edelman, who teaches film history at the State University of New York at Albany, believes this is less about making a religious point than box office bucks.

“Movies are made for the masses to make money,” said Edelman, who published Great Baseball Films in 1994. “So if they’re going to have a rabbi and he’s only going to be in one scene, they’re not going to necessarily have a yarmulke on or all the accoutrements of his religion. The people in the audience are not going to understand what all that is.

“In that scene, you want to have the various religions represented in those three characters, and from that point of view, I think the story succeeds. I’m glad one of those characters was a rabbi because the Jews were represented.”

But it’s the history of how Jews have been represented that was the focus of Edelman’s article “O’Brien to Ryan to Goldberg: Fact, Fiction and Cultural Stereotyping in Baseball Films,” which was included in Baseball in the Classroom: Essays on Teaching the National Pastime.

He discussed his findings in a telephone interview with NJ Jewish News.

Prior to the 1950s, ethnic groups were portrayed as stock characters: Irish men were usually cops, Italians were waiters or restaurateurs, and African-Americans and Asians were often cast in unflattering lights. In the infrequent instances when Jews appeared in films with a sports theme, it was not because of their athletic prowess.

“The problem is that when everyone begins to think, ‘All Jews are intellectual, all Latinos are lazy, all Italians are mobsters…this is where you have the problem,” he said. “While the celluloid Jewish athletes of the period are sweetly comical, there is another more insidious stereotype: The Jew who is fearful and unphysical, who cowers in the face of confrontation and is incapable of being a fighting hero.

“In a lot of the stereotypical [movie] portrayals, you might have a Jewish athlete, but he’s not really athletic,” said Edelman. “If he gets injured and can’t play in the important game, what does he care? It’s only athletics. So he’ll sit on the sideline and laugh and joke while the real hero, the real athlete comes in and takes his place and wins the game. Of course, any athlete who’s been training, if you get injured right before the big game, you’re going to be angry, disappointed. But if these characters are Jewish, they don’t take it very seriously.

“There was a 1930s film titled Hot Curves where you have a character named Goldberg who was playing for a professional team, and he was a jokester. You see him in spring training; balls are being hit to him and he’s ducking instead of catching the ball. Jewish characters are not supposed to be physical.”

Edelman offers another example from Take Me Out to the Ballgame, a 1949 movie starring Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra as turn-of-the-20th-century ballplayers. O’Brien (Kelly) and Ryan (Sinatra) are the romantic characters while banjo-eyed Jules Munshin plays second banana Nat Goldberg.

In his essay, Edelman wrote:

“Tellingly, [Goldberg] has no girlfriend, no on-screen romantic life. His sole purpose is to amuse the audience. This is evident in the opening sequence, as the ballplayers pose for a spring training group photo. The manager growls at Goldberg to douse his cigar. The first-baseman responds by comically coughing and putting the still-lit stogie under his cap.”

On the other hand, Edelman writes, “O’Brien and Ryan have personalities. They have interests. They are the male centerpieces of the story. Goldberg…is little more than a sounding board.”

Exceptions to the rule

Edelman conceded there were exceptions to the “standard” portrait.

“You look back to 1947, the John Garfield film Body and Soul. The character is Jewish, and he’s a world champion boxer. He’s a good athlete and he takes winning seriously.”

Another antidote to the stereotype, said Edelman, “is in the screen version of The Chosen. Very early in the film you have two groups of Jewish boys playing ball circa World War II in Brooklyn…. At the beginning, one of them says in voice-over that maybe some people might be questioning the physical adeptness of Jews to fight in the war, to fight for democracy. We’re kids, we’re too young to be in the war, but one way we can show we’re fit is by playing ball,” Edelman said. “That’s the more modern view, but that’s the one that’s very real.”

Citing another stereotype-breaking example, Edelman pointed to the Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire, in which Ben Cross played British Olympic medal-winner Harold Abrahams, a “strong Jew.”

“When I see a film and there’s a character who is athletic and Jewish — whether a real person or fictional — I don’t expect this character to be flawless. But if he’s shown to be physically fit, to take his athleticism and being in competition seriously, I think that’s a good thing because it busts the stereotype.”

In addition to his book on baseball films, Edelman, 58, is a regular contributor to Leonard Maltin’s annual movie guide. He also collaborated on two books with his wife, Audrey Kupferberg: Meet the Mertzes, a double biography of I Love Lucy costars Vivian Vance and William Frawley (“a huge baseball fan”), and Matthau: A Life, about actor Walter Matthau.

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Award-winning Jewish sports movies

• Chariots of Fire received four 1982 Academy Awards, including best picture and best original screenplay, as well as three additional nominations.
• Body and Soul won the 1948 Oscar for best film editing. John Garfield was nominated for best actor and Abraham Polonsky for best original screenplay.
• The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg won more than a dozen awards from film festivals and other bodies.

• Comment: comments@njjewishnews.com