Martin C. Winer

If you starve two patients, and only one develops an infection, one would still typically cite the bacteria and the starvation as (probable) causes of the infection.  Margaret Macmillan looks at this scenario strangely in that she infers that because only one patient developed a bacterial infection, the cause is solely the bacteria and not the starvation.

Margaret Macmillan is not writing about pathology hower, but the history of  international relationships at its greatest defining moment Paris 1919, the Treaty of Versailles. 

It has been commonly held that the harshness of the reparations exacted upon the Germans laid the grounds for Hitler’s rise and WWII.  Macmillan sites other historical examples of harsh reparations — such as those after the Franco-Prussian war – which didn’t lead to despotic reigns.  To my way of thinking her logic is like the smoking lobby gathering together 90 year old smokers to prove that smoking is harmless.

This flaw aside, Paris 1919 – the documentary (based on Macmillan’s book) should be required reading (viewing)  for anyone interested in history, war and peace, or international affairs.

It airs Wed Nov 11 @ 9PM on TVO followed by an interview of Margaret Macmillan by Allan Gregg

Paris 1919 on TVO:
http://www.tvo.org/TVO/WebObjects/TVO.woa?b?3003401257991231000

Margaret MacMillan interviewd by Allen Gregg:
http://www.tvo.org/TVOsites/WebObjects/TvoMicrosite.woa?b?8587281257996911000

Paris 1919 Book:
http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780375760525

I attended the 3rd lecture on the Jewish Roots of Tin Pan Alley by Jordan Klapman. My notes on the previous lecture can be found here : http://mwiner.wordpress.com/2008/04/03/jewish-contributions-to-tin-pan-alley

The lecture series will continue with another 3 lectures in December of ’08.

This lecture centered around the success of “Bei Mir Bist Du Shein” (To Me You’re Beautiful) written by Jacob Jacobs (lyricist) and Shalom Secunda (composer). This overtly Jewish (Klezmer) tune was made famous by the Greek (Lutheran) Andrews Sisters. The number was brought to the Andrews Sisters by Sammy Cahn after he heard a performance of it at the Apollo Theater in Harlem sung in the original Yiddish by African American performers Johnnie and George.

The song brought the Andrews Sisters instant stardom with this, their first record. The song was recorded by many other notable artists of the day including Acker Bilk, The Barry Sisters, Buddy Clark, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland (who received coaching in cantorial style from none other than Sam Goldwyn of movie fame), Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Glenn Miller (who had previously passed on the tune), and Teddy Wilson.

There were many other attempts to bring overtly Jewish music into mainstream America. Klapman’s lecture featured many audio examples of such attempts. Regrettably, none of them met with the fame of Bei Mir Bist Du Shein. However, many spin offs of the success of Bei Mir Bist Du Shein resulted.

Within weeks of the meteoric success of Bei Mir Bist Du Shein, radio executives at WHN in New York created a radio review of this new Jewish-Swing fusion called “Yiddish Melodies in Swing”. The show featured the vocals of the Barry Sisters, the “Swingtet” led by Pianist/Composer Sam Medoff, and the clarinet of Dave Tarras. The show had and extended run broadcasting every Sunday for two decades outliving the Golden Age of radio and most of its original audience.

The mainstream born Jewish: Throughout the course of Klapman’s lecture there was a pervasive pattern of mentioning a performers name followed by the Jewish name they were born with. “The Barry Sisters, born Bagelman”, “Sammy Cahn born Samuel Cohen” and on it went throughout the night. It was as if the seeds born of European pedigree needed to shed the husks of their origins before they could sow roots in Western soil. As it was with the performers names’ of the day, so too it was with the music. While Bei Mir Bist Du Shein was a single exemplar of the success of an overtly Jewish tune, allusions to Klezmer in the form of derived motifs and riffs permeated mainstream music coming out of Tin Pan Alley.

In perhaps the finest example of one such fusion taken to the nth degree we have the example of the Wedding Samba recorded by Edmundo Ros selling 3 million copies in 1949. This tune was born of the a earlier English recording of the Wedding Samba in 1940. However, the story continues, this 1940 song was born, in turn, of the Yiddish Theatre song of that same year “Der Nayer Sher” (The New Scissor Dance) composed by Abraham Ellstein.

In a demonstration of the universality of music, Hitler upon hearing the Germanic titled “Bei Mir Bist Du Shein” thought the song was “Wunderbar” until he was told that the song was written by Jews from Brooklyn. This wouldn’t be the first time that Hitlers musical tastes clashed with his politics. He was a tremendous fan of Franz Lehar who had a Jewish wife. He was also a great fan of Emmerich Kálmán of operetta fame who fled the Nazis leaving Europe for America. Music can not only circumvent politics but it can also supersede the original impetus of its composers.

Take for example, “My Little Cousin” recorded by Benny Goodman and Peggy Lee in 1942 which tells the story of boy meets girl. The Yiddish song upon which it was based, “Di Grine Kuzine” (My Green Cousin), tells the story of the culture shock of the new Jewish immigrants to American and ends with “Let this Columbus’s land burn!” As Klapman puts it “recycling is not a modern invention.”

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• The lecture series will continue (tentatively) on December 3, 10, and 17 2008 with details to follow. Jordan Klapman performs with his ensemble at Jazz venues throughout the city including the Free Times Cafe.
• Jordan Klapman’s Klezmer group has a new CD out with details to follow at www.jordanklapman.com
• Jordan Klapman will appear in a free concert:
  Sunday, April 27th 2008
  The Jordan Klapman Trio
  Scarborough Civic Center
  Scarborough, Ontario Canada
  2:00pm – 4:00pm
• Klapman’s website and upcoming events can be found here:
  http://www.jordanklapman.com/
  http://www.jordanklapman.com/gigs/frameset.htm 

Inglourious Basterds : Bastardizing Holocaust Remembrance

Martin C. Winer

A comedy about nothing may be quite clever but a Holocaust movie about nothing is irresponsible at best.  For many years after the Holocaust, the film world observed a mourning period not even willing to touch the topic.  Then a spate of films came out seeking to portray with the utmost realism the horrors that had occurred.  The screenwriters did not use their imaginations in constructing the screenplays since Nazi imagination was as evil as it was complete.  Screenwriters dedicated themselves instead to rendering a faithful reproduction of those tragic events.

But now it seems as though enough time has passed such that the Holocaust can serve as comic foil to wrap and serve a helping of Quentin Tarentino gratuituous violence.  In Tarantino’s earlier works like Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction, violence was a backdrop against which he nourished his viewers with rich character development.  Many remember the character of Max Cherry, a Bail Bondsman who discovered the Delfonics and his youth in a passing romance with Jackie Brown.  Tarantino’s unique gift is in providing full Technicolor hues to seemingly ordinary characters.  In this sense, Inglourious Basterds fails as a Tarantino movie long before it fails as a movie dealing with the Holocaust.

The characters of this film are two dimensional and black and white.  Despite ample opportunity to shed light on the characters, the closest Tarantino comes is in his depiction of Col. Landa who is a master rat in a world of rats.  The closest Tarantino comes to any sort of message is delivered through Landa who reports that a squirrel and a rat are both very similar rodents, yet only the rat is detested.  By extension the reason Tarantino provides that the Jews have been so heavily targeted is a childish “Just So” story.  Any search for a broader meaning to the film will fall as flat as the remaining characters.

Beyond failed character development this film often offers mere caricatures.  Brad Pitt’s performance was notably poor in that he offers only a hyperbolic rendition of an American of southern descent with an obnoxious accent.  The ‘Basterds’ – a troupe of American Jewish soldiers out to scalp Nazis – are equally hollow depictions of people bent on revenge.  Tarantino shines at bringing out characters in films set in California.  But when it comes to developing characters in war torn Europe, it seems that he has bitten off more than he can chew.

The ending of the film is as disappointing as the character development.  Tarantino offers an alternate ending to World War II where the Nazis are brought down by a cunning act of espionage and subterfuge.  Anyone with the slightest sense of history will watch with raised eyebrows comparing this with the real ending of over 60 million people dead before Hitler and his Reich met its end.  To end Hitler with the flick of Tarantino’s pen, even though this be a work of fiction, seems irreverent of a painful history.

The ultimate concern of such a film is brought out in a line from the very film itself:  “Goebbels considers the films he’s making to be the beginning of the new era… an alternative to … the German-Jewish intellectual cinema of the 20’s.”  If Tarantino has decided for himself that it’s time to move beyond the painful and historically correct depictions of Holocaust films past, and that instead the Holocaust can be used as a mere backdrop for contemporary drama, what era in film making will this usher in?