Center for Judaic Studies – Comedy Videos

Americaner Shadchen (An American Matchmaker)

This 1940 musical film offers a hilarious picture of second-generation Jews in New York City and their search for love. Broadly contrasting rabbinic ways with modern notions in a country where the rules for romance are very different, Americaner Shadchen portrays the dilemma of attempting to live between two worlds. The film’s hero, a model son and successful businessman named Nathan Gold, has been a failure in his pursuit of a bride. The film opens with a bachelor party, Gold’s eighth. His weddings have never worked out, and this one too is aborted. Gold then decides to become an advisor in human relations, ashadchen, as a way of finding a wife. With his servant Morris as his foil, Gold proceeds to solve the mysteries of modem relationships by setting up an office where human affairs can be approached scientifically.

Animal Crackers

“The torch which was carried by Sholem Aleichem was passed on to the Marx Brothers,” wrote critic James Yaffee. “Nothing could be more Jewish than their desperate zany insults, designed to deflate their pompous enemies but eventually making nothing but trouble for themselves.” Animal Crackers is the brothers’ second movie, adapted from their Broadway hit. The plot is silly and the laughs plenty. Groucho is Captain Spaulding, the African Explorer (“did someone call me shnorer?”), just back from the jungle to visit the stately home of haughty Margaret Dumont. With Chico and Harpo on hand to chase blondes and help solve a stolen painting mystery, Animal Crackers is classic Marx comedy.

Annie Hall

Woody Allen brilliantly captures the classic neurotic, paranoid, cynical, morbid, guilt-ridden New York Jewish male in his Academy Award-winning masterpiece. Co-starring Diane Keaton as transplanted Midwesterner Annie Hall, Allen’s story hilariously depicts their interfaith relationship – one that is doomed to failure by vast cultural and emotional differences. Allen plays Alyy Singer, a comedy writer who reflects on his childhood, career, ex-wives and girlfriends, and, especially, his romance with Hall. Through freewheeling flashbacks – some based in reality and others in fantasy – Singer recalls where he went wrong, and where he went right. The chemistry between Allen and Keaton is sublime, making this film an absolute gem.

Biloxi Blues

Biloxi Blues is the second of Neil Simon’s trilogy of autobiographical plays which appeared on Broadway and the big screen. This wry comedy follows the continuing story of Simon’s alter ego, a young Jew from Brooklyn named Eugene Jerome, who enlists in the army toward the end of World War II. While in boot camp, Eugene discovers that many of the same soldiers who are eager to fight the Nazis are also anti-Semitic. In the steamy heat of Biloxi. Mississippi, budding writer Eugene (Matthew Broderick) encounters the absurdities of army life, including endless drills, dense bunkmates, and chipped beef on toast. But he also discovers that his compulsive wisecracking grates on his tough drill sergeant, who just happens to be psychotic. Will Eugene survive ten grueling weeks in fatigues?

Blazing Saddles

In his bawdy comedy Blazing Saddles, writer/director Mel Brooks tackles the subject of prejudice in the Old West. The character of Bart (Cleavon Little), the black sheriff of the white town of Rock Ridge, may be seen as symbolic of outsiders in society, of whom Jews are, of course, a prime example. A corrupt governor (Brooks) and a scheming attorney general (Harvey Korman) hire a drifter named Bart to be sheriff. They figure that because he’s black, he won’t protest when they corrupt Rock Ridge. But Bart unexpectedly cleans up the town, forcing Brooks and Korman to continuously devise new strategies to corrupt Bart. Brooks’ humor runs rampant throughout in the form of Gene Wilder’s “Waco Kid” and Madeline Kahn’s “Lili Von Shtupp.”

Brighton Beach Memoirs

Brighton Beach Memoirs is the first of Neil Simon’s trilogy of autobiographical plays that appeared on Broadway and the big screen. This nostalgic comedy set in Brooklyn in 1937 introduces us to Simons alter ego, the irrepressible Jewish adolescent, Eugene Jerome. Fifteen-year-old Eugene lives in a tiny house in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, with his father, his mother, his older brother, and his widowed aunt and her two daughters. As war clouds gather over Europe, the Jeromes fight their own Simonesque battles over money, living space, and desire: Aunt Blanche can’t find the right man; Dad is sick and can’t work; brother wants to see the world; and Mom is trapped in the kitchen. As for Eugene, he just wants to get along with everyone, and, perhaps, learn about naked girls.

The Frisco Kid

The Frisco Kid stars Gene Wilder as Polish Rabbi Avram Belinski, a pious and trusting man who is headed for San Francisco, where he will assume leadership of a congregation. With the aid of a softhearted outlaw played by Harrison Ford, Belinski works his way west from Pennsylvania. Along the way, Belinski’s Orthodox values make a lasting impression on Indians and frontiersmen, and create outrageous predicaments for the duo in the untamed society.

The Great Dictator

Charlie Chaplin plays two totally opposite roles in his first “talkie,” giving a superb display of his boundless talent for both inspired comedy and powerful drama. One of his masterfully drawn characters is a Jewish barber facing the constant threat of storm troopers and religious persecution. The other is the great dictator, Hynkel, a brilliant lampoon of Adolph Hitler that is awesome proof of Chaplins pantomime genius.

Genghis Cohn

A former Nazi concentration camp commandant tries to escape his past by settling into a small Bavarian town where he becomes police chief. But shades of the violence and horror of his past come back to haunt him when his quiet life shattered by a series of murders in his sleepy town and he becomes embroiled in a bizarre relationship with a kinky, widowed Baroness. Into this mix appears the ghost of Genghis Cohn, a Jewish comedian he ordered to kill in his concentration camp. Slowly and deftly, with hilarious touches, Cohn exacts his ironic and surprising revenge.

The Jack Benny Program

Consists of two Episodes: “The Christmas Show” and “The Railroad Station.” In “The Christmas Show,” while shopping for Christmas presents, Jack buys a $40 wallet and has it gift wrapped. As he shops, Jack returns to change the card. Each time, the clerk must locate the gift, unwrap it, and start over. His nerves soon snap and hes reduced to a blithering idiot. In “The Railroad Station,” Jack has planned a ten-day trip to New York. He has shut off gas and electricity, and even pawned the parrot. As he packs, he has to deal with an eloping girl and an irate plumber. When he gets to the railroad station, he wins a live turkey.

Lenny

Dustin Hoffman was nominated for an Oscar for his performance as Bruce in this ground breaking biography directed by Bob Fosse. The film captures the troubled comedian on stage on off, trying to make sense of a world full of pretense and sham. Bruce’s vulgarity is well apparent, but so is his humor, which hits home with uncanny accuracy. While Bruce battles obscenity charges and his own drug addiction, Hoffman creates an astute balance of sympathy and repulsion for the character.

My Favorite Year

The immediacy of live television explodes with intensity unknown in today’s world of video retakes and canned laughter. This comic valentine to the unpredictable early days of live TV is an insiders backstage adventure, inspired by the antics of famous, real life network personalities.

Mr. Saturday Night

Billy Crystal shines in his directorial debut as the legendary comedian Buddy Young, Jr. – The most famous comic nobodys heard of. From his earliest days of headlining in his parents living room, to the golden days as Americas favorite television comic, Buddy remains in a class by himself. With the help of his brother/manager, who’s always ready to catch him when he falls. Buddys hilarious backstage climb to-the-middle is studded with witty one-liners and rapid-fire routines that will always leave you laughing – even as they touch your heart.

Private Benjamin

The immovable object is a pampered spoiled upper-middle-class princess named Judy Benjamin, whose wealthy new husband kicks the bucket on their wedding night. Enter the irresistible force: a three-year, all expenses paid hitch in the U.S. Army. What’s a nice girl like Judy doing in combat boots and fatigues? A smooth talking recruiter seductively describes today’s “new army” and Judy swallows the bait – which tastes awful, but turns out to be the best medicine shes ever taken.

The Producers

In the hands of anyone else, The Producers might be pure kitsch. But writer/director Mel Brooks knows how to take the Jewish psyche and wring the absurdity out of it until you have to laugh. Or cry. The Producers is an outrageous comedy starring Zero Mostel as a loud, conniving Broadway producer named Max Bialystock. Together with his meek and nervous accountant, Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder), he sells 25,000 percent of a musical that’s so tasteless, it’s sure to flop. They’ll close the show in preview and head to Rio with the excess cash. But “Springtime for Hitler” is a smash hit! (You’ve got to see it to believe it.) How will Bialystock and Bloom ever pay back all their unsuspecting investors? And how can the audience find their play so funny?

Sid Caesar in Your Show of Shows

Your Show of Shows made television history. In televisions infancy, the comedy show was broadcast live every Saturday night. Its hilarious and original sketches – starring Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Nanette Fabray, Carl Reiner, and others – had much of America laughing. The show was written by a stellar group of writers, including Neil Simon, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and Larry Gelbart. Although the humor is rarely explicitly “Jewish,” viewers might recognize the underlying Jewish sensibility. The sketches featured in this tape are typical scenes and subjects, like “The Professor,” comical family conflicts and everyday dilemmas, and parodies of high culture, Hollywood, and foreign films.

To Be or Not To Be

To Be or Not To Be prompted many critics to attack director Ernst Lubitsch for what they deemed a callous insensitivity to the plight of the Jewish people in Nazi-occupied Warsaw. Lubitsch pointed out that his black comedy included footage of the devastated city, reflecting his personal horror and repulsion. “What I have satirized in this picture are the Nazis and their ridiculous ideology,” insisted Lubitsch. Jack Benny and Carole Lombard star as a husband and wife acting team who perform with a Warsaw company. After a dashing Polish pilot falls for Lombard, he then leaves for England where he meets a mysterious man who will soon return to Poland. Could he be a Nazi spy? In a wacky series of events, Benny, Lombard, and the company assume clever disguises to outwit the Germans and foil their plot.