Yippie kay oy kay vey!

[pvitari]

Starting at sundown today, it's the first day of Chanukah, the time of year when I go around singing Adam Sandler's "Chanukah Song" a lot. :) Even though I'm as secular as they come. Anyway, I thought I'd post for each day of Chanukah (there's eight of them) a picture of a Jewish cowboy. Yup, we got 'em!

First up is Broncho Billy Anderson, born Maxwell Henry Aronson.

Wikipedia bio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broncho_Billy_Anderson

[moira finnie]

This is GREAT!! Thank you for doing this, Paula. I love Bronco Billy and I can't wait to see more kosher cowpokes, (at least during Chanukah at Mom's house).


Happy Chanukah to All

[pvitari]

Hi, Moira, thanks for the great Menorah pic! ;) I've got a nice long list of "kosher cowpokes" and I'll light up one for each day. :)

Here's a link to a really great write-up about Broncho Billy, with lots of pictures.

http://www.seraphicpress.com/archives/2 ... wish_5.php

[pvitari]

Ho Ho Hanukah!

Today's Jewish cowboy is Issur Danielovitch, a.k.a. Kirk Douglas. :) Douglas describes in vivid detail in his autobiography, The Ragman's Son, growing up in a large family in upstate New York, the only son (with six sisters!) of a couple who had immigrated from Russia (his father) and the Ukraine (his mother) to escape poverty and pogroms. Douglas is not only a movie star but a versatile actor as well who has proved himself in every kind of drama, including, of course, westerns. Plenty of westerns. :)

Man Without a Star


Gunfight at the OK Corral


Lonely Are the Brave


Last Train From Gun Hill


Along the Great Divide


Indian Fighter (1955 B western Douglas produced as well as starred in)

[pvitari]

Today's entry is The Real Thing. Real Jewish cowboys.

Like Scott Freed, real estate magnate and also a rancher, former rodeo performer, and a roper.


Or pioneer Carl Lowenberg, seen here in an 1888 photo. He traveled throughout New Mexico, Texas and Mexico.


Or the Grouskay family, Arizona cattle ranchers. Patriarch Eli and wife Rose had emigrated from Poland to Canada but the cold air exacerbated Rose's asthma, so they headed south to Arizona. After living in several cities, they settled permanently in Phoenix in 1922. Their son Aubrey grew up riding and roping with cowboys, carrying on a family tradition as the family back in Poland had been involved with livestock for generations. As an adult he officially joined the family business, which included feedlots and numerous brands. Aubrey was elected to the National Livestock Board and served as president of the Arizona Cattle Growers Association. He died in 2003 and his boots and saddle reside in the archives of the Arizona Jewish Historical Society.

Aubrey Grouskay


The Grouskay Ranch


A Grouskay company ad


Here's an article about Sol Floersheim, who was a big sheepman in New Mexico -- but he had cattle too.
http://parentseyes.arizona.edu/bloom/v22floersheim.htm

These are just a few of the intrepid Jewish pioneers who helped settle the Wild West and build flourishing ranches and businesses.

[moira finnie]

Great choice, Paula.

Kirk lets his fancy-dan neckerchief do a lot of the acting for him in The Last Sunset (1961).

I am inexplicably partial to Kirk's broth of a cowboy, the rascally Brendan O'Malley, whose extraordinarily tight jeans and oily snake charmer manner livens up the often unintentionally amusing Western, The Last Sunset (1961). Directed by Robert Aldrich in a straightforward style, the movie should've been better with Kirk, Rock Hudson, Joseph Cotten and recent Academy Award winner for best scenery chewing, Dorothy Malone, in the cast. (Even though Dot seems to still be playing her outlandish character from Written on the Wind and warming up for her seething widder woman in tv's Peyton Place). Not any of the actors faults ultimately, but the script (by Dalton Trumbo, yet) was a doozey, filled with lots of people speaking their piece, exchanging meaningful glances, hidden motives and generally displaying very poor communication skills among the adults, though teenage Carol Lynley was pretty believable as a girl with ideas...about the wrong guy.

I just have to enjoy a movie that brings together Regis Toomey, Jack Elam and Neville Brand in one cast led by the Kirkster!


It's kind of nice that Kirk even lived long enough to find his way back to the faith of his fathers, as he details in his subsequent memoir, Climbing The Mountain: My Search For Meaning, which had many moving passages reflecting on the core beliefs he has rediscovered late in life, including Judaism. Acknowledging that there were times when he was a self-centered schmuck during his Hollywood heyday, he may be the last of his kind. Btw, last week on Thanksgiving Day, the 93 year old Mr. Douglas and his wife Ann served up dinner to hundreds of people at the LA Mission.

[movieman1957]

I think Kirk makes a great cowboy. The photos are from some of my faves but one I just couldn't enjoy was "The Big Trees." Beautiful looking scenery but a pretty lame story. "Thud" not only was the sound the trees made but also the sound of the picture when it was over. It should have been carted away as well.

[pvitari]

Btw, last week on Thanksgiving Day, the 93 year old Mr. Douglas and his wife Ann served up dinner to hundreds of people at the LA Mission.

Somehow, I am not surprised.

Maybe he thought he was a s****** (you know, that's really not a nice word although it's used in one of the funniest jokes ever in Leo Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish.... my mother guffawed her way through that book, then gave it to her father -- a lover of sly humor -- to read, and he didn't crack a smile. When she asked why, he said he already knew all the jokes!) -- but I always thought he (Kirk) was a class act.

All I want to know is, how come son Michael Douglas hasn't made a western?? Tsk tsk.

[pvitari]

Meanwhile, back at the Ponderosa....

It's Lorne Greene as the TV's most beloved western patriarch, Ben Cartwright.

He was born Lyon Himan Green and he was Canadian. :) His mom called him "Chaim." With that mellifluous voice, he started off as a newsreader for the Canadian Broadcasting Company, but eventually moved into acting. He did a lot of guest spots on TV, but he wasn't known especially as a western star, although he did appear in some westerns -- a Jock Mahoney movie called Last of the Fun Guns, and episodes of Wagon Train and Cheyenne, for instance. But then in 1959 he was cast as Ben Cartwright, and for the next 14 years he was the voice of benevolent white-haired cowboy-father knows-best authority. (Later he was Captain Adama on the original Battlestar Galactica -- Ben Cartwright in space!) ;)

I grew up with Ben Cartwright (he and Ed Sullivan were the constant presence on my TV Sunday nights)... he was a pretty cool dad! I loved that he had three sons by three different women, it seemed so exotic to me in my suburban cocoon. ;)



He also recorded albums -- he had a pleasant singing voice.




With two of his TV sons, Dirk Blocker as Hoss and Michael Landon (born Eugene Orowitz by the way -- dad was Eli Orowitz and his mom was Peggy O'Neill) as Little Joe.

[pvitari]

Today's actor is Gene Barry, born Eugene Klass in New York City, to musical parents Martin and Eva Klass, both children of immigrants from Russia.

Barry grew up far from the prairies, mountains and deserts of the west, in New York, and all he ever wanted to do was act. He started on Broadway and then television and movies. He wasn't known as a Western actor though like so many actors, he of course ended up in some westerns, such as Those Redheads from Seattle (1953) and the 1957 Sam Fuller-written/directed Forty Guns (starring Barbara Stanwyck), though he's most well known in feature films for his starring role in War of the Worlds.

Then he was cast as that iconic well-dressed lawman -- Indian fighter, U.S. marshall, deputy to Wyatt Earp, and sheriff -- Bat Masterson, in a series that ran for three years on NBC, 1958-1961. The dapper Masterston, with gold-tipped cane and his custom-crafted gun, travelled the west, dispensing justice and indulging in his fondness for ladies and games of chance.





Barry recreated the role of Masterson twice on TV, once for a 1990 episode in a series called The Guns of Paradise, and also for the 1991 Kenny Rogers TV movie, The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw.

I was too young to watch Bat Masterson, so I don't remember its original broadcast. My first real memory of Gene Barry is as publisher Glenn Howard in the 1968 series The Name of the Game. And I love my cast album of La Cage aux Folles, the 1983 Jerry Herman Broadway musical (adapted from the French play and film) in which he played Georges, a role for which he won a Tony Award.

Ironically, the historical Bat Masterson spent the last 20 years of his life in New York City, as a sports editor, writer and columnist. He died in 1921, when little Eugene Klass, who lived in the same city, was two years old.

Barry won a 1987 Golden Boot Award. Here he is arriving at the celebration in costume.

[pvitari]

*sigh* I had this long post about Blazing Saddles all ready to go, and somehow I hit the wrong button, and it DISAPPEARED. Never to be seen again.

So reconstructing it quickly, as it's very late and actually past midnight, so I technically have missed a day...

We're doing a whole movie today (yesterday) -- Mel Brooks' divinely demented Blazing Saddles, which takes every western cliche and deconstructs/destructs it, and ultimately breaks the fourth wall to show them (and all movies) off as the complete fakery they are, while also using a whole raft of politically incorrect jokes to expose racism for what it is... the ultimate joke being the salt of the earth types who really are viciously small-minded and bigoted. Well, that sounds serious, but this movie is so funny that it hurts to watch because you can't stop laughing. They couldn't make this movie today, someone would be offended. Thank goodness for the 1970s (except for the alleged "fashions" of that decade).

I'm sure you all have your favorite scenes and dialogue, and I find it impossible to pick just one but for the sake of this post I have to say it's Mel Brooks as the Yiddish-speaking Indian. When he rides up, then sits there on his horse and looks at the black pioneer family for a very longggg minute, and then declaims, "Schvartzes!" I'm on the floor, maybe because that's a word I heard more than once dropping from the lips of my grandparents. ;) But also... what little Jewish kid (or any kid in the city, at least back in the first half of the 20th century) hasn't dreamed about being a cowboy or an Indian?


Besides Mel (in a double role), there's Cleavon Little as the stalwart sheriff the townspeople are waiting for, but wait... he's BLACK! and Madeleine Kahn doing the best Marlene Dietrich send up ever (complete with choir boys in Prussian army outfits), and Harvey Korman doing one of his patented accents, something faux-quasi-British, I think, and Gene Wilder (last minute casting when Gig Young had to drop out after the first day) as the Waco Kid, a kind of Jewish gloss/combo on Dean Martin in Rio Bravo plus every movie gunslinger you can think of, and Slim Pickens for some real Western approbation of the goings on. And Alex Karras as Mongo, David Huddleston... and of course Dom DeLuise! Mel also makes sure we get a Hitler joke and some gay jokes, and a pretty girl showing off almost all her assets... it is a Mel Brooks movie, where'd we be without them?

The ending is beyond brilliant, with not only the fourth wall but time itself being split, with the action taking place both simultaneously outside on the real street as well as Graumann's Chinese movie screen. Brooks doesn't lose control of his material for a second. It ends with our heroes riding off into the sunset of course... but they've ditched the horses for a limo. ;)

OK, time for a midnight snack. I think I'll have some beans. :)

[JackFavell]

Please hold off on the beans....

have some schnitzengruben.

[pvitari]

Gesundheit! ;)

Update on the real life Jewish cowboys. The first of Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders to be killed in action was 16-year-old Trooper Jacob Wilbusky, a Jewish cowboy from Texas. In fact, the first person of Roosevelt's Rough Riders to reach the top of San Juan Hill was also Jewish, name of Irving Peixotto.

[pvitari]

Today's cowboy is also one of Mongo's birthday boys... Eli Wallach, 95 years young.

When I went to the TCM film festival, the first person I literally spotted upon stepping out of the airport shuttle bus at the door to the Roosevelt Hotel was Eli Wallach. I didn't recognize him at first...in my mind he still looks like Tuco in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. But after a moment I realized that little old man -- who looked like he could be one of my parents' friends -- was Eli Wallach. THE Eli Wallach. Holy simoley! I babbled something to him, he looked amused, then the TCM minders showed up and whisked him away into a waiting limo. I saw him again a couple of times but only at a distance.

Eli Wallach played dozens and dozens of roles on stage and screen, usually stealing whatever scene he was. (He almost played Maggio in From Here to Eternity, but he had to drop out to do a play, so Frank Sinatra got the role he'd been dying to play, a role that played a part in one of the all-time great comebacks). He really didn't do a lot of westerns. BUT... of those few westerns, two roles are iconic, and one of them is mega-iconic. The iconic role is Calvera, the Mexican bandido in The Magnificent Seven


and the uber-iconic one is Tuco in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. Tuco's the ugly one of course. Physically, he's not ugly, but he's some kind of trickster demon who seems contrarian to everything else on earth.





(There's a gun concealed in the bubble bath... I didn't know guns could work when they're wet and full of bubbles, but good thing for Tuco they do!)

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Darren Franich celebrates Eli Wallach at 95 in Entertainment Weekly: http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/12/07/eli-w ... rthday-95/

New York Times film critic A.O. Scott writes lovingly of his Uncle Eli (yes, Eli Wallach IS his uncle): http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/movie ... ach&st=cse

Eli Wallach out on the town looking like a Texas rabbi. :)

[pvitari]

This is the last night of Hanukah, so this concludes the leck-cha on the subject of Jewish cowboys "reel" and "real." :) Unless someone else digs up some interesting info! ;)

Our last Jewish cowboys are really tenderfeet (tenderfoots?) who learn cowboy ways from that master of the one-armed push-up, Jack Palance. I mean Billy Crystal and Daniel Stern, of course, in City Slickers. (The third city slicker was Bruno Kirby.)







This was a really fun movie and I could certainly identify with Billy Crystal, that is, being a city slicker tenderfoot dudette myself. ;)

Back to the "real world" -- and I do mean "world," as in international.

FIrst south of the border, to Argentina, where Jewish gauchos once rode the range. In the late 19th/early 20th centuries, Jews fleeing oppression and pogroms in Eastern Europe emigrated not only in the U.S. but also to Argentina, where there was no official policy of racial prejudice and land could be had cheaply for the few Jewish families that actually wanted to take up farming and ranching. The newly arrived emigrants began to assimilate and to dress like the gauchos already working the cattle ranches. Here is an article by Alberto Manguel on the history of Jewish emigration and gauchos in Argentina: http://www.geist.com/opinion/jewish-gauchos



Arminio Seiferheld, a modern-day Jewish gaucho


Now over to Israel, where cowboy culture is alive and well. ;)
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I've hope you've all enjoyed this thread. Now I'm planning Christmas fun! ;)