A Nose By Any Other Name

A Brief History of Jews in Hollywood, from Louis B. Mayer to...Bradley Cooper?

In his eulogy for Leonard Bernstein, Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer reflected that the late composer was a man who “sought out ambiguity, paradox, risk.” He would have loved Film Twitter.

The first trailer for Maestro, a Leonard Bernstein biopic made by and starring Bradley Cooper, hit the interwebs this week, and as usual there was an uproar. I won’t go into much detail—you can look up the tweets yourself—but the gist is that some Jewish folks were disturbed that Cooper chose to don a prosthetic nose to play Bernstein. They worried that it played into ancient Jewish stereotypes used to dehumanize and scapegoat. The fact that Cooper already had a rather prominent schnozz (without the prosthetic) only made it more confusing. Some argued that it rendered complaints irrelevant, since he was mostly just changing the shape of his nose, rather than increasing the size. Others felt the fact that Cooper’s nose was already on the large side made it worse, like the artificiality of it was somehow the point. As if some distance had to be created between Bradley Cooper the Movie Star and Leonard Bernstein the Jew.

I’ll just say this: As a Jewish man, I had a visceral reaction to this shot.

Of course, there is also the fact that Bernstein is being played by Cooper at all. He’s not the first prominent Jew to be played by a Gentile. In fact, it’s standard practice. This year alone, there was also Cillian Murphy as Robert Oppenheimer and Helen Mirren as Golda Meir. Last year, Michelle Williams and Paul Dano played lightly fictionalized versions of Steven Spielberg’s Jewish parents. Before that, Felicity Jones played Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Meryl Streep played Ethel Rosenberg, and honestly we could go on and on and on. 

But just because it has always been done this way doesn’t mean it should continue. Representation of Jewish people onscreen matters for the same reason the representation of Black, Asian, LGBTQIA, Indigenous, the physically or intellectually disabled, or any other marginalized group matters. Visibility makes them less marginalized. Portraying those cultures with authenticity makes the stories richer and the characters more human. It makes it harder for others to see them as, well, Others. The situation with Jews is a little more complex, as we cannot claim that we don’t have the opportunity to tell our stories. Eastern European Jews founded Hollywood (largely because no pre-established industry would have them), and Jews seem to still represent a sizable portion of power brokers in the business. 

When Jews founded Hollywood, they knew that their success would come with scrutiny. People would begin to question their bonafides as Americans. In times of war, they would question their allegiance. The government might try to push them out. It had happened before. So they used their industry to hide their power. They created a world that Americans could not question, a world of unimpeachable American values, a world populated by beautiful Gentile stars that regular Americans were desperate to be near, and they hoped that no one would ask who was putting up the money. In early Hollywood, but especially as antisemitism ramped up around the world in the 1930s, Jewish characters were rarely depicted on screen.

The effects of those decisions are still being felt today. We have plenty of Jewish stars like Andrew Garfield, who has rarely played Jewish characters and has instead somehow become the go-to actor for evangelical roles (Silence, The Eyes of Tammy Faye Baker, Hacksaw Ridge). Or Scarlett Johannsson who in one of her first roles (Ghost World) was referred to as “a perfect Aryan.” There have been periods of feast for Jewish actors—the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, when Barbra Streisand, Elliott Gould, Alan Arkin, Dustin Hoffman, and others were given space to be unapologetically Jewish—but most of the time Jews play Gentiles, and Gentiles play Jews.

The effect of this is doubly damning. When Jewish actors play non-Jews, their essential Jewishness is diminished. Many viewers today don’t know that Goldie Hawn, Jake Gyllenhaal, or Joaquin Phoenix are Jewish. When Jewish roles are filled by Gentile actors, it subtly tells Jewish viewers that they are not good enough to be the heroes of their own stories. 

And yes, these choices are often made by Jewish filmmakers, like Spielberg, who cast non-Jews as his actual parents, or James Gray who cast Anne Hathaway as his Jewish mother and Anthony Hopkins as his Jewish grandfather in last year’s Armageddon Time. When asked about it, Gray said that all kids see their parents and grandparents as movie stars, so he had to cast someone with that kind of charisma. Was Natalie Portman not available? Or Rachel Weisz? Jewish and non-Jewish filmmakers alike seem to agree—in a widespread, unspoken way—that movie stars are simply not Jewish (except in comedy, of course). The fact that these casting choices are made by Jews should not diminish the antisemitism involved. They are simply working from the same set of values as Louis B. Mayer and Jack Warner. Either they’ve inherited these principles, or not that much has changed for Jews since the early 20th century.

Okay, so how is a Jewish person—or really anyone who cares about equality and representation—supposed to feel about this damn nose? Let’s start with this: There’s no reason to believe Bradley Cooper had any antisemitic intent. It’s more likely that he’s just an Actor with a Capital A who makes very actorly choices, like his hair in American Hustle or his voice in A Star is Born. To me, this stuff actually detracts from the performance. Even though his voice has a diegetic justification in A Star is Born, I spent most of the movie trying to decipher what his character was saying, and that ain’t great for the viewer. I’d wager that the prosthetic nose helped him find the character of Leonard Bernstein, much like Michael Richards only figured out how to play Kramer when he got the right shoes (to cite another non-Jew playing Jewish), but I have a hunch I’m going to get very distracted by it when the movie starts playing. 

It’s my job as a film critic to look past that stuff. As a Jew, it’s harder. Bernstein was one of the first Jewish popular artists in America who crossed over into outright celebrity without losing his Jewishness. He embraced it, often working Jewish themes into his symphonies. Bernstein’s third symphony, Kaddish, was based on the traditional Jewish prayer for the dead, and it takes the form of an argument with God over the essence of faith. That’s more Jewish than any movie Hollywood has ever made. From 1958 to 1972, he was the star conductor of Young People’s Concerts, a globally-syndicated concert series on CBS that introduced classical music (and his particular brand of Jewish charisma) to the children of the world. He was part of a social group of Jewish artists that included Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Richard Avedon, Jules Feiffer, and Stephen Sondheim. His Jewishness was essential to him and to us. Portraying his Jewishness with authenticity matters. If they wanted to simply ignore his Jewishness altogether—and leave it out of the story—that would be justifiable. But when you use a prosthetic nose, you remove that option.

The thing I keep coming back to, however, is why no one stopped him. I understand this is Cooper’s project. He wrote and directed it. It is his baby. But surely he had creative partners, confidantes, friends. Someone who could have pulled him aside and said, “Hey, the nose is gonna be a thing. Without putting too fine a point on it, your nose already looks a lot like Bernstein’s nose. Why don’t you just lose the prosthetic and save us all the trouble?” If it were me, I’d add: “You’re a good enough actor without it.”

This doesn’t happen because the issue of Jewish representation is not an issue in Hollywood. I’m sure Jewish filmmakers and actors rarely bring it up, for reasons already discussed. Non-Jews who would rather not take themselves out of the running for a role certainly aren’t going to. And so the issue persists, and the issue remains much harder to talk about than the representation of any other marginalized group. Jews aren’t being censored. Their antisemitism is internalized, which makes it just as difficult to put a stop to. Their self-censorship, it could be argued, is one of the foundations of American cinema. Good luck.

But the conversation should continue, even if it annoys a great many people. That has never stopped us before, and it shouldn’t now.