Jewface: which minority is the odd one out?

When Jonathan Miller directed Laurence Olivier as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice in the 1970s there was an immediate problem. Miller’s biographer, Kate Bassett describes what happened: “Unfortunately, he [Olivier] came bearing a bag of facial appendages that appalled Miller: the stock-in-trade hooked nose, orthodox ringlets, and a costly set of jutting teeth which were apparently based on a Jewish member of the NT board. The duo, as a result, got off to a sticky start, but Miller managed to wean Olivier off his worst accessories, with the actor enthusiastically concurring: ‘In this play, dear boy, we must at all costs avoid offending the Hebrews. God, I love them so!’ He was allowed to keep the teeth, which were not especially Jewish in any case. Sir Laurence loved his dentures so, he used to wander around the corridors and give press interviews with them in, to see if people noticed.”

Miller wanted to get far away from the traditional Jewish stereotypes of Shylock, Cruickshank’s drawings of Fagin in Oliver Twist and Alec Guinness’s exaggerated nose in the David Lean film of the novel. According to Bassett, “He [Miller] was very taken with the idea of an 1890s Shylock who would appear assimilated at first glance, and who could have a hint of Disraeli or of the emergent Rothschild dynasty about him. In his dapperness, this Shylock was also like Miller’s own grandfather, the émigré turned smart-suited merchant and bank man, Simon Spiro. Thus, the director’s ancestral backstory of complex assimilation fed into this staging. The production essentially made Shylock and his child, Jessica, ‘Jew-ish’ in different and conflicting ways. Olivier’s Shylock was a clean-shaven man, with a morning coat, wing collar and attaché case, barely distinguishable from Antonio’s fraternity of mercenary Christian gentlemen. At the same time he was, as one critic noted, a divided self.”

Olivier as Shylock in the 1974 ITV production of The Merchant of Venice

Fifty years on this issue of how to depict Jewish characters has returned with a vengeance. First, there was the controversy over Helen Mirren playing Golda Meir in the new film, Golda. It’s true that Meir had a large nose, one might even say a typically large Jewish nose. But what angered critics was the casting of the non-Jewish Mirren as Golda Meir. Was there really no Jewish actor available to play the role? In comments reported by The Jewish Chronicle, Maureen Lipman said she “disagreed” with Mirren’s casting. She added: “I’m sure [Mirren] will be marvellous, but it would never be allowed for Ben Kingsley to play Nelson Mandela. You just couldn’t even go there.”

Then came Oppenheimer, about the Manhattan Project. Again, there was a non-Jewish actor, Cillian Murphy, cast in the lead role as Robert Oppenheimer and, perhaps more curiously, Tom Conti as Einstein. It is true that Conti’s breakthrough role in the 1970s was as the very Jewish Adam Morris in Frederic Raphael’s Glittering Prizes — but, again, was there no Jewish actor available?

Now comes the controversy about Bradley Cooper playing Leonard Bernstein in a new biopic and, again, there are two problems. First, the prosthetic nose. As with Golda Meir, Bernstein had a large nose and strikingly Jewish features. Second, crucially, was there not a Jewish actor available to play the part? Cooper’s mother is of Italian descent and his father was of Irish descent. British actor and activist Tracy-Ann Obermann criticised Cooper on social media, writing: “If [Cooper] needs to wear a prosthetic nose then that is, to me and many others, the equivalent of Black-Face or Yellow-Face … if Bradley Cooper can’t [play the role] through the power or acting alone then don’t cast him – get a Jewish Actor.”

The issue is really about context. Today it is inconceivable that a White actor would be cast to “black up” as Othello or to play any other famous Black role. Similarly, it is unacceptable now for an able-bodied actor to play a disabled character, as Kenneth More did when he famously played the war hero Douglas Bader, or as Daniel Day-Lewis did in My Left Foot. We remember the controversy surrounding the casting of Ben Kingsley as Gandhi, though there was no such controversy when he played (superbly) a number of Jewish roles, Izhak Stern in Schindler’s List or “The Rabbi” in Lucky No. Slevin.

On the other hand, the director and actor Patrick Marber disagrees with Lipman and others: “I think a Gentile can play a Jew and a Jew can play a Gentile. I don’t like it when someone plays a Jew and gets it wrong. [But] I don’t like quotas.” I wonder whether he would take the same view of a White actor like Olivier playing Othello?

The final issue is about which minorities can insist that they are played by actors with relevant life experience and which can’t. Guess which one is the odd one out.

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