Tame

Spike Jonze’s film adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are is everything the book is not: overlong, talky, ugly, and dull. While I’m astonished that the movie received so many admiring reviews in the press, I’m not surprised that moviegoers have not (as yet) expressed disappointment by staging a riot or tearing down the theater, for this movie simply isn’t good enough to excite any kind of passions.

In general, the picture seems to have been created by that rare species, the American adult male who has spent too much time in psychotherapy, and Jonze and his collaborators indulge at length in the fantastical notion that the dysfunctions of the Wild Things — depicted here as a kind of family — will be of absorbing interest to others. Instead, the dialogue is painfully tedious.

This is a shame, because on most other levels, the Wild Things are beautifully realized: as cuddly as they are strange and menacing. If they had anything worth expressing, the Wild Things would certainly have the means, for they’ve got delicately nuanced CGI animation to bring emotion to their shaggy faces, and their voices are those of excellent actors: James Gandolfini, Catherine O’Hara, Chris Cooper, Forest Whitaker, Paul Dano, and Lauren Ambrose. Gandolfini is given the lion’s share of the dialogue, but only O’Hara manages to create a character as dimensional as the costume from which it emanates.

Sendak’s book has limited plot, the better to let young readers project their own stories into the pictures; whereas movie audiences pretty much demand clearly constructed narrative. Jonze therefore couldn’t make the film that would have served the book best — an impressionistic collection of images. So be it, but I don’t understand why he surrendered so many of the best images in the book (especially the wonderful moment when Max’s bedroom is transformed into a forest). I do understand why he washed out the color in the scenes in the Land of the Wild Things: he wanted to make the images seem stranger. But without color, the images are also dull, in several senses. Jonze sabotaged what should have been his signal achievement.

Among the human actors, young Max Records is borderline pretty, which is all wrong for our hero, Max. And though at times he locates and exposes some profound emotional characterization, he’s frequently too self-conscious. During his rampages at the beginning of the film, for example, he keeps sneaking peeks at the camera. As his mother, Catherine Keener fills in whole chapters of back-story with a glance and a gesture, and her depiction of maternal love would be the best thing in the movie, if this were supposed to be a movie about mothers.

But it isn’t, of course. I now suspect that the several child-friends who have seen the picture were trying to protect adults like their parents and me when they described themselves as merely disappointed with Where the Wild Things Are. They wanted to let us down easy. We all grew up with the book. But for them the dream of Max’s long night is fresh and real, almost untouched by nostalgia — and nothing at all like this movie.

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Una Voce Poco Fa

Co-stars at the Met: Proof that I’m not the biggest ass Joyce knows.

Though I’ve seen Rossini’s comedy The Barber of Seville many times, it’s never made me cry — until last night. I wasn’t bawling, mind you, but I got misty, and there’s no point trying to deny it. The question is why I reacted this way. Did the happy ending move me? (Maybe. On the other hand, it wasn’t exactly a surprise.) Am I simply in a weird mood, or excessively vulnerable these days? Or was I caught up in the excitement of seeing Joyce DiDonato at the freaking Metropolitan Opera at last?

“All of the above” is the correct answer, I expect.

Joyce looks on as Barry Banks, the World’s Most Dangerous Tenor,
performs impossible feats of daring.

After the show, Joyce remarked that people seemed grateful for the opportunity to laugh, and it did feel good, in a weekend saturated with bad news of all kinds, to kick back and watch the good guys outwit the bad guys. Joyce was in excellent company, including the tenor Barry Banks as Almaviva. Banks approaches his work with such intensity that in dramatic roles, he seems fully capable of throttling the soprano or setting fire to the theater; here, he could concentrate on being funny, and on luscious singing. I particularly liked his lesson scene and his “Ecco, ridente in cielo,” probably the sweetest I’ve ever heard.

Meanwhile, Joyce frolicked. Fully recovered from the leg she broke singing this very role at Covent Garden last summer, she bounded about the stage, scooting up and down a ladder while wearing a flowing gown, and she created a Rosina who’s young and ultra-feisty. It’s not often I have the feeling that a Rosina would bust out of Dr. Bartolo’s house even if Almaviva and Figaro didn’t come along, but Joyce’s character is a proactive protagonist, and great fun to spend time with. Musically, what struck me most was her shaping of rhythm, lending wit and excitement to even the most familiar passages. Really, she’s mastered this score so completely that now she can squeeze and stretch tempo as if it were a toy — Silly Putty, to be specific.

What’s more, Joyce looks so picture-book pretty in the costumes by Catherine Zuber and that tumbling mane of red curls that, somewhere, her Irish ancestors’ eyes are smiling, I’ll bet.

Joyce made her Met debut a few seasons ago, but this was my first opportunity to see her there. It’s a hell of a thing: you go to that famous house, this woman makes the chandeliers dance, and the crowds fall all over themselves to cheer her. And then you go backstage, and she’s still Joyce. Traipsing along after her is one of my life’s great pleasures, and I can hardly wait to see what she’ll do next.

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New York City Opera’s American Voices

¡Por favor! ¡Toreador!
Joyce Castle and a few friends celebrate NYCO

New York City Opera is so much the “people’s opera” that it’s a bit strange to attend a really glitzy fund-raising event there. This thought occurred especially during the auction that concluded last night’s season-opening gala, “American Voices”: do City Opera fans really have enough cash to plunk down for a hunting vacation in Germany (hosted by members of the Bismarck family, no less)? Well, apparently some do, because the prize did not go begging, though most of us seemed to be sitting on our hands, for fear of being mistaken for bidders.

I don’t know how much money was raised, but the evening was a great morale-booster for the company, which has suffered from financial crises, homelessness, a blacked-out 2008–09 season, and a leadership vacuum in recent years. “American Voices” are indeed a traditional specialty at this populist institution, and — with ticket prices starting at $12 — we were treated to a parade of American singers, in American song.

Ramey (center): A tongue of flame

I was particularly moved by Samuel Ramey’s account of the revival scene, from Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah, an opera with a distinguished history here. (The great Norman Treigle, whose shoes Ramey was hired to fill in the 1970s, created the role of Olin Blitch for City Opera, at the work’s New York premiere.) Though his career is nearer now to its twilight than to its dawn, Ramey grew in confidence as the scene progressed. You could actually feel his growing awareness, as if he were waking to his own power. His voice, wobbling at the outset, swiftly found its secure placement, and his acting seethed with intensity. He was having a good night, and he ran with it — exhilarating for him as an artist and for us, his audience. In the pit to egg him on was Julius Rudel, 88 years old, the company’s former director and in many ways responsible for its enduring artistic vision.

City Opera’s reigning prima donna, soprano Lauren Flanigan, offered an aria from Samuel Barber’s Vanessa, a great success for her here a couple of years ago. Alas, I didn’t get to see any of those performances, and the selection this evening (“Do not utter a word, Anatol”), divorced from its context, proved less than compelling. To a degree, this wasn’t a problem: Flanigan gave one of her trademark dramatic readings, and we ate it up, because this is her house and we’d love her if she sang nothing but “Mairzy Doats.” Hell, we even put up with Deborah Drattell’s work, just to hear this woman sing. But I can’t help wishing she’d chosen a stand-alone piece, something with a more festive mood, or a bigger dramatic gesture, or a more melodic sweep — or all of the above — which is to say, something more appropriate to the occasion.

Flanigan: We loved this dress, too.

Another beloved City Opera soprano, Amy Burton, did her best to inject interest into a blurry, repetitive, pretentious aria (in French) aria by pop star Rufus Wainwright, from his new opera, Prima Donna. Wainwright himself performed “That’s Entertainment!” — a fun contribution, but too fast and with insufficient point. Surely a man who writes lyrics ought to appreciate the importance of putting across lines like “Where a ghost and a prince meet / And ev’ryone winds up mincemeat,” but Wainwright failed us, and I was hard-pressed to explain to friends why I admire him.

A better tribute to City Opera’s crossover traditions came from the orchestra, under music director George Manahan, with a spirited arrangement of “New York, New York,” from Bernstein’s On the Town; and from Broadway’s Marc Kudisch, who acted up a storm in Carousel’s “Soliloquy.”

Manahan and the orchestra were in wonderful form all night, as it happens. Over the years, the level of playing has risen so far, it’s almost a miracle, and so long as the musicians have received adequate rehearsal (as was abundantly the case this evening), you’re assured of a first-rate performance. The orchestra opened the concert with Stravinsky’s “Fanfare for a New Theatre,” followed closely by a companion piece, the world premiere of Peter Lieberson’s “Fanfare for New York City Opera.”

The Gang’s All Here: Manahan & NYCO Orchestra

Several numbers at this performance were given over to young singers: the delectable Anna Christy sang “Blue-green beautiful chlorine” from William Bolcom’s A Wedding; sumptuous (and barefoot) Measha Brueggergosman gave us Gershwin’s “My Man’s Gone Now”; and Talise Trevigne and Kelley O’Connor scorched the gold leaf off the walls with a duet from Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainamadar.

Not until the end of the evening, however, did the occasion become a real gala. First, mezzo-soprano Joyce Castle cavorted gleefully through “I Am Easily Assimilated,” from Bernstein’s Candide, a hallmark of her repertoire with this company and elsewhere. This was authentic star power, quickening every pulse in the room. Joyce clattered away on her castañets and hopped and shimmied through her tango, with most of the City Opera chorus to partner her. (You really need to see a close-up of her facial expression, so I’ve provided this inset. Has assimilation ever looked like more fun?)

A tough act to follow, and it fell to that other Kansan mezzo named Joyce — DiDonato — to alter the mood and to send us out with another kind of uplift already. City Opera’s new general manager and artistic director, George Steel, selected her material: Bernstein again, “Take care of this house” from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The song speaks of the White House, but in this context, it spoke of the “new” home of New York City Opera: the David H. Koch Theater, inaugurated with this very performance, that is both the same old New York State Theater we’ve always loved, and a completely new space, with an uncertain but possibly brilliant future before it. With caressing tenderness and unflinching conviction, Joyce offered the house a blessing, and we, her congregation, joined in.

Koch Classic: Our benefactor starts the show.
George Steel looks on, at left.

I’ve said it before: this company informed so many of my ideas about what opera could be, it presented so many memorable performances by so many great artists, it means so much to me. I don’t want to see New York City Opera fail, or even falter in its mission. (And it has one.) For these few hours, I felt good about the company, and I remain hopeful. That in itself is cause for celebration.

According to Kara Lack, I am clearly visible in this photograph.
Can you spot me?

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A Visit to the Set of TV’s ‘Heroes’

Be it known: I don’t deserve some of the opportunities that come my way. I am so far behind in my viewing of the television series Heroes, it’s embarrassing, particularly because my friend Nate Goodman is director of photography and — as of tonight’s episode — a director, period, of the show. There are mitigating circumstances to defend my tardiness, but the bottom line is that there are hundreds of people who really ought to visit the set during a shoot. Nevertheless, I’m the one who got to do it.

What follows are a few notes on my experience. But first, a spoiler alert: I was able to make out almost nothing of the plot, and not even the title, of the episode that was being shot. However, fans of the show are a very knowledgeable, serious bunch, who have already published a web biography of Nate; and since they surely can extrapolate all kinds of juicy details from my account, they may not wish to read further. I promise not to take that personally.

Hayden Panettiere: Boy, does the camera love her!

At the studio where Heroes is shot, it is a truth universally assumed that any visitor knows already where he is going. I was told to look for Nate in a building, where I wandered lonely as a cloud, until I forced a woman to tell me that the set was in another building entirely, and that Nate was most likely there, not here. “Look for a carnival,” she said, but I saw only an old-time diner and a few storefronts, in the middle of what Gansevoort Street looked like, back before Manhattan’s Meat-packing District got cleaned up.

So I made my way to an alley in Tokyo, where crewmembers were eating a late lunch. Plenty of signs here, but of course I don’t read Japanese.

Believe it or not, I found parking near here.

At last a young woman pretty much shoved me down another alley, just beyond Gansevoort Street, where I found what must be the narrowest carnival ground on record. I had seen last week’s episode, which featured scenes at the carnival, and so I marveled at the way Nate, the camera crew and director, and all the set and lighting crew had made this tiny space seem so large. Well, it turns out that there’s a full set for the carnival, at a remote location. The alleyway carnival is used primarily for more intimate scenes, like the lunch (or was it dinner?) among carnival employees (and visitors?), which Nate and episode director Ron Underwood were shooting as I arrived.

“Shooting” actually entails a series of lengthy discussions between Nate and Ron Underwood (a go-to guy for this sort of television production, his other credits include the film City Slickers), with input from camera operators and other members of the crew. “What if we put the camera here?” “What if we shot over her shoulder?” “What if we moved this here?” “Can we get between these two tables?”

Really, this debate/negotiation/brainstorming moves efficiently and with relative swiftness: these guys know what they’re doing, and they do it every day. But for those of us who aren’t involved in the conversation, the novelty wears off fast. Between one take and the next, I nodded off.

Oliveri: “Thaïs! Du Barry! Garbo! All rolled into one.”

Watching a monitor during the shooting, I was struck by the camera’s glamourizing effect. Hayden Panettiere, who plays Claire, is a perfectly nice-looking young woman, and yet I walked right past her and focused instead on Dawn Oliveri, the knockout who plays Lydia the Tattooed Lady.* When Panettiere is photographed, however, she becomes arrestingly beautiful, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of her image on the monitor.

I worked in television for a very (excessively?) long time, yet one seldom gets to witness such transformations in television news. This may have something to do with the business: ostensibly, television newspeople present reality, not artistry. And so Connie Chung really is exquisitely beautiful on-camera and off. Yet I’ve seen often enough the interview subjects, and even reporters, who aren’t telegenic at all, whose features go flat and whose expressions are warped or wiped out on camera, no matter how well-informed or flatteringly lit they may be. Some people are just lucky.

David H. Lawrence XVII

Claire and Lydia talked about something, but I couldn’t quite hear the dialogue (and it’s to be doubted I’d have understood it anyway). Eric Doyle, as played by David H. Lawrence XVII, took in every word the women said, and punctuated the scene with a bite of cake that chilled the blood of pretty much everyone who saw him. Doyle has the “puppet master” ability, and he’s a fan favorite.

Once these two scenes were finished, the actors were released, and we turned our attentions to some visual effects being supervised by Eric Grenaudier. These scenes kept most of the crew busy, while Underwood and two actors rehearsed another scene. None of this was terribly interesting to me, and so I went off to explore the rest of the studio: random bits and pieces of places I couldn’t identify, as well as a big Japanese office, a cut-away carnival trailer, and the uncanny Burnt Toast Café. All the furnishings had been pushed about, as if this were moving day, yet every bottle of ketchup was full and every slice of pie as fresh as this morning’s baking.

Knepper as Samuel Sullivan

At last the actors were ready to walk through the next scene for the benefit of the crew, who watched and decided on camera angles and such. Since the scene took place in the New York apartment of Emma Coolidge (played by Deanne Bray), I felt at first as if I were arriving at a party — about 30 of us crammed into the space. Almost immediately, I felt as if I were eavesdropping on a private conversation, between Emma and Samuel Sullivan (played by Robert Knepper). As the actors went through the scene, a crewmember followed after with bits of masking tape, so that they’d be able to hit the same marks each time they ran through the scene. Bray is deaf, and so an interpreter accompanied the rehearsal; she signed Samuel’s lines (and Underwood’s direction) and spoke Emma’s dialogue. Presumably, her work will be replaced with subtitles in the filmed and edited scene as it appears on television.

Deanna Bray as Emma

Here, as on the diner set, I was impressed with the attention to detail in the set decoration. Emma Coolidge’s diplomas are framed on the wall of her apartment, for Pete’s sake, though I can hardly believe the camera will ever linger over them.

I couldn’t linger, as it happened, so I never got to see how Nate shot the scene in Emma’s apartment.

While I stayed on the set, the tension between unreality (shifting walls) and reality (minute details) grew to seem less and less like Alice’s Wonderland, and more like a workplace. One must get used to the oddities, until they become almost normal, and then one simply goes about one’s job. Indeed, the cast and crew struck me as impeccably professional. That may disappoint some readers, who hoped for scandal. Sorry, folks — I saw only an easy camaraderie among everyone on the Heroes set, matched by an unswerving determination to make each scene as strong as possible.

So that’s what Nate does when he goes to work in the morning — or the afternoon — or the pre-dawn darkness. Show business isn’t very glamorous at all, and yet the set is a nice place to visit. Would I want to live there?

Depends on my ability.

At the Burnt Toast: Panettiere with Thomas Dekker (Zach)

*NOTE: That name — “Lydia the Tattooed Lady” — isn’t an accident. Heroes finds points of reference in every kind of culture.

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Marathon Man

In a 26-Mile Slog, a Shortcut Can Be Tempting
Last year, 71 runners in the New York City Marathon were disqualified for various violations of race rules — at least 46 of them for reducing the marathon to something less than 26.2 miles. An untold number of runners escape detection, marathon officials said. Surely some cheats will prosper among the 42,000 entered in Sunday’s race.

From the Times

Whew! Hang on — let me just — catch my breath! Whew! I mean — shoot, man! I just ran the New York City Marathon! Woo-hoo!

Hey, can I get one of those shiny blankets? The kind that only New York City Marathon runners are entitled to receive?

What do you mean, why aren’t I sweating?


And what do you mean, “How can you run the New York City Marathon when you’re 3,000 miles away?”

I don’t like your tone. I happen to be a very fast runner, I’ll have you know. I can run faster than my own sweat.

Yeah, baby!

Over here! Can I get some water? ’Cause I just ran the New York City Marathon! Yeah! That’s what I’m talkin’ about!

What do you mean, where’s my number? Listen, just get away from me, all right?

I pity you, man. I really do. You’ll never know what it’s like to test your self — to push your endurance to the limit — to race not the clock but your own soul — for an entire 26 blocks in the heart of the greatest city on earth!

I told you. Get away from me.

Hey, Mister! I need to get me one of those pasta vouchers. Over here! Got to load on some carbs now, please! ’Cause I just ran the Marathon!

And maybe a shiny blanket?

Dang, I think my knee is about to give out.

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Miles Kreuger & the Institute of the American Musical

All Singing! All Dancing!
Ethel Merman and a few friends.
Miles Kreuger knows what show this is from.

Though I have yet to make a complete inspection, I have been assured that the collections of the Institute of the American Musical fill 17 rooms. Even a quick glance at Miles Kreuger’s headquarters suggests that another five rooms may be in order: the place is carpeted and furnished with memorabilia. Books are shelved in double decks, file cabinets creak under the weight of scripts, correspondence, and other archival documents, photographs practically paper the walls, and a massive cabinet contains nothing but original-cast albums — every original-cast album, ever. Many feature liner notes by Kreuger himself.

In conversation, Kreuger has but little need for his archives: he happily cites from memory names, dates, addresses, and every kind of statistic, even phone numbers long since disconnected. He remembers with extraordinarily vivid clarity the precise details of the first show he ever saw on Broadway — when he was four years old.

Kreuger, right, with the sublime Nanette Fabray

As young Miles prated on, asking his grandmother about the purpose of the stage curtain and why the musicians were punished by being thrown into the pit, a woman remarked, “Imagine! Bringing a child of that age to the theater! He’ll do nothing but talk and talk!”

“Look who’s talking,” replied little Miles.

The play in question, he informs me, was Knights of Song, about Gilbert & Sullivan, whose work Miles was already learning by heart. Nigel Bruce starred as W.S. Gilbert, and the play ran (very briefly) at the Fifty-first Street Theatre, one of the most ornate venues in New York.

Years later, on that same stage — by then renamed the Mark Hellinger Theatre — Miles missed out on what should have been his big break as a performer. While he was working as an assistant on a new musical adaptation of Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, director Moss Hart and lyricist Alan Jay Lerner asked him to audition in the producer's office. They liked what they heard, and the part was his. But once arrived at the Hellinger, Miles was overwhelmed by the vastness of the auditorium, so much bigger than his college theater, and he chickened out.

That’s how he didn’t create the role of Freddy Eynsford-Hill in My Fair Lady. Julie Andrews still teases him about the incident, he says. (“If you hadn’t been so shy, we could have worked together for two years!”)

The Hellinger

So much for the street where we lived. The Hellinger didn’t bring me much luck, either: that’s where Rags played its four performances, in 1986. Today, the theater is owned and occupied by the Times Square Church.

Many of the great theaters of Broadway are gone, and their only remnants are in Miles Kreuger’s home: just inside the front door are two seats from the old Empire Theatre. (Not the multiplex cinema on 42nd Street, but the legit theater on Broadway and 40th.) “These seats saw Maude Adams in Peter Pan,” Kreuger observes. He can recite whole catalogues of lost treasures, and the changing cityscape, he says, is why he moved away: “By 1978, there wasn’t a trace of New York City left,” he says. “Times Square was gone. Penn Station was gone.” He decided to move to Los Angeles.

Kreuger is such a New York type (who can drive, but doesn’t), and his subject so Broadway-centric, that Los Angeles seems an unlikely destination for him. However, he’s quick to remind a visitor that Hollywood made important contributions to the American musical, too. Lest we forget, Judy Garland never appeared in a Broadway play.

I first met Kreuger when I worked at the Kurt Weill Foundation — he remembers Railroads on Parade, Weill’s contribution to the 1939 World’s Fair — and he was a guiding force behind John McGlinn’s recording of Show Boat, on which Teresa Stratas sings “Bill” (to me, need I point out). We were long overdue to get reacquainted, and my research into the career of Madeline Kahn provided the perfect opportunity. (Indeed, Miles welcomes any qualified researcher to the Institute, and provides advice and other assistance in addition to access to the collections.)

When our conversation touched on Peter Bogdanovich’s At Long Last Love, an homage to Cole Porter in which Madeline co-starred, I learned that Kreuger knew Porter and had introduced Bogdanovich to some of his songs. Kreuger wrote the liner notes for the soundtrack album, too. But the movie was a failure, Madeline and Bogdanovich never worked together again, and the recording is a collector’s item of which she herself owned no copy, and on which I’ve never set eyes.

Maude Adams did it differently:
Jerome Robbins and Mary Martin rehearse Peter Pan

Mostly, we talked about New York, and the remarkable personalities Kreuger knew there. To cite but one example: freshly graduated from Bard College at age 20, he worked with Helen Hayes, Lena Horne, Ezio Pinza, and Ruth Draper. (Not a bad start.) And one more example: Goddard Lieberson’s secretary sounded so much like an Elaine May character that at first Kreuger thought Mike Nichols (who’d told him to call the legendary record producer) was playing a trick on him.

Kreuger is nostalgic for New York, certainly, yet what strikes me is how much of it he brought West with him. Not only the artifacts that surround him but the spirit he exudes. He serves as a useful role model as I try to decide where I should live — as I mourn my own “lost New York” (which I never saw until after Kreuger had left) — and as I frolic in the eerily seductive California sunshine.

And he reminds me of a scene in Diva. Jules the mailman is talking about music, and Cynthia Hawkins interrupts him. “If you didn’t exist, you would have to be invented,” she says. So it is with Miles Kreuger. Such fans are the keepers of the flame that warms the rest of us.

Kreuger’s latest project is a collection of Johnny Mercer’s lyrics.

The Institute of the American Musical has been described as “a national treasure” by Dr. James Billington, the Librarian of Congress, and its vast collections are open to researchers and students by appointment. As a 501 (c)(3) not-private, not-for-profit corporation, the Institute gladly accepts donations — which are tax-deductible. For more information or to make a contribution, please write to

The Institute of the American Musical
121 North Detroit Street
Los Angeles, CA 90036-2915

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Lou Jacobi

Look up the beach. Look down the beach.
Do you see one Chinese?

I never met the Canadian actor Lou Jacobi, though I once spotted him at a bus stop in Manhattan. At six-two or so, he was much taller than I’d expected, and perhaps shy: for when he saw me looking at him, he tried to recede into the shelter, to make himself invisible. But there was little chance I’d fail to notice the man who made me want to be Jewish, and whose performances set in motion the long and ongoing process of my judeophilic cultivation.

Jacobi’s resonant voice made some consonants linger whole minutes after he’d finished pronouncing them. This made his delivery memorable, and it elevated even flat or silly dialogue to the status of genius. He wore fatigue and disappointment like body parts that could not be shrugged off. Though he could moderate his accent, it remained unmistakably Northeastern and Jewish, and it elicited nostalgic affection from more assimilated audiences. They might not get along with their real-life uncle Lou, but this stage-and-screen one they could embrace.

He’s probably best known for his delicate, honest, and howlingly funny performance as the transvestite in Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex — the rare role that doesn’t rely on his speaking voice to make its impact. On Broadway, Jacobi also appeared in The Diary of Anne Frank opposite my beloved Jack Gilford, and he replaced Jack in the series of comedy albums that introduced me to his work. When You’re in Love, the Whole World Is Jewish taught me the meaning of the word shtick. Among other things.

As a baby, my first word was “Oy” (though among my Texan relatives, only my father recognized it as a word). Over time, many other artists and many more friends would build on that foundation, sharing with me their culture, and at last adopting me. But Jacobi was the first.

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