You don't see a mezuzah on the door of Sheriff Gary Cooper's jail in High Noon, Joe Starrett's family shouting, "Come back, Shane-for Shabbat dinner," or the Lone Ranger attending "High-ho Silver" Holiday services.
Although Jonanthan L. Friedmann admits that he could take westerns or leave them, his new book, Chai Noon: Jews and the Cinematic Wild West, explores the genre with a Jewish lens. "I am an outsider to Westerns looking for outsiders within the genre: Jewish characters onscreen and Jewish sensibilities behind the scenes," he wrote.
Movie westerns have been around for well over a century. In fact, the film credited as the first narrative feature was a Western: The Great Train Robbery (1903). But overtly Jewish characters and subjects "are rare in Westerns and even rarer in films that aficionados hold up as essential viewing," Friedmann wrote. Those who were Jewish might be problematic characters like
Futterman in The Searchers, who "probably needed killin'" as the openly Semitic shopkeeper who attempted to rob and kill John Wayne's Ethan Edwards.
"A coded embodiment of the scheming merchant," Friedmann wrote of the cringeworthy character. As an antidote to Futterman, the author offers Barney Cashman, a well-liked bathhouse owner and balladeer in Jewish director Samuel Fuller's "undeservedly forgotten" noir western, Forty Guns.
Ironically, while Jews primarily reside on the margins of the western mythos- The Frisco Kid and the animated Feivel Goes West are exceptions, with Jewish characters as protagonists-Jews "have significantly shaped the cinematic genre," according to Friedman. He cites an index to one guide to movie westerns that contains more than 220 key Jewish directors, screenwriters and actors, accounting for more than 800 films.
One such figure was Gilbert Anderson, born Max Aronson. After acting as an extra on The Great Train Robbery, he was inspired to create and play a new cowboy character, Broncho Billy, becoming the first Western movie star. He played Broncho Billy in half of the 300 shorts he starred in. His accolades include an honorary Oscar, a U.S. stamp, Hall of Fame inductions… and Broncho Billy Park, near Essanay Studios in Chicago, which he co-founded.
In silent Westerns made by Jewish-owned or funded companies, Jews are spared ridicule and punishment. They had titles like Yiddisher Cowboy and Tough Guy Levi, and exploited the comic image of a frontier Jew, to the delight of Eastern European immigrant audiences.
A fun chapter is Friedmann's roundup of western comedies, spoofs, and satires with a Jewish sensibility. There's nebbish Eddie Cantor in Whoopee (1930), the Native-American ranch hand who enrages his boss when he denies being of one of the lost tribes of Israel in Cat Ballou (1965). There's gefilte-fish-out-of-water Billy Crystal in City Slickers (1991). There's the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, and even the Simpsons.
And there's Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles, of course, whose only conspicuous Jewish content is Brooks' Yiddish-speaking Native-American chief. But the film's New York Jewish humor is expressed through its political consciousness. The buddy team of Gene Wilder's Waco Kid and Cleavon Little's urbane black Sheriff Bart is a reminder of the alliance between Jews and Blacks during the Civil Rights era.
Chai Noon uses the Western as a window to explore bigger questions: What makes a movie Jewish? Is it the characters, the actors, the directors, the writers? How much of a film's Jewishness owes to the filmmakers, and how much to the viewer's interpretation?
While less than a fistful of Westerns contains explicitly Jewish stories or scenes, Friedmann highlights the Jewish contributions in front of and behind the camera belie a sentiment expressed in Mordecai Richler's 1971 novel, St. Urbain's Horseman, in which a character states, "When a Jew gets on a horse, he stops being a Jew."
Donald Liebenson is a Chicago writer who writes for VanityFair.com, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, and other outlets.
