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S40E6: Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy | Clip

Fiddler’s Tradition

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This excerpt from Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy speaks to the surprising universality of the 1964 Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick musical Fiddler on the Roof—a show about a small, tight-knit Jewish community living in early 20th-century Tsarist Russia.

TRANSCRIPT

♪♪ We should introduce ourselves.

In place of your usual glamorous hosts, you have two frightened writers today.

This is Sheldon Harnick, who wrote the lyrics to “Fiddler on the Roof.” And this is Jerry Bock, who wrote the music to “Fiddler on the Roof” and conducting the orchestra today, Milton Green.

He conducts the orchestra at the Imperial for us every night.

There was a skeptical feeling that this might not be a universal show.

If any show can be termed universal, appealing to almost everybody.

But this show, more than others, might be specifically designed for just a certain group of people.

And we had this in mind without destroying any of the authenticity of the folklore or the color of the show.

We didn't want to limit it just for the appreciation of a small group.

Well many people have said, Oh, you were so brave.

We didn't feel that way.

I thought, I'm a Jew.

I fought Hitler.

Certainly the American people — we all fought Hitler.

What's so — what's so brave?

What's so avant garde about doing a show about Jews?

So we did.

We did many backers auditions for the one woman women who sold theater parties.

And many of them were Jewish because they represented Jewish groups.

Usually the way the audition would go is that I would explain what the book was, in brief, and Jerry Bock and I would then sing some of the score.

♪ May the Lord ♪ ♪ Protect and defend you ♪ ♪ May the Lord preserve you from pain ♪ ♪ Favor them ♪ ♪ O Lord, with happiness and peace ♪ ♪ Oh, hear are Sabbath prayer ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ ♪ ♪ Hal Prince was our producer.

After we would do the backers audition, he would have to get up and really try and convince these ladies that the show was going to be fun and not just a show that had a pogrom at the end of the first act and an exile at the end of the second act.

So Hal had his work cut out for him because these women were very sensitive and they thought, Our audiences are not going to like this.

They asked me to direct it and I said, I'm the wrong guy.

You've got to get Jerry Robbins or someone like him.

He can give it universality with movement.

So it won't be just for a narrow audience.

And the first question that Jerome Robbins asked was, What is this show about?

We explained what we thought the show was about, and Robbins, to our surprise, said, No, that's not what gives these stories their power.

And time and again, at all these meetings, he would say, What is this show about?

And we said, Well, it's about this, this farm.

We started to describe the plot.

And hed say, No!

And then finally, one day, I believe it was Sheldon Harnick said, Well, I mean, it's about tradition.

What else is it about?

And Jerry said, That's what it's about!

Write about tradition.

♪ ♪ ♪ Who day and night must scramble for a living ♪ ♪ Feed a wife and children ♪ ♪ Say his daily prayers and still...♪ That's the old lyric.

Everything evolves.

♪ ♪ ♪ Who day and night must scramble for a living ♪ ♪ Feed a wife and children, say his daily prayers ♪ ♪ And who has the right as master of the house ♪ ♪ To have the final word at home ♪ And the daughters theme was ♪ And who does momma teach ♪ ♪ To mend and tend and fix ♪ ♪ Preparing me ♪ ♪ Marry whoever papa picks ♪ ♪ Tradition ♪ The opening number, “Tradition” was common to every culture.

So the show was as common to Japanese family life as it was to Jewish family life.

And it went all over the world.

And every single place it went, it became their family story.

Despite the idiosyncrasies of what was Jewish about it.

♪ Tradition ♪