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stilljewish
Jews in Westerns
I don't like "help, I'm writing a paper!" posts so I kind of hate to be making one, but... help, I'm writing a paper?
This semester I took a university course about westerns, and completely fell in love with the genre. My final project is to write a paper about any western I want to. So I was going to go for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, because -- well, because they're them, and they're awesome enough to both have their own yuletide pages and to have been referenced on The West Wing, right?
But then I watched The Frisco Kid. And I was so excited that I immediately made a semi-flaily post about it at my LJ. Because guys, it's not a great movie, it's barely even a good one, but it is so much fun! It's a western (♥) whose heroes are Gene Wilder as a rabbi (!!! + ♥) and Young Harrison Ford (♥) who has, as one person put it, a dangerous degree of hotness in this movie. Not to mention, a non-passing resemblance to one John Sheppard (seriously, down to the expressions). It also includes Harrison Ford telling Gene Wilder "not to take his eyes off his tuches", and a cuddling-for-warmth scene, for all you slash fans.
Anyway: it's not the subject of the paper, but I would very much like to talk a little about the portrayal of Jews in westerns. Not about the lack thereof - Jews are hardly ever featured at all in westerns. I'm interested in how they're portrayed when they are, so I am currently looking for examples of any westerns that feature Jewish characters in any way, or characters with Jewish associations (ie, Dustin Hoffman playing the western hero).
Other than the various Jewish characters in The Frisco Kid, so far I have:
- The Searchers (1956) - the owner of the trading post is Jerem Futterman, and by his surname and occupation it's safe to extrapolate he was Jewish. Futterman is a minor character, and he's killed not long after he's introduced.
- This article snippet - the only thing I could find online about portrayal of Jews in westerns, incidentally, but maybe I'm a bad researcher - mentions Der Yiddisher Cowboy which isn't even featured on IMDB, and Tombstone (1993), which has the character of Josephine Marcus Earp, Wyatt Earp's historically Jewish wife. I haven't seen the movie yet, so I'm not sure how she's portrayed yet.
Little Big Man (1970) features Dustin Hoffman as the western hero. The character isn't Jewish, but Dustin Hoffman is in shape and size and mannerisms pretty much the opposite of a classical western hero, and his Judaism factors into that.
Blazing Saddles (1974) - I have not seen yet. *hides*. I know that there are Yiddish-speaking Indians and there's a character called Mrs. Stein, and of course Jewish actors as heroes again.
These are the only examples I could find. Now, historically, there were plenty of Jews in the American West - Deadwood's a good example for a town with prominent Jews - but in western films they have next to zero representation, all of it stereotypical*, most of it comedic. Frankly, the most significant Jewish image in westerns is them Levi Strauss denim jeans John Wayne wears when he rides into the sunset.
I'm sorry I'm not concluding this post with a conclusive argument - I really feel like I need more examples and more research done in order to form one. I do know that I'm going to be comparing the portrayal of the Jewish pioneers in Palestine from early Zionist films with the classic western hero, and the portrayal of the [Jewish] hero in Israeli films in the '70s with Gene Wilder's Frisco Kid rabbi - the first comparison being very similar, and the latter very different.
As for Jews characters in westerns, I would very much appreciate help in finding more of them, if they exist. Thank you! And shabbat shalom :-)
*except the ones I haven't seen, which I can't be sure - yet. In any case, Tombstone gets the benefit of the doubt if only because it's from the '90s, not from the '70s or earlier.
This semester I took a university course about westerns, and completely fell in love with the genre. My final project is to write a paper about any western I want to. So I was going to go for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, because -- well, because they're them, and they're awesome enough to both have their own yuletide pages and to have been referenced on The West Wing, right?
But then I watched The Frisco Kid. And I was so excited that I immediately made a semi-flaily post about it at my LJ. Because guys, it's not a great movie, it's barely even a good one, but it is so much fun! It's a western (♥) whose heroes are Gene Wilder as a rabbi (!!! + ♥) and Young Harrison Ford (♥) who has, as one person put it, a dangerous degree of hotness in this movie. Not to mention, a non-passing resemblance to one John Sheppard (seriously, down to the expressions). It also includes Harrison Ford telling Gene Wilder "not to take his eyes off his tuches", and a cuddling-for-warmth scene, for all you slash fans.
Anyway: it's not the subject of the paper, but I would very much like to talk a little about the portrayal of Jews in westerns. Not about the lack thereof - Jews are hardly ever featured at all in westerns. I'm interested in how they're portrayed when they are, so I am currently looking for examples of any westerns that feature Jewish characters in any way, or characters with Jewish associations (ie, Dustin Hoffman playing the western hero).
Other than the various Jewish characters in The Frisco Kid, so far I have:
- The Searchers (1956) - the owner of the trading post is Jerem Futterman, and by his surname and occupation it's safe to extrapolate he was Jewish. Futterman is a minor character, and he's killed not long after he's introduced.
- This article snippet - the only thing I could find online about portrayal of Jews in westerns, incidentally, but maybe I'm a bad researcher - mentions Der Yiddisher Cowboy which isn't even featured on IMDB, and Tombstone (1993), which has the character of Josephine Marcus Earp, Wyatt Earp's historically Jewish wife. I haven't seen the movie yet, so I'm not sure how she's portrayed yet.
Little Big Man (1970) features Dustin Hoffman as the western hero. The character isn't Jewish, but Dustin Hoffman is in shape and size and mannerisms pretty much the opposite of a classical western hero, and his Judaism factors into that.
Blazing Saddles (1974) - I have not seen yet. *hides*. I know that there are Yiddish-speaking Indians and there's a character called Mrs. Stein, and of course Jewish actors as heroes again.
These are the only examples I could find. Now, historically, there were plenty of Jews in the American West - Deadwood's a good example for a town with prominent Jews - but in western films they have next to zero representation, all of it stereotypical*, most of it comedic. Frankly, the most significant Jewish image in westerns is them Levi Strauss denim jeans John Wayne wears when he rides into the sunset.
I'm sorry I'm not concluding this post with a conclusive argument - I really feel like I need more examples and more research done in order to form one. I do know that I'm going to be comparing the portrayal of the Jewish pioneers in Palestine from early Zionist films with the classic western hero, and the portrayal of the [Jewish] hero in Israeli films in the '70s with Gene Wilder's Frisco Kid rabbi - the first comparison being very similar, and the latter very different.
As for Jews characters in westerns, I would very much appreciate help in finding more of them, if they exist. Thank you! And shabbat shalom :-)
*except the ones I haven't seen, which I can't be sure - yet. In any case, Tombstone gets the benefit of the doubt if only because it's from the '90s, not from the '70s or earlier.