Marjorie Morningstar

This film has some of the most bizarre casting in Hollywood history - who could possibly conceive of Gene Kelly playing a Jew? Yes, an 'assimilated Jew," but a Jew nonetheless. Maybe the same Warner exec who a few years later envisioned WASP-ish Rosalind Russell as Mrs. Jacobi in A MAJORITY OF ONE? With the exception of Everett Sloane (who may have been Jewish - I've never been able to confirm this) and Ed Wynn (who was), this is the most goyishe-looking family imaginable. Claire Trevor was from Brooklyn - I guess they thought this qualified her to "pass". Everyone looks like they just got back from church, not a synagogue.

Hollywood and the movie industry were built by Jews - except for Darryl F. Zanuck, all the major movie moguls - Mayer, Selznick, Cohn, Goldwyn, Warner, Laemmle - were Jewish - yet they were frightened of portraying Jews honestly on screen, and many an actor had to subdue his "Jewishness" and change his name to 'blend in' - could John Garfield have become a movie star under his real name, Julius Garfinkle?

MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR hasn't held up well as a film or on the printed page - maybe in the 1950s she was the gal every young woman wanted to be or know, but when I finally got through the book a few years ago, I found her to be not only irritating but a tease of the first order - few men or women would have much patience with her superficial personality today. I wondered at the book's popularity - somehow it managed to nudge past AUNTIE MAME and become the #1 bestselling novel of 1955.