Newspaper Page Text
Traveling ****
with the Stars
by Tim Boxer
ATLANTA—ALI MACGRAW has an identity crisis. The New York-
born beauty was raised Episcopalian in Westchester. Yet lately she’s been
entertaining thoughts of being Jewish.
Her self-doubts developed as a consequence of starring in the
filmization of Herman Wouk’s stirring novel of the Holocaust, “The
Winds of War.” Robert Mitchum and Polly Bergen are also in this 18-
hour movie to be aired as a TV mini-series in
February on ABC.
She spent a year and a half on location in
Yugoslavia, portraying an American Jewish
girl who goes to Florence to study with her
uncle (played by Topol) and inevitably gets
caught up in the onslaught of the German
beast.
1 met Ali in Atlanta,where I found her as
beautiful as she was in “Love Story,”
although her hair is cut short now. She was
being honored at a party at the Limelight
Entertainment Complex hosted by
Interview magazine, for which she’s the
current cover girl. After the photographers
shot hundreds of frames with bursting
Tim Boxer strobes, and the television crews interviewed
her for the late news, Ali broke away and took me to a private corner of
the disco. At one point she got hiccups and, while she held her breath, I
patted her on the back. It worked.
“We filmed the exodus from Poland,” she said, recalling scenes in the
movie of thousands of Jews fleeing Warsaw in the face of German
invasion.
“I escaped in a car with Topol behind the wheel. When they called a
lunch break, 1 couldn't go with the rest of the cast to eat and chat. 1 went
off by myself., and cried. I couldn't break the trance. For me it was really
happening.
“There’s a very Orthodox wedding scene, very moving. After the
ceremony, after the joyous dancing, the Nazis came and strafed the
village. 1 found it absolutely devestating.
“1 was in Yugoslavia for a year and a half. All that time, between
takes, 1 was in a trance. At the end I felt 1 had participated in one of the
most important things in my life. Dan Curtis, the producer-director
who’s Jewish, spent four years of his life to put this whole thing together.
I’m very lucky to be in it.”
At one point Topol took Ali to Zagreb to see some of the actors in the
film put on a production of “The Dybbuk." They were members of the
Polish Yiddish theater. They spoke Russian. Polish and Yiddish but
Topol translated for Ali.
Ali was so affected by Herman Wouk’s story of the Holocaust that
now, after it’s all over, she finds herself questioning her identity. For the
first time in her life she’s asking, “Who am IT
Her maternal grandfather. Maurice Klein, came from Budapest at 14
and worked in a sweatshop in New York. “To me that says Jewish
family,” she said.
She has had three husbands. First a college friend, then film producer
Bob Evans, lastly Steve McQueen. “Bob is Jewish and the father of my
son Joshua, who’s 11.”
These thoughts, never expressed before our meeting, are finally
surfacing. 13 years after she portrayed Brenda Patimkin, the
quintessential JAP. in Philip Roth's “Goodbye, Columbus.” (At first she
was actually turned down for the role because it was said she wasn’t the
Jewish type.)
“It’s disturbing," Ali says, “that here I am, a grownup, and 1 have no
idea who I am. Everybody who can tell me is dead.”
* * *
TORAH TALK: “Do you love meT Adam asked. “Who else?” Eve
replied.
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PAGE 11 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE December 24, 19*2