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traveling ★★★★
with the Stars
by Tim Boxer
NEW YORK —BLANCHE BAKER, playing the title role in
“Hannah at the Harold Clurman Theater, was already familiar with the
heroic story of the young girl who parachuted into enemy territory to
organize Jewish resistance against the Nazis. Her father used to recount
Blanche, whose entire family perished,
was in the NBC mini-series “Holocaust,” for
which she won an Emmy for portraying a
young girl raped and murdered by the Nazis,
Blanche went to Auschwitz and Bergen-
Belsen.
“1 was angrier than I’d ever been in my
life," she recalled. “I felt something had been
taken from me—my family.
“Some of this anger is expressed in
‘Hannah.’ In a play you bring in certain
things from your life for the role.”
When Garfein was liberated from Bergen-
Belsen he was 14 and weighed 48 pounds.
“You can’t become cold, callous and hard
because you went through something
horrible. You still have to feel love, you still
have to be able to do good work. You shouldn't carry around bit’-'ness.
Don’t let it cut you off from life. What I got from the Jewish religion is an
appreciation for life."
That’s Blanche’s life philosophy. She sees the same in Hannah Senesh.
“Hannah lived her life for a purpose. She’s a legend in Israel.”
When she was a biology major at Wellesley, near Boston, Blanche
would spend summers as a nurse’s aide at UCLA Medical Center. “I
would have become a nurse,” she said. “Preserve life—that's everything
for me. It comes from my past—my whole family was killed.”
Several years ago Blanche went to Israel to film a special Christmas
television program called “Joseph and Mary.”
“Here was a nice Jewish girl playing the Virgin Mary,” she said. I met
Menachem Begin who said, ‘I want to tell you how relieved I am that the
part is in good hands ’”
* * *
MYRON COHEN i* a remarkable personality for an SO-year-old
entertainer with a cardiac pacemaker. He just finished a successful
engagement at Indigo and was just as funny as ever. It was his first New
York appearance since 1974 and he hasn’t changed.
He's stHl tall and baldish, as Earl Wilson described him when he
appeared as guest of honor at the Sunday celebrity night at Leon and
Eddie’s in 1942.
He was a dress salesman telling funny stories then, when he first
started out: A fellow was awakened by a wrong number in the middle of
the night. The caller was apologetic. “That’s all right,” said the sleepy
fellow “1 had to get up anyway. The phone was ringing.”
A year later he wasn’t a dress salesman anymore. Wilson described
him as a dialectician. Another story: A woman woke her husband up at 3
a.m. and demanded he close the window. “It's cold outside.” The poor
man reluctantly got out of bed, slammed the window, hopped back in bed
and snapped, “So now it's warm outside?"
Myron, born in Brodno Gubernia on the Russian-Polish border, first
went to London. His family's flat was a haven for many European
immigrants en route to the New World.
His dialects, he insists, are done in good taste. One thing he draws the
line at is risque humor.
“I can’t stand Buddy Hackett. I vomit. The same with Redd Foxx.
Filth. My stories are based on truth. People can relate to the things I tell.
Nothing is funnier than the truth."
For instance: Some men were playing cards when all of a sudden one
of them suffers a heart attack and expires. Out of respect for the dead the
others finish playing standing up. One man is selected to call on the dead
man’s wife and tell her what happened. He goes to the woman and says,
“Lady, your husband just lost $800 playing gin rummy." The woman
raises her arms and shakes her head: “He should drop dead!” The man
says softly, “He did.”
* * *
BOXER SHORTS: The world’s foremost fiddlers—Isaac Stern,
Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zuckerman, Schlomo Mintz—did a week of
concerts in Tel Aviv to commemorate the 100th birthday of Bronislaw
Huberman, founder of the Israel Philharmonic . Danny Thomas
dropped into the Stage Deli on his way to a benefit in Toronto. “Between
St. Jude and B’nai B’rith,” he quipped, "I’m too busy to eat" ..Murray
Wilson of La Difference restaurants sat shivah for his dear mother
Selma...Nat Sherman’s tobaccotorium offers pipes carved in Israel, but
as Nat points out, “Negev on Sunday” ..Shelby Friedman of Dallas says
four little words describe his condition after stuffing himself with
Hanuka latkes all week: Plop! Plop! Fizz! Fizz!.. To listen to Abe
Margolies kvell over Dorian Malamud, his 17-year-old heavyweight find,
you’d think he has another Max Baer on his hands. Maybe that’s what the
world needs now—another Jewish heavyweight boxer.
the story of Passover.
Tim Boxer
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PAGE 11 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE February 18, 1983