Jewish Journal

Henry Jaglom discusses ‘Just 45 Minutes from Broadway’ [VIDEO]

by Naomi Pfefferman

September 10, 2012 | 5:00 pm

Henry Jaglom

Q:  What was the impetus for the story?

A:  I’ve always been fascinated by theater people, and by the fact of my being Jewish, and those two things together led me to explore something that I’d never had any personal experience with, which is the Yiddish theater.

Not only do I have no experience in the Yiddish theater, I had no experience with the Yiddish culture whatsoever.  I grew up in a very assimilated, well-off European family.  My father was from Russia but his language was not Yiddish, it was Russian and he came from a wealthy background so he had English governesses and French tutors, who didn’t speak Yiddish.  And my mother came from Germany, from a prominent family that traces itself back to Moses Mendelssohn.  So she didn’t speak Yiddish; in fact her language was German.

For the past 11 years I’ve been writing and researching a book on Jewish history, and in the section on turn-of-the-century America there is a mere mention, a paragraph about the Yiddish theater, but somehow I started writing this family [the Isaacs].  As a writer you don’t necessarily write and plan things out; I like to see what flows, and out comes this guy, who tells a story that he, his father, his grandfather and his great-grandfather, were all in the Yiddish theater; that his great-grandfather was brought over with the Yiddish theater to America, when the czar stopped the Yiddish theater in Russia.  And as I was learning more I was writing more, making [Isaacs] the central character, and this whole family comes from a certain tradition from Yiddish theater, and I was absolutely fascinated by it.

Q:  Your own family has a unique history.

A:  My father eventually became a prominent businessman and actually the person who was running the economy of the free state of Danzig, sort of like the minister of trade, and then when the Nazis came to power they wanted him to continue.  And he said, “I’m a Jew, it’s not comfortable to be here, and I’m giving you six months notice.”  And so they sent to Berlin and got back the word that they would make him an honorary Aryan if he would stay, and that’s when he told my mother, “It’s time to leave.  If they want to make you an honorary what you’re not then it’s not good to be what we are, which is Jews,” and they got in the car and drove off to Poland, and took a plane to London, where I was born.

Read the rest of the interview here.

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