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"He thinks she's pretty,
she thinks he's witty, though he may dress like a shlub. 'This is my honey,
she comes from old money, so you can't keep me out of the club.'"
The song "Look at Her" from
Annie Korzen's play, Yenta Unplugged.
Actress Annie Korzen has a
case of the Jewish woman's blues. And for good reason.
When she wanted to audition
for a Neil Simon production, her agent told her, "Forget it; he never
hires Jewish women."
When she finally met the "great
Jewish American director, Sidney Lumet," he chuckled and told his assistant,
"Bring over the little yenta, the 'yentette.'"
"But why am I surprised,"
Korzen says in her one-woman show, Yenta Unplugged, in which she weaves
a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tale with story and song. "The
man married Gloria Vanderbilt, Lena Horne's daughter and a woman he describes
as 'WASP heaven.'…Plus he made a movie about Chassidic Jews starring Melanie
Griffith!"
Yenta Unplugged, now at the
West Coast Ensemble/La Brea, is Korzen's comic revenge for all those who
slight and stereotype Jewish women; three years ago, she went on "Oprah"
to make her case, and now she's taking her cause to the stage.
Actually, Korzen says that
she has felt the bias since childhood, when "all I had to do was watch
TV and see the blonde, 'All-American' girls. The message was that 'Jewish-looking'
meant 'ugly.'" And Bronx-bred Korzen took the hint. She went up to
Harlem to have her frizzy hair straightened, cringing when the lye was
poured upon her scalp.
When she discovered that a
"WASP trophy wife" was the American dream of many Jewish men, Korzen found
happiness with husband Benni, a Danish Jew and a film producer.
Nevertheless, she tried to
hide her ethnicity early in her acting career, wearing tweeds, a straight-haired
wig and practicing "that Gentile R: New Yorrrk, Times Squarrre, orrrgasm."
Her elocution notwithstanding,
many of the TV roles Korzen manages to snag these days are for "abrasive
Jewish women with schmucky husbands." She portrayed an interfering
tourist on Mad about You for example and is the recurring Miami
yenta, Doris Klompus, on Seinfeld." Korzen says she accepts these
kinds of roles because "I can't afford to turn them down and because
I love acting and I keep having this fantasy that things will change."
She does occasionally draw the line, however, when producers try to make
her look too yentaed-out.
"I don't mind playing the
'abrasive Jewish woman,'" says Korzen, who's helping to launch a possible
Screen Actors Guild initiative against the stereotyping and typecasting
of Jewish actors in the media. "It's just that there's rarely a lovely,
intelligent Jewish woman for balance."
By 1990, the performer had
had enough. When a yarmulke-clad emergency-room doctor told her, "Let's
not be such a Jewish mother," she decided to put pen to paper. She
began Yenta Unplugged, though the Jewish men in her writing group wondered
why she had to make her character so Jewish.
Today, Korzen says that she
wants her play "to show who Jewish women really are and to make people
feel better about themselves, no matter who they are." Along the way,
she spoofs all her favorite pet peeves, such as how director Rob Reiner
once complimented his then-wife-to-be, Penny Marshall (now his ex): "He
told her how surprised he was that they got along, because, normally,
he never liked Jewish girls! "Penny goes, 'Heh-heh-heh, I'm not
Jewish, I'm Italian. The name was originally Masciarelli.'
"'Oh,' says Meathead,'
that explains it!'" Korzen also quips that when a director once requested
an "Annie Korzen" type, he finally hired a perky little blonde. "I'm
too Jewish to play myself," the actress says. "When they make a
movie out of this show, I will probably be played by Meg Ryan." But
by the final curtain, Korzen is heartened by the fact that Rob Reiner
finally married an accomplished Jewish woman. "Na-na-na-na-nah-na,"
she taunts. There is a dramatic pause.
"Sidney, are you listening?"
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