The Antecedents of American Holocaust Drama
The
Holocaust is an ineffable occurrence that defies the capabilities of the human
imagination. Dramatic representations of the historical catastrophe
must transform, or as Adorno has said, transfigure, the terror so that it
can be endured by an audience. In the American theater this is accomplished
usually by the imposition of melodramatic modes upon the historical model.
Sententious messages, moral exemplars, uplifting endings, and heroic sacrifices
are used to bring order out of the chaos; to make the unimaginable approachable
and the unbearable manageable. Lawrence Langer refers to this as the
Americanization of the Holocaust, and asserts that such representations "permit
the imagination to cope with the idea of the Holocaust without forcing a confrontation
with its grim details."1
The process of 'Americanization' can be traced to the anti-fascist plays of
the 1930s and early 1940s. These works, written by some of America's
best known playwrights, bridged the cultural and spatial gap between American
and European affairs. Most of these plays had nothing to do with Jews,
but they nevertheless had a significant influence upon Holocaust dramaturgy.
The anti-fascist plays offered effective strategies for overcoming audience
apathy and revulsion in representing the Nazi movement.
Early anti-fascist dramas urged American involvement in European affairs at
a time when public opinion was firmly opposed to intervention. Nazism
was represented as an amorphous evil physically and spiritually encroaching
upon the West. The authors strove to create empathy for the victims
and to agitate public opinion against the movement. According to Susan
and Bernard Duffy, the purpose of anti-fascist drama was "to chronicle Nazi
atrocities in order to shock the audience, instill in them a sense of outrage,
and move them into action."2
Examples of anti-fascist drama include Richard Maibaum's Birthright
(1933), Leslie Reade's The Shatter'd Lamp (1934), Elmer Rice's Judgment
Day (1934), American Landscape (1938), and Flight To The West
(1940), Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here (1936), S.N. Behrman's
Rain From Heaven (1934), Clifford Odets' Till The Day I Die (1935),
George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's The American Way (1939), Clare Booth's
Margin For Error (1939), Maxwell Anderson's Candle In The Wind
(1941), Lillian Hellman's Watch On The Rhine (1941) and The Searching
Wind (1944), the 1941 revision of Robert Sherwood's There Shall Be
No Night, John Steinbeck's The Moon is Down (1942), and Edward
Chodorov's Decision (1944). In addition, a number of works by
European authors opposed to the Nazis were presented in New York at this time:
Friedrich Wolf's Professor Mamlock (1937), Ernst Toller's No More
Peace (1937), and Franz Werfel's The Eternal Road (1937).
Anti-Fascist dramas employ a number of theatrical and literary devices to
bridge the physical and emotional gap between an American audience and events
in Europe. Most popular are the conventions of reflected emotional involvement,
the imminent threat scenario, redemptive heroic sacrifice, and the familial
melodramatic structure. Reflected emotional involvement occurs in works
such as There Shall Be No Night, Watch On The Rhine, Flight
To The West, and Candle In The Wind. In these plays the protagonists,
threatened by the Nazis, are romantically linked to American women.
The women, without exception, are white, Protestant, and from proper homes
in New England or Virginia. The women are presented as moral exemplars
to the American people, and their willingness to sacrifice themselves for
the men they love validates the righteousness of the anti-fascist cause.
The imminent threat scenario occurs in It Can't Happen Here, The
American Landscape, The American Way, and Flight To The West.
In these plays Nazism is presented as a clear and present danger to the United
States. No longer can the plight of Europe be ignored, because the source
of its misery, fascism, has arrived in America. In these plays the United
States is threatened by Nazi takeovers and infiltration, but in each play,
an American comes forth willing to sacrifice himself to save the country from
the Nazi threat.
Clifford Odets, Robert Sherwood, and Lillian Hellman wrote three distinctly
different types of plays to express their outrage about the rise and spread
of Nazism. Like all anti-fascist plays, their works strove to create
empathy for the victims of fascism in order to counter the isolationism and
apathy of the general public. Clifford Odets' Till The Day I Die
(1935) tells the story of a young communist named Ernst Laustig who is tortured
by the Gestapo, denounced by his comrades, and who commits suicide in order
to offer a message of hope and strength to his yet unborn child. Robert
Sherwood's There Shall Be No Night (1940) is about a Noble Prize winning
Greek scientist named Karilo Vlachos who refuses to flee his homeland when
the Italian and German Armies invade. The death of the avowed pacifist
at the pass of Thermopile, and the stoicism of his faithful wife, are offered
as moral imperatives to the American people. In Lillian Hellman's Watch
on the Rhine (1941), the good German Kurt Mueller faces certain death
when he decides he must return to Europe in order to aid his comrades.
The play is set on the outskirts of Washington DC, at the estate of a wealthy
liberal matron named Fanny Farrelly. The plot includes numerous coincidences,
Nazi spies, adultery, hints of incest, blackmail, murder, and finally a noble
sacrifice and a family reconciliation.
The three dramatists, employing diverse techniques, seek to demonstrate the
imminent threat of Nazism to the world and to agitate their audiences to take
action against it. The playwrights, however, approach the problem from
contrasting perspectives. Odets presents Nazism as the enemy of all
workers and suggests that it can only be defeated by an international 'united
front.' Sherwood argues that Nazism is a fundamental threat to democracy
and that America has a moral, Christian duty to preserve freedom on the planet.
Hellman stresses a more secular position, but also concludes that Americans
have a moral imperative to fight inequality and tyranny wherever it is found.
Hellman and Sherwood manipulate the emotions of their audiences by filtering
the situation in Europe through American sensibilities. In Watch on
the Rhine, the daughter of Fanny Farrelly returns after twenty years accompanied
by her German husband. He is a brave "anti-fascist" who is the devoted
father of their three children. The validity and goodness of his quest
against the Nazis is reflected in the love and devotion of his American wife,
and his beautiful American children. The American audience that cannot
identify itself with the character of Kurt Mueller can certainly feel empathy
for his angelic Anglo-Saxon wife. A similar device is used by Sherwood
in There Shall Be No Night. The Greek scientist Karilo Vlachos
is married to a woman from a prominent New England family. The Vlachos
household in Athens is decorated with American paintings and English is the
language spoken. The Vlachos' son, Peter, proudly proclaims his American
heritage and his desire to visit his mother's country. The sacrifice
of the Greek scientist and his son for the cause of freedom are seen through
the eyes of the American wife and mother. Sherwood also uses the character
of a CBS radio reporter to provide even more of an American perspective.
Sherwood's use of the CBS radio reporter is a clever device that enables him
to provide detailed information about the specific situation and to editorialize
upon it simultaneously. This mode of exposition also allows the playwright
to dispense with purely narrative dialogue. The representation of the
radio broadcast in There Shall Be No Night is extremely effective and highly
dramatic: The foreign correspondent breathlessly speaks into a microphone
while his colleagues manipulate the equipment. Sherwood's insertion
of edited historical documentation into the middle of his family melodrama
adds to the perceived verisimilitude of the piece. By filtering that
information through an American reporter, he further reinforces the connection
between distant events and his intended audience. The reporter, Dave
Corween, is clearly sympathetic to the Greek cause and colors his reporting
accordingly.
Clifford Odets in Till The Day I Die faces the difficult challenge
of having to provide an American audience with a tremendous amount of background
information in order for them to follow the plot of his play. He solves
this problem by having his hero work on an illegal printing press. In
the first scene, a character reads a flyer that the workers have produced.
The delivery of information in this manner is more awkward and less dramatic
than that provided by the radio reporter in There Shall Be No Night,
but it is effective nevertheless.
Another device used by Odets, and later borrowed by Hellman, is the reading
of the police dossier. Background on the behavior of a character and
a chronological summary of historical and political events can be provided
quickly and dramatically. When the sadistic Nazi captain interrogates
Ernst Tausig, he has the victim's file before him. In the third act
of Watch on the Rhine, the dissolute Romanian aristocrat who works as a Nazi
spy, utilizes a dossier to reveal the true identity of Kurt Mueller.
The audience, in both instances, is kept on edge because they, like the protagonist,
do not know the extent of information held inside the files. A final
device of exposition employed by Odets in Till The Day I Die is that of the
formal report. A secret communist cell meets in the sixth scene of the
play and the first order of business is the delivery of reports on insurgent
actions. The second order of business is the reading of the roll of
honor for those killed fighting the Nazis. Odets thus has another opportunity
to add more background information and additional specific detail to the melodramatic
framework of the piece. These strategies for delivering background information,
historical context, and political explanation, will be utilized by numerous
later playwrights of Holocaust drama.
All three plays end with a redemptive act of tragic sacrifice that is meant
to serve as a moral exemplar to the audience. In each case the goal
of defeating the Nazis is represented as a messianic quest. Ernst Tausig's
defiant suicide in Till The Day I Die is the heroic action of a man
who has retained his humanity under barbaric circumstances. Karilo
Vlachos in There Shall Be No Night tells his fellow soldiers before
the fateful battle against the Nazis that their mission is noble and
pious and will serve as a beacon for democracy. Kurt Mueller's
farewell to his wife and children in Watch on the Rhine before he returns
to Europe is a sentimental appeal against Nazism.
America's ambivalence towards Hitler, its phobic attitude towards communism,
and latent anti-semitism all contributed to the manufacturing of the mythic
anti-fascist hero. This fictional construct was never a communist or
a socialist. He was always a liberal democrat who embraced a value system
identical to the American model. The phrase-'anti-fascist,' first used
by Lillian Hellman in Watch on the Rhine , is a neutered descriptive
term that is not threatening to American political or religious values.
One of the great heroes of anti-fascist drama is S. L. Jacobowsky. Jacobowsky,
a refugee from Poland, is an eternal optimist who manages to outwit the Nazis
at every turn. Although the character of Jacobowsky was created by Franz
Werfel, the 1944 Broadway production was based upon a version written by S.N.
Behrman. The controversial transformation of Werfel's play by Behrman
demonstrated how the complexities and subtleties of the European wartime experience
were simplified reductively for American consumption. Franz Werfel's
original version of the play could be considered one of the earliest examples
of Holocaust drama. S.N. Behrman's adaptation is probably the last great
anti-fascist play. The difference between the two is the process of
Americanization which transformed Werfel's dark tragi-comedy into a sleek
Broadway entertainment.
The creative genesis of Jacobowsky and the Colonel occurred in 1942
at a Hollywood dinner party thrown by Max Reinhardt in honor of Werfel.
Werfel, who had recently escaped from France, entertained the guests by telling
an amusing tale about a Polish Jew he had met during his travels. S.N.
Behrman approached Werfel after the dinner and the two men discussed the dramatic
possibilities of the story. Behrman claims that he suggested Werfel
write a play along the lines of the anecdote but Werfel told him, "you must
write it."3
Behrman began working on a dramatic adaptation and kept in contact with Werfel
seeking advice and collaboration. Werfel, however, became dissatisfied
in the direction that Behrman was taking the narrative and effectively fired
him. Werfel, who had begun working on his own version of the play, believed
that the piece needed to be 'Americanized,' and sought out Clifford Odets
to assist him. Odets agreed to collaborate and produced a script that
was optioned by the Theatre Guild in New York. The Theatre Guild, and
particularly its managing director Lawrence Langner, ultimately decided that
Odets' version was "too ponderous and unplayable." They contacted S.N. Behrman
and brought him back onto the project. Elia Kazan, who was directing
the production, visited Werfel in California and sought his permission to
use the Behrman version. According to Kazan the meeting did not go well:
Why, he wanted to know, was his play being adapted? What was wrong with presenting a simple straightforward translation of his work? Who here was a better writer than himself? I said it was a matter of the American theatre audience. At this he began to yell at me. He said Americans had no dramatic literature worthy of the name ... 'Savages!' he yelled. "You are savages here!" ... This by-play went on throughout the interview, and I got nowhere.4
Lawrence Langner,
however, worked out a deal with Werfel and the production went into rehearsal
utilizing Behrman's text. Kazan directed the play as if it was a fairy
tale: "The production must dance, its style must be light and charged with wit;
every single person in the play must be a subtly comic figure."5 The production
opened in New Haven, Boston, and Philadelphia before its New York City premiere,
and during the out-of-town period the script was rewritten and honed into a
joyful comedic romp. Werfel, whose own version of the play in German was
subtitled a "Comedy of a Tragedy," was angered that his work was being transformed
into little more than a Boulevard drama.6 After the play opened in Boston,
Werfel demanded once more that Behrman be removed from the project. The
Theatre Guild, however, refused Werfel's request and lawyers from both parties
became involved. The final conclusion was that Behrman and Werfel shared
joint authorship of the Broadway production but Werfel received the lion's share
of the royalties. Werfel quickly had his own version of the play translated
into English and published. Behrman's recollection of the incident in
1972 is tinged with bitterness:
Werfel and I were now enemies. I had given him a hit; the play was sold
for a considerable sum to the movies; I never heard a word from him although
he was not averse to collecting the major part of the royalties. The only
one who later tried to shed light on it was a friend of Werfel's. He explained
to me that German writers consider that no writing is any good unless it is
symbolic and tragically serious. They love symbolic characters which represent
profoundly somber abstractions. Werfel had by this time written his own
version of the play and it was full of them. It became the libretto for
a tragic German opera.7
The two versions of the play are radically different in style and emphasis despite their structural similarities. In both versions a refugee from Poland named Jacobowsky seeks to escape Paris before the invading German army arrives. Jacobowsky is able to secure a car, but is unable to drive. Meanwhile a Polish army officer, carrying important documents for his government-in-exile, also needs to leave Paris but has no means of transport. The Colonel and Jacobowsky agree to travel together and the officer's adjunct drives the car. Instead of fleeing from the Germans, however, the Colonel orders them to drive towards the front lines where his mistress is waiting. They pick up the girlfriend, Marianne, and wildly set off for the coast of France. Along the way Jacobowsky employs his cunning and good nature to secure food and supplies. At one point, after the car has been stopped by German soldiers, Jacobowsky extricates them from the situation and tricks the Nazis into giving them gasoline. The story ends happily when Jacobowsky and the Colonel, their differences resolved, both escape to England.
In Behrman's drama
the Colonel is represented as a Don Quixote-like figure-a noble but slightly
crazed romantic warrior. He is gruff, rude, domineering, and given to
flights of fancy. The Colonel's assistant, Szabuniewicz, is also broadly
drawn in a manner much akin to Sancho Panza. Jacobowsky, portrayed as
the only normal person in a world turned upside down, is forced to tolerate
these two crazy men in order to escape.
Behrman's version of the story is ethnically and culturally neutered.
The urgency for Jacobowsky's escape from the Nazis is never explicated.
The only reason given is Jacobowsky's fear that he will be placed in a concentration
camp. But he is never expressly referred to as a Jew and he does not call
himself one. The only time Jews are mentioned is towards the end of the
play. A Gestapo officer has been killed and all Jews and aliens are to
be shot on sight. This information is used to heighten the dramatic tension
and serves as a backdrop for a sentimental scene between Jacobowsky and Marianne.
Behrman's sententious message, delivered in one of the few political speeches
of the play, is couched in the broadest and most general terms. Behrman's
greeting card sentiment, that people everywhere should be concerned with injustice
anywhere, is worded without ethnic reference:
"You remember when the Hitler pestilence first broke out in Germany all
of us said, "What happens to Jacobowsky is none of our business." And
when it spread from Vienna to Prague we said the same thing. "It's none of our
business." But if instead we, and the British and the Americans and the
Poles, had said: "It is our business-Jacobowsky is a man too. We can't
allow human beings to be treated so"-in six weeks with six divisions we could
have exterminated this pestilence in Germany."8
Jacobowsky is presented as a prototypical anti-fascist hero in Behrman's adaptation
of Werfel's story. Jacobowsky becomes a metaphoric figure who stands for
the downtrodden of Europe; he is the refugee Everyman of the Second World War.
The extent of his Judaism, however, is limited to his name.
In Franz Werfel's version of the play the Colonel is not the buffoonish clown
that appears in Behrman's drama. Colonel Stjerbinsky is a mean spirited
anti-semite who actively loathes Jacobowsky. Jacobowsky, in turn, is a
peevish character who is vain and a bit of a snob. The tension between
the two opposites builds until it turns nasty and ugly. The cosmopolitan
Jew and the fascistic army officer almost come to blows after a particularly
brutal interchange:
COLONEL STJERBINSKY: Last night, when we were sleeping in the public dormitory
in Dax, on those wretched mattresses, you and I next to eachother-r-r--Stjerbinsky's
luck--why did you star-r-re at me
JACOBOWSKY: I was wondering about your face and about your muttering.
COLONEL STJERBINSKY: My R-r-rosary. I was pr-r-raying. Under-r-r
the blanket, because I was ashamed of you.
JACOBOWSKY: Do you always have such threatening eyes when you pray?
COLONEL STJERBINSKY: But you do not pr-r-ray, Jacobowsky. You wer-r-re
str-r-rapping ar-r-round your-r-r stomach your-r-r money-belt...You wer-r-re
afr-r-raid.
JACOBOWSKY: In this belt was my last bit of money and some dear souvenirs.
COLONEL STJERBINSKY: You wer-r-re afr-r-raid of me! Be Still!
Mister-r-r S.L. Jacobowsky r-r-regards Colonel Tadeusz Boleslav of the
noble family Pupicky-Stjerbinsky as a scoundr-r-rel, a pickpocket, a highwayman...
JACOBOWSKY: No, Colonel.
COLONEL STJERBINSKY: Be still! In war-r-r I have killed men, and
in peace I have deser-r-rted women. God help me! But who is
the highwayman? Who seduces by sobr-r-riety? Who br-r-ribes
by cr-r-rawling meekness? Who ingr-r-ratiates himself by helpfulness?
Hitler is r-r-right. Your-r-r whole existence is nothing but gr-r-rabbing,
gr-r-rabbing, gr-r-rabbing.9
The relationship
between Jacobowsky and Stjerbinsky is on the brink of termination after this
dialogue. The two men, however, cannot survive alone. The best qualities
of each is lacking in the other. The bravado and strength of the Colonel
needs the cunning and sophistication of Jacobowsky to be effective. Jacobowsky,
in turn, depends upon the Colonel to provide physical safety and leadership.
The two men symbolize the condition of gentiles and Jews in Europe and Werfel
uses them to demonstrate the interdependency of the two groups.
The imminent demise of the relationship between Jacobowsky and Stjerbinsky creates
a metaphysical crisis that demands supernatural intervention. At this
crucial juncture, a strange apparition appears on the stage; it is the Wandering
Jew and St. Francis of Assisi, riding a bicycle built for two. The Wandering
Jew looks like a typical intellectual and speaks in a linguistic pattern that
suggests a shtetl Jew. He explains why he looks so young to the incredulous
Colonel, "I do the best I can. When a person is two thousand years old,
he should look about as I do" (75). St. Francis, appearing like a pale
Minorite monk in sandals, speaks with a thick Italian accent and usually defers
in conversation to the Wandering Jew.
The absurd and bizarre comedy of the scene-that foreshadows the grotesque post-war
imagery of Ionesco, Genet, and Beckett-is overshadowed by the terror of the
situation and the gravity of the mission shared by the Wandering Jew and St.
Francis. The Wandering Jew, who has just spent two years in Dachau, explains
the reason for their arrival:
"In the works of Eugène Sue and other authors you will read that
I am the forerunner of the great wind. The wind is on the way. In
Wiesbaden an armistice has been signed. The Germans will occupy the greater
part of France and the entire coast. There's only a moment left.
The advance troops are arriving in mayors' offices all over France. With
extradition lists!" (77)
After delivering the message, St. Francis and the Wandering Jew climb back on the bicycle and pedal off together. This unlikely pair, as disparate as the Colonel and Jacobowsky, represent Werfel's mystic vision of a synthesis between Christianity and Judaism. The Wandering Jew tells Jacobowsky, "just let opposites get old enough and they'll meet, just like parallel lines in infinity" (76).
At the end of Werfel's play the Colonel and Jacobowsky gain mutual respect and
begin to take on the characteristics of each other. The final scene of
the play takes place at the Mole de Nivelle in Saint Jean-de-Luz. The
four travelers-Jacobowsky, Marianne, the Colonel, and the adjunct-arrive at
the pier where a boat is waiting to embark for England. A British officer
greets the Colonel and informs him that there is room on the boat for only two
passengers. The Colonel's adjunct, Szabuniewicz, apparently in little
danger, departs the scene, but that still leaves three people for two spaces.
Marianne is deeply upset at the thought of leaving Jacobowsky behind and refuses
to get on the boat without him-"I saw a truck a while ago, on which they were
carting away innocent people! I saw them drag all the Jews out of my little
hotel and saw them tear the parents from their children! My ears are still
ringing with their grief" (108). The British officer, however, will not
allow Marianne to give up her place for Jacobowsky. "We are saving only
English subjects and Allied officers, and no one else. If it is at all
possible, we are willing to wink at various ladies attached to these gentlemen"
(113). The Colonel, behaving in a manner hitherto foreign to his personality,
graciously praises Jacobowsky and attempts to cajole the Englishman into relenting.
When the British officer refuses, the Colonel selflessly announces that he will
remain behind and share Jacobowsky's fate.
Jacobowsky rises to the occasion and makes a heroic and noble gesture to prevent
the Colonel from sacrificing himself. Jacobowsky produces two identical
vials from his coat-one containing poison and the other water-and proclaims
that he will throw one into the sea and drink the other. He tells his
friends that his fate is now in the hands of Providence. If he drinks
the poison then he will die immediately thus freeing the Colonel from his vow.
If he drinks the water then it is a sign that he has divine guidance and therefore
does not need the Colonel's help. Jacobowsky believes that faith must
be maintained regardless of the circumstances:
"Yes, Marianne, the Jacobowskys are to be exterminated, with the overt
or secret approval of the world! But they will not be exterminated, although
millions die. God is punishing us. He probably knows why.
He punishes us by unworthy hands, who make us stronger while they weaken us.
And then, filled with loathing, He exterminates them in turn. Do you know
that the Wandering Jew and Saint Francis are on their way to America?
But I... Between a life that is worse than death, and a death that is worse
than this life, I shall escape through the little chink that God always leaves
open for us (118)."
The British officer,
called the Dice Player, urges Jacobowsky to choose between the two vials.
Jacobowsky throws one into the sea and drinks the other. He has chosen
correctly and the officer, impressed by Jacobowsky's courage and determination,
decides to bring him on board. "The arguments of your friends didn't convince
me. You convinced me yourself! Your resoluteness and your will to
live, you optimist! England can make use of you. The whole world
needs you" (119).
The Colonel and Jacobowsky, now comrades in arms, walk onto the boat leaving
Marianne behind. The Colonel pledges his eternal love to her and says
he will return as a liberator of France. This Euripidean ending, complete
with a pseudo deus ex machina, reveals the irony underlying the comedic structure
of the piece. Werfel's play is indeed a tragedy of a comedy and the playwright
leaves little doubt that although Jacobowsky has gained salvation by fleeing
Europe, millions of others have been left behind to die.
Jacobowsky and the Colonel is full of dark and forbidding images; the
Wandering Jew who arrives from Dachau, The description of Jews being forcibly
deported, and the desperation of a man driven to suicide. It is no wonder
that the Theatre Guild in 1944 opted for S.N. Behrman's lighthearted script
instead of Werfel's somber vision. Besides the obvious commercial appeal
of Behrman's work, it was also politically expedient. It was of paramount
importance that American involvement in the Second World War not be couched
in terms of liberating European Jewry. Instead, the war had to be perceived
by the public-if their support was to be maintained-as a war to preserve the
American way of life.
A Werfel biographer, Lionel B. Steiman, concedes that "it may indeed be true
that a straight translation of Jacobowsky and the Colonel would have
been too alien to American taste and experience and that American audiences
would have rejected it."10 But he concludes that a major reason why such
a translation would have failed was because the play discussed the fate of European
Jews which was a subject "no American audience in the year 1944 was yet prepared
to hear."11
One of the most bitter and hotly contested subjects in Holocaust studies concerns
who knew what and when. Apologists for Allied inaction have long argued
that no one in the West really knew what was happening. Numerous books,
however, such as Arthur Morse's While Six Million Died (1967), Henry
Feingold's The Politics of Rescue (1970), and David S. Wyman's The
Abandonment of the Jews (1984) assert that the Roosevelt and Churchill administrations
were well aware of what was going on in Nazi occupied Europe, but chose to ignore
it. Haskel Lookstein in Were We Our Brothers' Keepers? (1985) and
Deborah Lipstadt in Beyond Belief (1986) argue that not only were politicians
aware of the mass killings but so too was the general public and particularly
the American Jewish community.
Behrman's decision to neuter the ethnic identity of Jacobowsky and his failure
to refer to the suffering of European Jewry is problematic. Behrman, an
assimilated Jew, chose to ignore the suffering of his co-religionists, because,
in part, it would have reduced the commercial viability of his play. Ironically,
the Theatre Guild's production of Jacobowsky was still identified as a 'racial
comedy.' Burns Mantle in his anthology The Best Plays of 1943-44 suggests
that the play's success was due largely to Jewish patronage: "There was a comedy-starved
public of war victims of one class and another that was naturally sensitive
to the appeal of racial comedy of the "Jacobowsky" pattern. Something
like 26 theatre parties, each of them taking over the capacity of the Martin
Beck Theatre, had been organized before the comedy opened."12
The transformation of Werfel's play-the Americanization of the text by Behrman
and Elia Kazan-and the dramaturgical strategies utilized by the authors of other
Anti-Fascist dramas provided paradigmatic models for the later creation of American
Holocaust drama. Plays such as Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett's The
Diary of Anne Frank (1955), Millard Lampell's The Wall (1960), Shimon
Wincelberg's Windows of Heaven (1962), and Arthur Miller's Incident
at Vichy catered to the taste of an American audience weaned on the upbeat
endings, moral simplifications, heroic sacrifices, and exultant moments of Anti-Fascist
drama. Works needed to be sanitized, accessible and uplifting in order
to be acceptable and profitable in the American market. As late as 1964,
Leo Sullivan's review of the Arena Stage's production of Millard Lampell's revised
version of The Wall revealed a continuing critical bias. Sullivan
applauded the Arena's production because "its sense of comedy, coupled with
the genuine suspense of plot, delivers The Wall from being the depressing
thing one might have expected."13 For a Holocaust drama to be a commercial
success in the 1950s and 1960s it had to be funny, suspenseful, and entertaining-In
other words, it had to be like S.N. Behrman's version of Jacobowsky and the
Colonel.