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From Mel Brooks to Elaine May to Ethan Coen: Producer Julian Schlossberg writes memoir about working with Jewish stars over 6 decades
(JTA) — On a couple of occasions in Julian Schlossberg’s early life, he found himself in parts of the United States where some people he talked to had never met a Jewish person. The first was a stint in the Army, the second was while selling movies to rural television stations.
But over the next six decades — once Schlossberg embarked on a long and successful career that included stops as a Hollywood studio executive with Paramount Pictures and later as a prolific distributor of movies and producer of off-Broadway and Broadway shows — he was rarely the only Jew in the room ever again.
Schlossberg tells those stories and many more in his new memoir “Try Not to Hold It Against Me: A Producer’s Life” (Beaufort Books). He writes about how he went from a child in the Bronx to an influential show business figure who mingled and worked with countless movie stars, having enjoyed a long career that shows no signs of being over at age 81.
Schlossberg was born in 1941, and grew up in what he describes as a middle class family, in a Bronx neighborhood that at the time was heavily Jewish and Irish. His father Louis played semi-pro baseball, but as Schlossberg writes in the book, turned down the chance to play for a team in Kansas City in part because “there were almost no Jews in baseball.” Instead, Louis spent most of his professional life working in Manhattan’s Garment District.
The family lived near the Kingsbridge Armory, then likely the largest of its kind in the world, which hosted conventions, car shows and rodeos that came through the city at the time. Those rodeos, in fact, were Schlossberg’s introduction to showbiz.
“I would go as a kid and just revel in the fact that I was meeting these incredible stars,” he said.
Schlossberg with Jewish star Michael Douglas. (Courtesy of Julian Schlossberg)
Meeting stars would eventually become commonplace. Before and after his time in the Army in the early 1960s, Schlossberg worked as a cab driver, a busboy, a waiter, a counselor, a typist and more while taking college classes at night. He got a job at the ABC in 1964 and worked his way up the company’s ranks.
“I had decided, as a very young man, that since I didn’t have a law degree or a dental degree or a medical degree, I was going to learn every aspect of show business that I could,” he said. “I didn’t know what it was going to do, but I knew that knowledge was power, and that if I had knowledge, maybe I’d get some power.”
He would live out that goal, working in just about every area of entertainment, from radio to movie distribution to theater producing. (He goes back and forth on which one he likes best.)
In the 1970s, he hosted an AM radio show called “Movie Talk,” for which he interviewed hundreds of movie stars. WMCA station executives wanted Schlossberg to use a different stage name, to sound less Jewish.
“They didn’t want it to be ‘a Jewish name,’ and I said ‘Wait a second — if I’m going to be on the air in New York City, I can’t be a Jew?’ So they gave in, and I kept my name,” he said. “You kind of want to remember the times you did stand up, I guess. Not that it was a giant standing up, but I would have not done the show if they had asked me to change my name, because it made no sense to me.”
Speaking of Jews, Schlossberg has worked with a virtual who’s-who of famous Jewish entertainers over the years, from Neil Simon to Lillian Hellman to Sid Caesar to Mike Nichols to Peter Falk to Ethan Coen. And the ones he didn’t work with, he hung out with socially. Barbra Streisand invited him to a famous birthday party (that ended up taking place at Liza Minnelli’s house), and Mel Brooks has always greeted him as “Schloss Berg,” as if his name were two words.
Schlossberg with Barbra Streisand, right, and Merryn Jose. (Courtesy of Julian Schlossberg)
Schlossberg’s film production credits range from the 1994 British mystery “Widows’ Peak,” starring Natasha Richardson and Mia Farrow; to the 1980 “No Nukes” documentary that filmed an anti-nuclear weapons concert with the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Jackson Browne; to a revival of the long-buried version of Orson Welles’ “Othello.”
In 1995, Schlossberg worked with three prominent Jews on one off-Broadway production: a set of one-act plays performed together each night, called “Death Defying Acts,” written by Woody Allen, David Mamet and Elaine May. Schlossberg later produced the Broadway adaptation of Allen’s movie “Bullets Over Broadway,” while May, whom Schlossberg likens to a sister, contributed the forward to his book.
“Elaine is, as I’ve written, the smartest person I’ve ever met, and probably one of the most talented if not the most talented, because there is nothing that she cannot do,” Schlossberg said of the now 90-year-old Oscar, Tony and Grammy winner. “She’s a great actress, she’s a great writer, and she’s a great director. And she’s a hell of a friend.”
At one point in his career, as he details in one chapter, Schlossberg crossed paths with another Jewish producer: Harvey Weinstein. When Weinstein was young, the now-disgraced serial sexual harasser approached Schlossberg and asked him to teach him the movie business. The two men worked together for a time, although eventually they fell out.
“I never in my wildest dreams thought he would hit the heights that he hit, or the depths that he sunk to. Never,” Schlossberg said.
Another of Schlossberg’s mentoring experiences ended on a more positive note. Mark S. Golub, a rabbi, came to Schlossberg for advice in the late 1990s on learning the theater business. Golub, who died late last month at 77, went on to become a prolific Broadway producer and the founding president of the Jewish Broadcasting Service channel.
It was a fruitful partnership: Golub learned about the industry, and Schlossberg absorbed lessons about Judaism.
“It was a very interesting combination, of somebody who certainly knew a great deal about Judaism, and myself, who was learning a lot by that time about [Judaism],” Schlossberg said. “It was interesting to me to be partners with a rabbi.”
Schlossberg had several projects set to go at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, but when the industry shut down, he wrote his memoir instead. Now he’s looking to rev up some of those projects. Next up on the docket is “Tales From the Guttenberg Bible,” an autobiographical, four-character play written by and starring the Jewish actor Steve Guttenberg. It is now set for its world premiere in April, at the George Street Playhouse in Rutherford, New Jersey.
“I think audiences will respond to it, because he’s so kind and personable and living… a nice Jewish boy,” Schlossberg said of Guttenberg.
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The post From Mel Brooks to Elaine May to Ethan Coen: Producer Julian Schlossberg writes memoir about working with Jewish stars over 6 decades appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Antisemitic vitriol claims an unlikely new victim — a flamboyant and popular French DJ
The celebrated French DJ Barbara Butch, whose flamboyant performance at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris was condemned by Catholics and conservatives, is proudly lesbian and unabashedly Jewish. Last week, the latter quality sparked yet another flare up of antisemitism in France.
On the evening of July 18, about 20 minutes after Butch began a concert in the city of Grenoble, about 150 protestors who had entered the hall with the rest of the audience unfurled pro-Palestinian banners denouncing the brutal destruction of Gaza. Many of them began to fling antisemitic insults and glass bottles at Butch. Stunned by the sudden explosion of violence, Butch soon left the stage. At that point, the municipal authorities intervened. “Confronted by threats aimed at the artist Barbara Butch, and to guarantee the safety of both the audience and performers,” they declared, “the city of Grenoble has taken the decision to cancel the performance.”
This eruption of antisemitism parading as anti-Zionism was as predictable — and as predictably ignored by the local government — as are the fires now consuming swathes of western France. In the weeks leading up to the concert, a petition was launched by the local section of La France insoumise (France Unbowed), the extreme-left political party founded and led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who has recently and plausibly been accused of flirting with antisemitism. The petition condemned Butch for supporting a proposed law in 2025 that penalized “new forms of antisemitism,” which potentially included expressions of anti-Zionism and even criticism of the Israeli government.
There were two problems, though, with the petition. First, there is the obvious issue of banning an artist from presenting or performing their work because one disagrees with their political statements. (Statements that do not, of course, inspire acts of racial hatred or violence.) Second, and no less obviously, Butch had almost immediately regretted and publicly retracted her initial support of the proposed law, one she realized could suppress legitimate criticism of Israel’s brazenly illegal and brutal actions in Gaza and the West Bank.
All this was for naught, though. The tract distributed in early May by the local office of Unbowed France demanded the cancellation of Butch’s concert by the city government, which had sponsored the music festival it was part of. Fair enough. Not so fair, though, was the tract’s lurid montage, which placed Butch against the background of an LGBTQ flag spattered in blood and stamped with the Star of David, accompanied by the claim that she was “complicit with the genocide” committed in Gaza.
Equally startling was the role played by Allan Brunon, a parliamentary member of Unbowed France who is also president of the party’s local chapter. Not only did he lead the protestors at the concert venue, but he also insisted that, as far as he could see, their behavior never degenerated into violence, even though videos of the ruckus confirm that bottles and other objects hit the stage, as does the eyewitness testimony of Laurence Ruffin, the mayor of Grenoble, who was also in attendance. Brunon’s faux naïve explanation for the expletives shouted at the concert was equally insulting; they were aimed, he insisted, at Butch’s “political position and not who she is.”
Leaders from across the political spectrum, from the extreme right to traditional left, have denounced the role played by Unbowed France at the concert. Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Rally who never misses an opportunity to bash Unbowed France and bury her party’s own antisemitic origins, decried “the antisemitism, repeated appeals to violence, and totalitarian nature and project of the extreme left,” while the former prime minister and centrist politician Gabriel Attal, in a mocking allusion to an earlier claim made by Mélenchon, observed that the party’s “antisemitism is anything but residual.” As for the leadership of Unbowed France, Mélenchon has kept silent while the leader of the parliamentary group, Mathilde Panot, spoke in the conditional case, stating that “we would never support, if they occurred, either flung insults or bottles.” (my emphasis).
Wittingly or not, Attal’s remark reaches much further back than last week. Ever since the late 19th century, the extreme right in France has not had exclusive dibs on antisemitism. Édouard Drumont, the author of the virulent antisemitic 1886 bestseller La France juive and editor of the La Libre parole, the newspaper that sparked the Dreyfus Affair, thought of himself as an anti-capitalist and man of the left. It required the immense reserves of eloquence and decency of Jean Jaurès, the Socialist leader, to persuade the rank and file to rally to Dreyfus’ cause. As late as the 1950s, the French Communist Party unhesitatingly followed Moscow’s lead during the late stages of Stalin’s paranoia, featuring spectacles like the “Doctors’ Trial” of 1953, that targeted Jewish “counterrevolutionaries” intent on undermining the Soviet Union.
Of course, the French left has come a long way since then. But to paraphrase Mathilde Panot, if Unbowed France’s apparently uncowed leader, along with a large contingent of his party, are suffering from more than a dollop of residual antisemitism, the future of a democratic and liberal France is at risk.
The post Antisemitic vitriol claims an unlikely new victim — a flamboyant and popular French DJ appeared first on The Forward.
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Why I stand with Israel
I’m often asked why I take a public stand on behalf of Israel. Some have asked how I have the fortitude to do so. Others wonder about the “reputational risk.” Still others wonder about subjecting myself to the “awful” comments. To me, they’re like weather reports — a way to gauge the sentiments of those with whom I disagree.
“Just stop talking — if for no other reason than for saving yourself the embarrassment of being heard by anyone.”
“You Zionists are just mad that no one’s buying your narrative anymore”
“F— Israel”
“Hey Peter! When did you drop the second “n” in your last name? When your family eluded capture when Germany surrendered back in 1945?”
“You are so full of $hit! Mamdani condems a genocide unless you think as long a Santanyahu who happens to be a Jew should be able to kill innocent children day in and day out and get away with simply because he is a jew.”
“I have absolutely loved your music over the decades (my favourite artist) but I have difficulty in listening to it now. The meaning behind your lyrics resonates differently with me now — sorry.”
I support Israel, not because of any government, any particular policy, or anything having to do with geopolitics. I support Israel because half the world’s Jewish population lives there. This is about peoplehood — my people. I understand well how this kind of particularity is easy to criticize, how in an era where the ideology of oppressor versus oppressed has caught the imagination of many people, where thinking about one’s sense of belonging to an ancient nation is thought to be anachronistic, and where a vague notion of universalism has become the new moral imperative.
But as I’ve written many times in my column, all love and all concern begin with specificity. We only learn how to love and be concerned about others through the ways we have loved — and have been loved — by our own.
I see it this way. There are seven million Jews in Israel. They are people of many races and ethnicities, many talents, and many political affiliations. They and their supporters worldwide are now under siege. They have been fighting for their survival, surrounded by neighbors seeking their destruction since before the Jewish state came into existence in 1948— and they have continued to do so since the pogrom of Oct. 7, 2023.
Some have asked me, by way of accusation: do you now believe in genocide? Have you become a warmonger? (I assume my former fan, above, feels this way.) Do you support the murder of children? What happened to the man who wrote songs like “Been Set Free,” Impermanent Things,” and “Mission Of My Soul”? Have you suddenly become cruel, hard-hearted?
The questions are too absurd to warrant a response.
For me, support of Israel and the Jewish people more broadly doesn’t take special courage or insight.
If someone were attacking a close relative or friend, my reaction would be the same. It would be reflexive, instantaneous. What consequence could outweigh the idea of sitting back while your loved ones are imperiled? There are those who have argued that whatever cruelties have been meted out are “acts of resistance” and justified military actions by the oppressed against their oppressors. One wonders what logic brought Hamas and its supporters to conclude that K’fir (who was 10 months old at the time of his murder) and Ariel Bibas (who was 4 years old at the time of his murder) were oppressors deserving of death by strangulation.
Such is the strangeness of the current moment, when it feels as though much of the world has once again chosen to place a target on the backs of Jews. Justifications are conjured up and offered, just as they were during the pogroms in Europe, the forced conversions and auto-da-fés of Spain, the fabricated Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Russia, the institutionalized anti-Jewish and anti-Israel campaigns of the Soviet Union that found expression at the United Nations in 1975, and in the demonstrations that erupted immediately after Oct. 7 — before Israel had fired a shot.
Synagogues in America are more than three times as likely as other U.S. houses of worship to employ armed security guards. Jewish day schools too, like the ones my grandchildren attend, face extraordinary security costs. Today, the average Jewish institution spends more than $400,000 annually on security. That represents an average increase of roughly 125% since before Oct. 7.
Let’s pause here.
This means that after the largest massacre of Jews since the Shoah, synagogues and Jewish schools have to spend 125% percent more to protect themselves from another one. The idea should stun any normal thinking person. Though sadly, I believe it would stun very few people these days.
Most recently, in NYC, Mayor Zohran Mamdani employed the magic words that brought him more attention on social media than ever before. The last time I checked the video in which he said the following received upwards of 90 million views: “I will arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if he comes to New York City.”
Not long afterward, a brutal double stabbing occurred, amid shouts of the now all-too- familiar “Allahu Akbar. One of the victims was a man wearing a kippah as he left a synagogue service. The attack happened on the Jewish holiday of Tisha B’Av, no more than a two-minute walk from my daughter’s apartment.
I leave it to you to decide whether this kind of rhetoric helps create a more peaceful New York City.
So I ask: How could I not speak up? How could I not use my voice in support of my people at a time like this? Isn’t it obvious? And why shouldn’t anyone who cares about Jews and Israel use their own voice?
You don’t need a huge platform. You simply need to speak out in whatever sphere you find yourself. This is the moment your parents and grandparents hoped you’d never see.
How you choose to act matters. It matters a great deal.
The post Why I stand with Israel appeared first on The Forward.
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Over 12 Torah scrolls stolen from Paris suburb synagogue
(JTA) — Over a dozen Torah scrolls have been stolen from a French synagogue in an attack the local rabbi called “antisemitic.”
The burglary hit the Grand Synagogue of Levallois-Perret, a wealthy suburb of Paris, between Sunday night and Monday morning. Rabbi Chalom Lellouche said the Jewish community was “violated” by the theft.
“It is, of course, a criminal act, but it is also an antisemitic act that specifically targeted the Torah,” Lellouche said in a joint video statement on Monday with Philippe Cohen, the president of the local Jewish community association.
The des Hauts-de-Seine prefecture, which handles local state administration, said on X that the stolen scrolls represented not just a “simple theft,” but “an entire community of believers that was wounded to the depths of its soul.”
Prefect Alexandre Brugère and elected officials met with Jewish communal leaders in Levallois-Perret on Monday evening, promising to identify the thieves and secure the return of the scrolls. A police investigation is ongoing, according to Cohen.
Cohen said the burglary was the work of a “professional team” that bypassed security systems and said the synagogue’s security was being reassessed. He called the incident “a profound spiritual trauma for the entire Jewish community in France and around the world.”
“It was the Torah — and only the Torah — that was targeted,” said Cohen. “No property was damaged, and nothing else was stolen apart from Torah items of immeasurable value.”
France recorded 1,320 antisemitic incidents in 2025, accounting for 53% of anti-religious acts, according to the Ministry of the Interior. Jews make up less than 1% of the French population.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Over 12 Torah scrolls stolen from Paris suburb synagogue appeared first on The Forward.
