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Steve Guttenberg, and his very Jewish life, take the stage for a play adaptation of his memoir
(JTA) — Actor Steve Guttenberg has had the kind of career that put him in touch with nearly every trend in Hollywood. There were prestige films like “Diner” and “Cocoon” and the lighter but wildly successful fare like the first four movies in the “Police Academy” series. “Three Men and a Baby” was the biggest American box office hit of 1987; the 2004 Christmas movie “Single Santa Seeks Mrs. Claus” somehow spawned a sequel.
In short, it’s the kind of career that would inspire a juicy, dishy memoir, which it did when he wrote “The Guttenberg Bible” in 2012.
Now a brand new stage adaptation, “Tales From the Guttenberg Bible,” is playing through May 21 at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Guttenberg plays himself in the show, in which he explores his career, his Judaism and much more.
“As a tradition and as a culture, [Judaism’s] been a huge part,” said Guttenberg, who was born in Brooklyn in 1958 and raised in Massapequa, on Long Island. “My family didn’t observe Friday nights, but my father was kosher… I was bar mitzvahed, and then when I went out to California when I was 17, I found the temple to be a great respite for me, especially from the loneliness.”
For years, Guttenberg regularly attended the Stephen Wise Temple in Los Angeles, and later joined Kehillat Israel in Pacific Palisades.
The show features four actors playing 90 different characters, including the Jewish movie producers Allan Carr and Robert Evans, the voiceover actor Michael Bell (who is Guttenberg’s godfather), as well as Paul Reiser, Merv Griffin and Kevin Bacon. It covers Guttenberg’s life from age 17 — when he famously snuck onto the Paramount Pictures lot, set up an office and sometimes claimed to be the stepson of then-Paramount executive Michael Eisner — through his late 20s.
“It’s been such a great career, and I’ve really enjoyed it,” Guttenberg said. He said that Julian Schlossberg, the veteran producer of movies and theater, read the book and told him that he thought there was a play in it.
“So I started writing it into a play,” he said, and Schlossberg thought they should bring it to “a great regional theater.”
Guttenberg is not new to the stage, having made his Broadway debut in the early 1990s, and later appearing in “Relatively Speaking,” the Schlossberg-produced, one-act anthology that played in 2011 and 2012. Guttenberg appeared in the one-act play written by Woody Allen, while the other two were by Ethan Coen and Elaine May.
But the actor’s relationship with Schlossberg goes back much further. One of his first movie parts was in the 1978 thriller “The Boys from Brazil,” which was about a Jewish Nazi hunter (Laurence Olivier) tracking Nazis in South America. Schlossberg, hosting a radio show at the time, proclaimed Guttenberg a “talent,” on a broadcast that Guttenberg’s mother happened to hear, leading her to call in.
Schlossberg, author of a recent memoir about his own adventures in showbiz, described Guttenberg as a “nice Jewish boy” in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency earlier this year.
Although he was seen more recently on TV in “The Goldbergs,” “Party Down” and “Dancing with the Stars,” Guttenberg mostly stepped away from acting for about five years to care for his ailing father, who passed away last July. That, along with the pandemic, had put the play on the back burner.
When asked which of his movies he’s asked about the most, Guttenberg names “Short Circuit” (a 1986 sci-fi comedy) and “The Bedroom Window” (a 1987 thriller) in addition to “Three Men and a Baby,” “Police Academy” and “Cocoon.”
“‘Can’t Stop the Music’ gets a lot of play. And of course, ‘The Day After,’” he said, referring to Nancy Walker’s 1980 musical comedy and the groundbreaking 1983 TV movie about a nuclear apocalypse. Guttenberg said he was “lucky enough that I have five or six or seven old movies that people ask about.”
Guttenberg has warm memories of Leonard Nimoy, the Jewish actor and “Star Trek” icon who directed “Three Men and a Baby.”
“As a person, he was a ball of fire inside an iceberg,” Guttenberg said of Nimoy, who died in 2015. “Very stoic, but extremely warm and loving. The first time I met him, he asked if I had his mother’s stuffed cabbage… a terrific artist, an incredible acting teacher, a well-versed writer, photographer, and director.”
While “Police Academy” — about an inept bunch of cops — is a rare franchise from the 1980s that has never had any kind of remake or reboot, Guttenberg said that there have been about “10 scripts developed” over the years, including from such big names as Jordan Peele. He added that Taika Waititi, the Jewish director of “Jojo Rabbit,” is “developing one now, or thinking about it.”
Even though his acting took a back seat in recent years, Guttenberg noted that he enjoyed his run as a science teacher on “The Goldbergs.” The long-running, soon-to-conclude ABC series about a suburban Jewish family is set amongst the popular culture of the 1980s — so it has touched on several of his movies.
“I like [creator Adam F. Goldberg] a lot, and I think any time that we can give support to shows that have Jewish culture in them, that, as a Jewish person, you’ve got to lend your name to it, especially with all that’s going on,’” he said.
After the New Jersey run, Guttenberg will bring the show to Sag Harbor’s Bay Street Theatre in August, and, he and the producers hope, other engagements beyond that.
“I think it’s a great play, and I think we’re gonna be able to play it all over the country and in different cities, and one day back in New York.”
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The post Steve Guttenberg, and his very Jewish life, take the stage for a play adaptation of his memoir appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Looming large over Israel’s 78th Independence Day celebrations: Argentina’s Javier Milei
(JTA) — During his three days in Israel this week, Argentinian President Javier Milei made a strong impression.
There he was, weeping again at the Western Wall. There he was, receiving the Presidential Medal of Honor for his leadership and support for Israel. And there he was, lighting a torch for the Independence Day festivities as the first foreign leader ever to do so.
There Milei was, grabbing a microphone and dancing raucously on stage to the Spanish-language song “Libre” at both the rehearsal for the national ceremony and the live event on Tuesday.
And there he was, ostensibly the reason that the far-right Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir left the ceremony before it began. Ben-Gvir left after being asked to vacate his seat to make way for Milei, in an arrangement that some speculated was meant to prevent Ben-Gvir from being photographed in the same frame as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Milei’s presence in Israel Sunday through Tuesday offering a powerful symbol of his continued support for Israel even as so many other world leaders have distanced themselves. Milei is a longtime philosemite who has said he aims one day to convert to Judaism.
“In life there are partners and there are friends,” Milei said in Spanish during the Independence Day ceremony. “Partners come together for a moment of shared interest. Friends forge unbreakable bonds for life. I am pleased to say that Argentina and Israel are not merely partners, but friendly nations.”
The Independence Day ceremonies projected an image of resilience at a challenging time for Israel, where wars on two fronts are currently in ceasefires announced by U.S. President Donald Trump. Among the others chosen as torch-lighters, seen as one of Israel’s most significant honors, were soldiers who have participated in the years of war that followed Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
Two of the chosen torch-lighters drew sharp criticism. One was Rabbi Avraham Zarbiv, a rabbinical judge who has drawn scrutiny for publicly praising demolition operations in Gaza. In February, the Ombudsman of the Israeli Judiciary ruled that Zarbiv had violated a code of ethics by expressing his views on controversial issues.
“I light this torch in honor of the bulldozer and excavator operators, the trailblazers, destroyers of the enemy and the dismantlers of terrorist infrastructure who protect the lives of our soldiers,” he said at the ceremony.
A cousin of a woman killed in captivity also also denounced the selection of Gal Hirsch, Israel’s coordinator for hostages and missing persons, who faced calls for his resignation in February after telling Haaretz that demonstrations demanding the release of hostages were aiding Hamas. Gil Dickmann, a cousin of Carmel Gat, wrote in a post on Instagram that his selection was “spitting in the faces of families” of the hostages.
Last year, torchlighters for the ceremony included former Israeli hostage Emily Damari, NBA player Deni Avdija and the American Jewish conservative pundit Ben Shapiro, whose appointment was criticized by some Israeli leaders as inappropriately political.
The day’s official programming will end with a ceremony awarding the Israel Prize, the nation’s top civilian honor. Among those receiving the prize this year are the artist Yaacov Agam and Chantal Belzberg, the CEO of a nonprofit that aids the families of fallen soldiers.
Trump was also invited to receive the prize, getting a public invitation in February following an earlier announcement by Netanyahu. He will not be present.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Marx Brothers fans rejoice: There’s a recording of Harpo speaking
Harpo Marx’s wife, Susan Fleming, once remarked that, when you got him talking, you couldn’t shut him up.
The proof was there for those who chanced to see him in the 1930s and ‘40s, screening clips of the films he made with his brothers. If a crowd was good, he’d deliver what was known as “Red’s Speech,” a reference to the red wig he wore on stage.
The speech grew more verbose with each recitation, with input by Harpo’s friend, the critic Alexander Woollcott, a fount of $5 dollar words. It got so long, in fact, that Harpo would take it out in the form of a long script that spilled off the stage down the aisle.
“There’s always been this fallacy that Harpo never spoke on stage,” said Marx historian Robert S. Bader, author of Four of the Three Musketeers: The Marx Brothers on Stage and Zeppo: The Reluctant Marx Brother. When he did, he would often make a joke about the mute persona he adopted in 1914, opening his remarks with “as I was about to say in 1915.”
In 1964, Harpo was hitting the speaking circuit. He spoke at events for the United Jewish Appeal, having grown more connected to his Jewishness after a 1963 trip to Israel. On these occasions, Bader said, Harpo “might have looked like a local councilman, just wearing a business suit,” and would sneak in a line from his bar mitzvah speech: “For 13 long years, I have toiled and labored for your happiness.”
Advised to retire from performing after a number of heart attacks, Harpo reasoned that, so long as it was for charity and he didn’t get paid, it couldn’t count as work.
That rationale led to Harpo’s appearance at benefits for a number of symphony orchestras. On March 20, 1964, he gave his final performance at a concert for the Riverside Symphony Orchestra in California, playing a suite of songs about the moon, an original composition and conducting a particularly manic take on Haydn’s “Toy Symphony.”
This time, Harpo not only spoke, giving a lively recitation of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, he did something unprecedented by allowing himself to be recorded with the understanding the public might someday hear it.
On June 5, 2026 a record of the evening will be released as Harpo Speaks! The Riverside Symphony Concert. It was announced on April 1, but it was no April Fools joke. It’s an outstanding artifact, and it was discovered quite by accident.
John Tefteller, the foremost collector of rare, Marx-related records, was looking for a copy of a 1963 concert with Harpo and comedian-musician Allan Sherman, recorded by Sherman’s son Robert. Looking in the tape box for Pasadena, Sherman instead found the Riverside tape. Oddly enough, Robert Sherman had no memory of recording — or even attending — the Riverside concert.
Bill Marx, Harpo’s son and the arranger of much of his music, says the man on the recording, telling the tale of “Peeduh,” the “boid” and the “huntahs,” is the one he grew up with.
“It was very, very low key,” said Bill Marx, now a celebrated pianist and Juilliard-trained composer, recalling his father’s voice. “I think I would have to say that he was about five or six notes lower than Groucho’s. It was easy to hear him speak. I suppose you could call him soft-spoken. He rarely if ever raised his voice in our house with my two brothers and sisters.”
Instead, he would do something like wake his daughter in the middle of the night to play jacks.
Peter and the Wolf, written for young audiences, was a natural fit for Harpo, and it was his idea to do it. The version of the libretto, co-written by Harpo and Groucho, also features a topical joke for that election year of 1964: “Imagine the triumphant procession. Peeduh at the head, after him the huntahs leading the wolf, then Goldwatuh, Rockefelluh and Nixon.”
That Harpo was a patron of the symphony is no great surprise. He practiced the harp three hours a day and Bill Marx remembers his father’s love of French impressionist composers like Debussy and Ravel and Fauré. When Bill played records in his bedroom, without fail his father would knock on the door, ask what he was listening to, and commit to learning it — which he did.
“He just had a great learning thirst, and I had the privilege of watching this man appear in everybody’s life by doing things that he was compelled to do,” Bill Marx said.
As the narrator of Peter and the Wolf, Harpo is wonderfully expressive, evoking the storytelling of an old-time New York-born Zayde (dressed in his traditional costume at the concert, he donned a new accessory: reading glasses). He sounds quite a lot like Chico, his closest brother in age.
Restoring the tape took major work from audio restorer Joel Tefteller (John’s son) and audio engineer Nick Bergh. At one point, in his closing speech, Harpo walked away from the mic, making the original tape almost inaudible.
“He wasn’t used to looking for a microphone,” said Bader. “He didn’t have a lot of time in front of microphones. I don’t think anybody ever had to say ‘Harpo get closer to the microphone’ ever.”
The post Marx Brothers fans rejoice: There’s a recording of Harpo speaking appeared first on The Forward.
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UCLA student government condemns campus Hillel for hosting former hostage
A campus event featuring freed Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov drew the condemnation of UCLA’s student government on Tuesday. In an open letter, the UCLA Students Associated Council said that bringing Tov to speak to students “served to legitimize and normalize” atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon.
Shem Tov, 23, was kidnapped from the Nova music festival in Southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and held hostage in Gaza until his release in a prisoner exchange in February 2025. UCLA hosted him on April 14 for a Yom HaShoah event.
“While we affirm the humanity of all people impacted by violence, we reject the selective platforming of narratives that obscure the broader reality of ongoing state violence,” the student government letter wrote in the letter, which was addressed to the UCLA administration and UCLA Hillel among others. “Israel is currently continuing to carry out what has been widely identified by human rights advocates as a genocide in Gaza, while also expanding its illegal military campaign into Lebanon.
“In this context, elevating a single narrative, absent of critical political and humanitarian framing, serves to legitimize and normalize these ongoing atrocities.”
Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, UCLA Hillel’s director emeritus, called the statement “completely ridiculous.”
“You can’t present the narrative of your experience without it being called ‘one sided,’” Seidler-Feller said. “There has to be a counter-story to persecution. Is there a counter-story to killing people?”
UCLA Hillel executive director Daniel Gold dismissed the criticism in Tuesday’s letter as antisemitic.
“Hillel at UCLA and Students Supporting Israel UCLA would like to apologize…for absolutely nothing,” he wrote in a statement. “Members of UCLA student government have once again shown they are anti-dialogue, anti-learning, anti-truth, anti-student and antisemitic.”
The USAC did not respond to a request for comment.
As college campuses across the country became a hotspot for pro-Palestinian activism following the Oct. 7 attack, UCLA, with an activist history and a large Jewish population, stood out as a major flashpoint. Its student encampment was the site of a riot in April 2024 and eventually cleared by police in riot gear.
The USAC has sided with pro-Palestinian protesters throughout. In a Feb. 2025 letter titled “We Are All SJP,” the USAC, which is democratically elected by the roughly 30,000-member UCLA student body, condemned Chancellor Julio Frenk’s suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine. The letter referred to Israel only as “the Zionist state” or put the country’s name inside quotation marks.
The University of California has since been sued by the Department of Justice, which said that UCLA created a hostile work environment against Jewish and Israeli faculty in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
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