68
Friday, February 11, 1983
40—BUSINESS CARDS
Valentine
"GOFERIT RANCH"
ATTENTION:
Women of Today
Save Time
Over 100
PERSONAL SERVICES
PROVIDED
• Shopping
• Chauffering
• Errands
Reasonable Rates
Free Consultation
8 days a week!
CONTACT MS. R
356-8451
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
CLEANING &
GENERAL SERVICES
For Hire
References
JAMES BRYANT
868-2572
867-3178
PIANO TUNING
Repairing - Refinishing
MAYER GLUZMAN
European trained master techni-
cian. -
Reasonable Rates
967-0824
CHIMNEYS
Brick Restoration.
Rebuilt-Repaired-New.
Tuck pointing, flashings,
cleaned and screened. All
work guaranteed. Free Es-.
timates.
Licensed and Insured.
532-5168
ROOFING & SIDING
• CUSTOM TRIM
• 0-UTTERS
• AWNINGS
LICENSED
INSURED
542-2609
CAM-FIELD INC.
MR. FIX-IT
COMPLETE HOME AND OFFICE REPAIR SERVICE
Specialties: • Plumbing
• Electrical
• Appliance Repair
Professional — Courteous — Reasonable
THE ONLY
LENNIE FINE
398-3983
onimmilimmumAtInimmin
ALUMINUM
SIDING
• Custom Trim
• Seamless Gutters
• Roofing
• Storm Windows & Doors
"Rodgers does
it Right"
RODGERS
Home Improvements
Licensed Builder
Insured
FEBRUARY SUPER
SPECIAL!!
DAVE BENKOFF
Painting & Wallpapering, Inc.
Will Hang Any Roll of
Wallpaper For $10"
Per single roll, during February
Offer expires Feb. 28, 1983
358-5038
For an appointment TODAY
Call
(minimum charge 10 rolls)
• STORMS
• ENCLOSURES
CALL
KEN CAMERON
MR. FIX-IT
MR. FIX-IT ALL
Electric. Plumbing. Out-
door lights. Alarms, Inter-
coms. Locks. Garage
Doors.
Carpentry.
Drywalls. Painting.
Aron
851-3109
3 Hirr si o Gjo r i l ;33
ATTENTION
ALL HOME OWNERS
Now you can finish
those needed home
repairs or remodeling
projects. During these
slow times we are of-
fering the lowest
prices ever. Our
guaranteed quality
workmanship has not
changed. We ap-
preciate all your work.
Call anytime
RICHARD M. HYMAN
557-7059
53—ENTERTAINMENT
VERSATILE sophisticated party
music. Call 893-9667.
FREDDY SHEYER Duo. $35
hour. 542-3359.
BIRTHDAY PARTIES
And other Special Occasions.
273-6716
Clowns, juggling, magic,
music dance, Puppets,
balloon sculpture.
CARICATURES BY
JULIUS
For Parties
or Business
293-1723
CHARLES ANTHONY
PRODUCTIONS
ATTENTION HOME OWNERS
PREPARE YOURSELF FOR WINTER
(Insurance Claims Welcome)
ROOFING
CARPENTRY
New and Repair
Shingle Replacement
PAINTING
Rough and Finish
We finish basements,
kitchens & decks.
INSULATION
CERAMIC & VINYL FLOORING
CAULKING
New & Repair
BROKEN GLASS
ANY REPAIR OR MAINTENANCE
Plumbing, Electric, etc.
REPLACEMENT
Reasonable Labor Prices
WE NEED YOUR WORK
Discount to Senior Citizens
559-6130 Mon.-Fri. 9-5
Eves. 247-5736
Drywall & Plaster Work
MIKE STEINGOLD
Ablr
"SHOWCASE OF BANDS"
SUN., FEB. 13, 1983
FAIRLANE MANOR
19000 HUBBARD DR.
DEARBORN, MI.
Doors Open at 1:30 p.m.
6 Bands Will Perform
You will be eligible for prizes
and see displays from:
LaMoore Photography,
Gingiss Formal Wear,
Stone Travel, Wedding
Cake Specialists, Eva's
Fashions of Garden City,
Tri-S Video, Engraving
Connection, Statewide
Limousine Service.
Admission at door $1.50
For advanced ticket infor-
mation please call
751.7900
Charles Anthony Productions,
2101 E. 12 Mile Rd., Warren,
MI
The Great Mazepp a • • •
By DR. JOSEPH COHEN
the daughter of a Spanish
Jew and an aristocratic
French Creole lady living in
New Orleans. Probably, she
was born in Milneburg,
then the city's licentious spa
on Lake Pontchartrain.
My guess is that she was
the illicit off-spring of a
liaison between a Jew
named Josephs and a
woman of mixed blood.
(Editor's note: Dr.
Cohen is director of
Jewish studies and pro-
fessor of English at
Tulane University in New
Orleans. He is a member
of the board of the Jewish
Federation of New Or-
leans and treasurer of the
Louisiana Jewish Histor-
ical Society.)
On the final page of
"Mazeppa: The Lives, Loves
and Legends of Adah Isaacs
Menken," Wolf Mankowitz
the Anglo-Jewish novelist,
playwright and Wedgewood
specialist, concludes this
newly-released biography
(not available i4 the United
States yet), of the interna-
tionally acclaimed, and, in-
deed, notorious 19th Cen-
tury American actress with
the line, "Of course, I ha-
ven't found out who she
was."
Though she was the Mari-
lyn Monroe of her day —
some of the parallels in
their six-pointed, star-
crossed lives are astonish-
ing — no one else has found
out who she was either. It's
anybody's guess.
Born in New Orleans
sometime in the middle
1830s, she insisted all her
life that she was Jewish,
and she had among her five
husbands one who was
Jewish. Menken studied
with Rabbi Isaac Mayer
Wise in Cincinnati, refused
to perform on Yom Kippur,
going instead to services,
wrote stirring poems on
Jewish identity, and by her
explicit wish she lies buried
in the Jewish section of the
Montparnasse Cemetery in
Paris.
But was she Jewish? The
truth is, no one knows.
Mixed in with the
legends she nurtured and
lies she concocted about
herself in the approx-
imately 33 years of her
short, brilliant life are
some fairly noteworthy
accomplishments: she
earned more money than
any other actress of her
time,
laid
the
groundwork for what
would emerge as the
peculiarly American con-
tribution to the theater,
the musical comedy, was
recognized as a bold and
articulate spokeswoman
for women's rights, was
an equally ardent advo-
cate for Jewish causes,
and she wrote poetry of
not
inconsiderable
worth.
Menken's poems were
still in print 40 years after
her death, all in pirated edi-
tions. For over a century,
she has been the subject of
extensive academic and
popular investigation.
Interest in her never seems
to flag.
She was the human em-
bodiment of Byronic roman-
ticism, and it was through
the vehicle of his poem
"Mazeppa" that she became
an immortal of the theater.
She still gets credits for
her innovations, not the
least of which are these
lines from "Gypsy":
"Once I was a schlepper,/
DR. JOSEPH COHEN
Now I'm Miss Mazeppa/
With my new revolutions in
dance! Oh, you've gotta!
Have a gimmick! If you
wanna get ahead . . . "
Menken's great gimmick
was the finale to "Mazeppa"
in which the hero of Henry
M. Milner's adaptation of
Byron's poem, always
played by a male, is stripped
nude, tied to a wild horse,
and sent off to certain death.
On stage, a spirited horse
was used on a treadmill,
with a duminy substituted
for the live actor.
Menken, an accom-
plished equestrienne,
tamed horses as well as
men, and she insisted on
playing the scene live, at
some constant risk. In
doing so, she became the
most sensational,
scandalous actress of the
19th Century.
She wore the equivalent
of a revealing flesh-colored
body-suit covered by a short
flimsy tunic, raising the ire
of every morality league
from New York to Califor-
nia, and the voyeuristic ex-
pectations of her largely
male audiences who packed
theaters from coast to coast
to see her.
She
possessed
a
thoroughly modern ap-
proach to publicity and
show-biz hype.
She was charged with
bigamy on one occasion and
arrested on another by a
Union general during the
Civil War who closed down
her show in Baltimore and
transported her to Wash-
ington under suspicion of
being a Confederate Mata
Hari.
Bertram Korn in his
"The Early Jews of New
Orleans" lists a Josephs
frequenting the city in
the 1830s. Menken had a
sister who was known as
Annie Josephs. She once
told Dumas pere that she
was a quadroon.
Mankowitz thinks she
may have been the daugh-
ter of Auguste Theodore, a
"free man of color" working
as a wheelwright, but he
admits, as I do, to pure
speculation. The noted
Louisiana historian, John
S. Kendall, once attempted
to trace Menken's pater-
nity, but he came up with
nothing conclusive.
It seems unlikely that
Menken was exposed to a
Jewish milieu in childhood.
Her second marriage, how-
ever, was to Alexander
Menken, in Texas. He was
an itinerant musician in
disfavor with his German-
Jewish family in Cincinnati
for rejecting their thriving
clothing business to follow
his less-than-acceptable
calling playing the violin at
pit-stops in the Southwest.
As both Menkens were
hardly making a living,
Adah prevailed upon Ale-
xander to return home to
the family business with all
its privileges. On the boat
trip up the Mississippi, she
literally "became Jewish"
by studying old copies of the
Cincinnati Israelite, then
edited by Isaac Mayer Wise.
Once there, her poems,
speeches and dramatic
readings endeared her to
one and all.
Rabbi Wise published
her pieces and seriously
undertook her tutelage in
Hebrew and study of the
prophets. Her reputation
as a poet and actress
grew apace.
But Cincinnati was too
Her friends included provincial and she soon
Mark Twain, Bret Harte jumped off her pedestal
and Walt Whitman. Her there, scandalizing the
lovers included the Menken family and
notoriously perverted everyone else by taking up
poet Swinburne, Dumas with a popular Irish prize-
pere, and possibly, fighter, John C. Heenan, to
Charles Dickens to whom whom she bore an unac-
her book. of poems, "In- knowledged, short-lived
felicia, was dedicated. son.. Playihg "Mazeppa,"
Thousands of men on two she became the toast of
continents worshipped Broadway, going on to cap-
tivate London and Paris.
her.
Driving herself re-
But who Was this strik- le ntlessly, living riotously,
ing, multi-talented Bohe- an d occasionally suffering
mian beauty with a yid- inj uries from being thrown
dishe kop, and was she b y horses in the finale of
really Jewish? Mankowitz "M azeppa," she pushed her
marshals all the evidence of lu ck too far, wore herself
her origins in his fascinat- ou t, and died in 1868 of
ing and lively portrait, but un determined
causes,
he is no more able to au- p r esumably cancer, in
thenticate her origins than p a ris. Whatever her pater-
any of her previous biog- nit y, whoever she was, she
raphers. to ok her secrets to the
Menken claimed to be Do- gy aye, and there they still
lores de Ricardo Los Fiertes, lie hidden.