58 | AUGUST 18 • 2022 

INDUSTRY ON HBO, 
RENEWALS, GODFATHER 
‘JEWISH’ STUFF 
The HBO series Industry 
recently made it on my 
radar. It premiered in 2020 
during the apex of the pan-
demic but was filmed before 
the pandemic hit. Almost all 
reviewers said the show was 
an unrealistic look at the 
lives of young people trying 
to move up the ladder at a 
large London financial ser-
vices company. Many critics 
said you could overlook the 
unrealism because the ener-
gy of young people living 
pre-COVID professional and 
romantic lives had a certain 
fun and charm. 
 While their financial talk 
was “mumbo-jumbo,” critics 
said, the characters strictly 
personal conversations were 
witty. Many said it was more 
fun than Succession. 
A second, eight-episode 
season premiered on Aug. 1. 
About a week ago, I learned 
that a star of Industry, 
Marisa Abela, 25, is the 
(British) daughter of a Jewish 
mother and a non-Jewish 
father. Abela plays Yasmin 
Kara-Hanani, a woman of 
Lebanese background who 
comes from a wealthy family. 
Yasmin’s father makes his 
debut in the second season. 

He’s played by Adam Levy, 
51, a Brit actor.
Abela father’s family is of 
Maltese (almost certainly 
Catholic) origin. Her moth-
er’s parents, Abela says, 
are the children of Polish 
Jewish refugees. I learned 
about Abela’s background in 
a brief article that said she 
was in “early talks” to play 
the late Amy Winehouse, 
the famous British Jewish 
pop singer. The article noted 
that the filmmakers were 
determined to find someone 
of Jewish background to 
play Winehouse. 
The Old Man, an original 
Hulu series, ended its 
seven-episode premiere 
season on July 21. A second 
season was just ordered. 
It stars Jeff Bridges as an 
ex-CIA agent who has long 
been living under a false 
identity. Here’s just two 
reasons to watch the first 
season: It got great reviews, 
and Joel Grey, 90, turns in a 
great performance in a quite 
small but important recurring 
role. 
I hope by the time the 
second season premieres 
I can verify that the two 
producers and co-writers 
of the show, “newbies” 
Jonathan E. Steinberg and 
Robert Levine, are Jewish. 
Seems like a “gimmee,” but 
it’s not. 

 Also renewed for a 
second season is The Bear, 
an acclaimed FX/Hulu series 
about a top chef who is turn-
ing a “greasy spoon” into a 
gourmet delight. As previ-
ously noted, it co-stars Ebon 
Moss-Bachrach, 45.
The Offer is a (concluded) 
Paramount+ series about the 
making of The Godfather, a 

1972 Paramount studio film. 
As I previously wrote, there 
was a “record number” of 
real-life Jewish characters 
in the series and a lot of 
Jewish actors playing Jews. 
However, The Offer, while 
sometimes “fun,” disap-
pointed me because it was 
incredibly inaccurate.
The series credits say it is 
based on the memories of 
Al Ruddy. Ruddy, 92, The 
Godfather’s producer, is 
constantly falsely depicted 
as the “indispensable man.” 
Events are often made up 
out of whole cloth.
A silver lining is that as 
I looked into The Offer, I 
incidentally came across 
three “new-to-me” Jewish 
sidelights on The Godfather. 
Share them with friends and 
family who are fans of The 
Godfather. The number of 

such fans has only grown 
in the last 50 years. Here 
goes: 
(1) John Marley, born John 
Marlieb, played big-time 
producer Jack Woltz, the 
guy who wakes up with a 
horse’s head in his bed. In a 
1972 interview, Marley said 
that a fake head looked too 
fake, so a real horse’s head 
was obtained from a local 
slaughterhouse! 
(2) There’s a brief scene 
in which we see a sign in 
front of a movie studio gate 
that says Woltz International 
Pictures. The sign was 
actually posted in front of 
a Paramount studio gate. 
The Paramount studio street 
that begins at that gate has 
recently been renamed 
in honor of Jewish actor 
Leonard Nimoy, and 
(3) Just before the film’s 
release, studio execs 
complained there was no 
Godfather scene in which 
stars Al Pacino and Marlon 
Brando exchanged more 
than a few words. Coppola 
asked his friend, screenwrit-
er Robert Towne, now 87, to 
write such a scene. Towne’s 
scene is very memorable: 
Brando tells Pacino how to 
ferret out traitors and how 
much he regrets that his son 
(Pacino) has been drawn into 
the criminal life. 
When Coppola won the 
best screenplay Oscar (1972) 
for Godfather, he thanked 
Towne. Towne, who was 
born Robert Schwartz, got 
his own best screenplay 
Oscar for Chinatown (1974) 
and he wrote many other 
famous films. His niece is 
married to Simon Helberg, 
41 (Howard on The Big Bang 
Theory). 

CELEBRITY NEWS

NATE BLOOM COLUMNIST

ARTS&LIFE

IMDB

Marisa Abela

WIKIPEDIA

Joel Gray

GOLDEN GLOBES

John Marley

