Hollywood's Second Class Jewish Chicks & "Two Lovers"

Why is it that on the silver screen, the Jewish chick is always the undesirable one, the safe choice, the ugly/annoying one? Even women who are Jewish (or half) in real life play the “desirable gentile goddess” while the Jewish woman character is the second fiddle. It might have something to do with the self-hatred of many male Jews in Hollywood for whom the Jewish woman is exactly that stereotype; besides, many of them need to justify marrying outside of the faith. Or maybe it’s just the self-hatred.

I ask this because in “Two Lovers,” which hit nationwide release this week, Joaquin Phoenix plays a Jewish guy whose parents want him to date (and marry) the beautiful Jewish daughter (Vinessa Shaw), of the couple who are buying their business. But, instead, he prefers the hot blonde gentile woman (played by the half-Jewish Gwyneth Paltrow) who doesn’t want him. The Jewish woman as the safe, not-as-sexy-or-hot choice is nothing new in Hollywood. We’ve seen it in sooo many TV shows and flicks, like the 1972 incarnation of “The Heartbreak Kid” in which Elliott Gould Charles Grodin dumps the homely Jewish stereotype-ette for the hot (at that time) Cybill Shepherd.

Read my review of “Two Lovers” and note that this stereotype can also work if you reverse the roles of each sex. For example, in the far superior and much warmer “Crossing Delancey” (1988), Amy Irving (who was not Jewish, but reportedly converted to marry Steven Spielberg) plays a Jewish woman who was in love with the male version of the Gwyneth Paltrow character, an author who didn’t really love her back. At the urging of her grandmother, she dates (and falls in love with) the more nebbishe/geeky Peter Riegert.

“Delancey” was 21 years ago and I thought we’d advanced. But apparently, the same Jewish liberals who are embarrassed about the first of those two adjectives are still running the show. They just don’t like themselves any more. Plus, they’re still trying to get away from their mothers, apparently.

There are plenty of beautiful Jewish women (some even blonde) in Hollywood, including my cousin, actress Amelia Kingston (real name: Shannon Schlussel). Sad that Hollywood still wants you to think they’re the ugly, annoying caricatures in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

More sad that the ones doing the caricaturing are neither Muslims nor Nazis, but my own fellow co-religionists.

Note: This post has been updated. Both Vinessa Shaw and Joaquin Phoenix were incorrectly identified as not being Jewish. We regret the error and thank the readers who pointed this out.