Was Elvis Jewish?

According to a book by Elaine Dundy, ELVIS AND GLADYS, he was. I always suspected. The obsession with karate, the white jumpsuits, his love of the traditional Jewish meal of peanut butter and banana sandwiches – he might as well have been Larry David with sideburns.

The book claims that Elvis’ grandmother on his mother’s side was Jewish. So his mother, Gladys, was Jewish, and thus, following the birth line according to Jewish law, so was the King.

This now explains all the Cadillacs.

And why he was “Crying in the Chapel.”

Elvis’ middle name was Aron, which the book suggests was just a misspelling of Aaron, the brother of Moses in the Bible. Jews are usually better at spelling so I question that claim.

Elvis had uncles named Sidney and Jerome. That alone does not make them Jewish, but if they annoyed young Elvis at Thanksgiving and told endless stories about going to high school with Milton Berle then you can confirm it.

Gladys was proud of her Jewish ancestry, the book attests. The fact that this was not mentioned in any of the five hundred other books about Elvis must mean her pride did not extend to two separate sets of dishes.

When she died, Elvis put a Star of David on her tombstone to honor her Jewish heritage.

Apparently, his parents told him to downplay his Jewish ancestry because of all the anti-Semitism. (In the South? Really?) I imagine his record company probably felt the same way, although it was okay for the public to think he was black.

The book says at one point he lived in an apartment below a rabbi and he would confer with him on occasion. Religious ethical questions like should he sleep with Delores Hart?


Elvis wore a piece of jewelry called a “Chai” which contained Hebrew words and the Star of David. Here too, this was not a convincing argument for his Jewishness because everyone who wore a gaudy jumpsuit in the ‘70s wore a Chai. It was just part of the look.

A stronger argument would be that he had no chemistry with Mary Tyler Moore who played a nun in his movie CHANGE OF HABIT. And the tagline for that classic was “When the King of Rock meets the Queen of Comedy romance rules.” Well, it didn’t. ‘Nuff said.

Jewish numerology is very significant. There is a Jewish holiday called Lag BaOmer. Literally, the name of the holiday means the "33rd day of the Omer." Elvis made 33 movies. That’s both eerie and conclusive.

By the way, ELVIS AND GLADYS is not the only book to contend the King was Jewish. (Note: ELVIS AND GLADYS is not to be confused with PETE AND GLADYS, a sitcom from the ‘60s starring gentiles.) There’s a book called SCHMELVIS: IN SEARCH OF ELVIS PRESLEY'S JEWISH ROOTS by Jonathan Goldstein & Max Wallace. But unlike Dundy’s book and this post, they don’t take the subject seriously.

So was Elvis actually Jewish? Throughout history Jewish scholars have argued over everything else, why not this too? I’d like to think he was, if for no other reason than Nixon would be spinning in his grave for befriending him.

UPDATE:  Tomorrow's post will appear a little later than usual.  I'll scribble down my first thoughts on the Emmy nominations, which will be announced tomorrow morning. 

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My network notes for UNDER THE DOME

I don’t get it. Every time we've done a series we’ve gotten a shit-ton of network notes. And usually they were very specific.

“Where’s the cat? Wouldn’t the cat be in the bedroom at night?”

“Is there something healthier than cookies she can pack in her kids’ lunch boxes?”

“Did they eat the pizza? They had that big fight in Shakeys but no one ate the pizza they ordered.” (We once got that actual note)

We’d get twenty of these an episode. For a pilot I once had a network guy open an on-set refrigerator to approve the contents.

But, as they say, “that’s the business we chose.” It’s part of the process, and we deal with it.

And then I started watching UNDER THE DOME. Holy shit! This is the most absurd thing I’ve ever seen. This is all okay with everybody? No notes? Well, as someone who had to substitute an apple for cookies and stick a cat in the bedroom, please allow me to give UNDER THE DOME some notes the network apparently felt were too minor to mention.

How do people breathe encased in a dome?

Wouldn’t it get a little hot under the dome? "Big Jim" wears that 1978 brown leather jacket he got at Monkey Wards all day long.

Since the dome is invisible can’t the town communicate with the outside world by just holding up notes? And the outside world could brief them the same way. Chester Mill doesn’t have to use a scratchy ham radio to get info. You'd think they were tracking Amelia Earhart.

"Junior" is afraid his girlfriend, Angie is going to break up with him so his solution is to kidnap her and chain her to a bed in a fallout shelter. First off, they’re under a dome. It’s not like she can leave town. Secondly, that’s your best plan?

And third – how does she go to the bathroom? She’s chained to a bed for three days.

Okay, fourth – isn’t anyone in the town concerned that she’s missing?

Wait – fifth – if you’re being held captive by a psycho, the best way to disarm him might not be to lie and say you fucked some other guy and loved it. In the eight times that Jack Bauer’s daughter was kidnapped in 24 she never did that.

Along those lines, the crazy cop who accidentally shoots his partner when the bullet ricochets off the dome (oops on that one), but breaks out of jail and flees. To where? What’s he thinking? Even in the forest there’s only so much real estate. It’s easier to get lost in the BIG BROTHER backyard.

There’s no mass panic?  You've just been sealed in by something unknown for an unknown period of time.  Just one rogue cop finds this disturbing? There’s no looting or runs on grocery stores? Even the diner stays open. People sit at the counter and sip their coffee and enjoy their pie just like it’s just another sleepy Thursday.  Order that special of the day now because when they're out of it they are OUT of it.   

Two townsfolk are in the diner when the African-American woman looking for her white daughter shows them a picture. The redneck says condescendingly, “How can that be?” The woman explains she and another woman are the parents. He’s very bemused and dismissive. Did anyone notice that his buddy sitting next to him is also African-American? And might that gentleman react? 

Does every DJ on CBS have to look like Venus Fly Trap?

Wouldn’t this dome be sort of a national story? Wouldn’t it be just an absolute circus outside the dome with news and camera crews reporting constantly? 12,000 TV trucks converge on the Zimmerman trial but not one is outside a giant dome that has enclosed an entire town?

There’s a big house fire. Smoke seen for miles. A day after the fire is put out the smoke is completely gone. Wouldn’t it be trapped in the dome and the whole town would be smoky?

Would someone in town, even one person, realize that they’re in for a calamitous water shortage since rain from the sky would bounce off the top of the dome?

The reverend accidentally starts this fire by lighting a document and throwing it in a wastebasket next to drapes. Within five seconds the entire room is engulfed in flames and the reverend is too. We see fire on him. A half-hour later the house is still burning. The reverend is rescued (he’s still alive?), and miraculously he’s not seriously burned. Are you saying that if you spread the word of Jesus you are fire retardant?

When smoking hot redhead, Julia starts to suspect the mysterious stranger (with the mysterious name), Barbie is maybe ominous and scary, is it a good idea to still let him stay in your house?

Julia goes through his backpack when he’s taking a shower (you townies might want to ration that water) and finds the marked map of the town in like a second.  That's like bank robbers walking around with schematics of a Wells Fargo in their pocket.   You think he might hide the map a little better?

Barbie finds his missing dog tags. Julia asks where they were. Instead of the thousand-and-one places he could have said, he picks the bathroom in her house where she could easily catch him on his lie.

So all the teens decide to go to the one kid’s house with a generator so they could party?

And is one of the kids just a tad too stupid when he thinks he can squeeze through the dome because it’s water-soluble and we’re all 70% water?

The idea that there’s this invisible force field and people can’t leave the town – didn’t they already do that on ONCE UPON A TIME? And LOST? And THE SIMPSONS MOVIE?

Since the Chief of Police knew his pacemaker fluttered when he even got near the dome, why did he touch it? Of course it exploded.

That was a great effect when the dome came down and split a cow in half. Did they eat the half of cow?

UPDATE:  Thursday morning I'll post my thoughts on the Emmy nominations.  I'm not expecting one so I won't be biter. Okay... maybe just a little.

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Matt Harvey asks New Yorkers what they think about Matt Harvey

Matt Harvey is starting tomorrow for the NL in the All-Star Game. Here's a great bit from tonight's Jimmy Fallon show, where Matt Harvey asks New Yorkers about Matt Harvey.

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Warning: Proud Parent Alert

Yes, today I’m going to be one of those annoying parents that corners you and shows you endless photos of their baby. You want to say, “All babies that age look like that -- mini Uncle Festers -- so what?” but instead you just politely smile and think of ways to extricate yourself from the situation. “Listen, I just got a text that a meteor is landing on this spot in thirty seconds so I really should scoot.”

And then there are the pet owners who insist on showing you endless photos of their dog. “Oh, here’s Bluto with a piece of our couch in his mouth. Isn’t he just the cutest thing?” NO. And neither is the shot of him sleeping on the bed with your wife.

At least on Facebook you can scroll through these precious snapshots of toddlers wearing oversized sunglasses and cats wearing oversized sunglasses. And you can lie and say your server is down so you couldn’t watch the adorable YouTube videos of Chloe/Britney/Jason/Fido’s first potty triumph.

But today, I’m one of those parents. Last night the first produced show my daughter Annie and her partner Jon Emerson wrote aired on the Disney Channel. GOOD LUCK CHARLIE. Here’s their credit. Tell me it isn’t the cutest most adorable credit you’ve ever seen! Thanks for the indulgence. And congratulations again to Annie & Jon.   Next up: a new Nick at Nite show called INSTANT MOM. Their episode films Thursday.

Here's what Janel Maloney and Aaron Sorkin said about first credits on the WEST WING commentary track.

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Emmy categories I'd like to see

This year's Emmy nominations will be announced Thursday morning. Can you stand the suspense? Ratings for the show have been dwindling over the years. In an effort to stem that tide the Academy has wisely chosen Neil Patrick Harris to host. Remember a few years ago when they had a committee of reality show hosts do it? Neil will try to be better than Ryan Seacrest, the hilarious Jeff Probst, and Heidi Klum. I have a good feeling.

The Academy has also considered changing some of the categories, making them more relevant. Here are a few that I propose. The ATAS is welcome to use them. All I ask in return is a lifetime achievement award to be presented by Heidi Klum.

Best plausible sci-fi drama
Best implausible sci-fi drama
Best series that never aired on any network
Best series only on the air because it’s owned by the network
Best actor with plastic surgery
Best series that has changed timeslots so often you don’t even know it’s still on the air
Best series regular who got killed this season
Best series regular you wish would be killed next season
Best variety, musical or documentary that doesn’t have three pledge breaks in it
Best screener DVD from a show that never in a million years would get nominated
Best director of single-handheld-jilting-nausea-producing-camera show
Best director who can handle Mandy Patinkin
Best former sitcom ingénue who now plays someone’s mother
Best actress playing the thankless best friend
Best actress who always thought television was a comedown and is now lucky to be working
Best guest appearance by an actress just out of rehab
Best actress from a series in that gray area of not really a comedy or a drama
Best performance by an actor speaking nonsensical procedural gobbledygook
Best actor who replaced the original actor who was fired for testing poorly
Best actor getting by strictly on his looks
Best series that should have won instead of MAD MEN.
Best made-for-tv movie originally made for theatrical release but couldn’t get a distributor
Best reality show without Tom Bergeron
Best reality show where people don’t bathe (includes ‘American Idol’)
Best canceled series
Best half-hour comedy vagina jokes writer
Special Governors Award to the Golden Globes Announcement

As always, I'll be reviewing the Emmy Awards ceremony later this summer.  Good luck to all the hopefuls.

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A writer's tragedy

From Technodirt.com comes this story that is the screenwriter’s version of the Darwin Awards. Apparently some guy wrote three screenplays (with the delightful titles of COLOR OF TULIP, BLOOD ON ICE, and – keeping with the theme – BLOOD ON SEVEN HILLS). He claims that at one point he was in negotiations to sell the screenplays for $2.7 million. But the talks went nowhere. So he ended up with nothing. Ohh??? There’s no middle ground between $2.7 and nothing?? But that’s not the point.

He later signed up for DSL and the technician installing it “cleaned up some unused items on his desktop” which included -- oh no! - the screenplays.

Oooops!

Data recovery was only partially successful in retrieving them. So the guy sued, claiming the screenplays were worth MILLIONS. He lost. And the jury felt he was also at fault FOR NOT MAKING A BACK UP OF SUCH “VALUABLE” FILES!

Ooooops!

I also question why the skeesix didn’t have a single printed copy. How did he submit them to these potential million dollar buyers? Even if a PDF file was submitted would perhaps one of the eager recipients bother to make a printed copy? These producers who had millions of dollars to just throw around couldn't afford a Xerox machine? Or send a guy down to Kinkos?

Always back up your scripts!!!

I do it every time I finish a writing session. I load it onto a thumb drive. I also have the nifty new Mac Time Capsule that backs up my hard drive constantly, and I drop a copy in Dropbox.  (If you don't have Dropbox you should!) 

Nothing’s going to stop me from breaking the bank when I sell my latest screenplay -- BLOOD ON MAPQUEST DIRECTIONS TO PISMO BEACH.

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Friday Questions

Here are some Friday Questions for your weekend pleasure.

Ike Iszany asks:

When you do a show do you plan for the shorter syndication edit? Do you pad in two minutes you can lose?

First off, you have to be on a big hit to even be thinking about syndication. So in the first few seasons syndication is just a glimmer in your eye.

We never pad. You are allowed to come in a minute or so short. The network is happy to fill that time with promos. We try to come in short if possible because it makes the show tighter and should we be lucky enough to go into syndication less has to be edited out.

In addition to editing, some shows in syndication today are sped up – just a tiny bit but sometimes it’s enough to really throw the rhythm off.

This is a trick often used in Top 40 radio. Stations would speed up records. If you take a 45 rpm record and play it at 47 it sounds just a little bit brighter and faster. But competing stations would then up the ante and increase their speed to 48 or 49 rpm, and all of a sudden the damn records change keys and start sounding ridiculous.

Syndicators have some process where they can drop frames and in theory the change is imperceptible but it’s not. Just as a Carly Simon record sped up sounds like the Chipmunks.

Lenny Parker wonders:

There is this common belief that query letters are a waste of time because nobody pays any attention to them.

From your experience, do you believe this is true?

I assume you mean to agents and managers. I think there’s still some value in them if you (a) keep them very short, and (b) have something in them that will catch the reader's eye. Examples: You’ve won a screenwriting contest, you’ve had a play produced by a prestigious theatre group, you’re from Krypton.

But long letters detailing your desire or sharing your life story will probably not be read and the agent may decide to not read your script either. So again, brevity is the key.

From Dave Bittner:

How often does a specific character trait get dropped during the run of a series? Specifically, in the first season of Frasier, Daphne possessed psychic powers, but this seemed to have been dropped over time. Did it simply play out?

Yes, sometimes character traits either play themselves out, get to be too one-note, or prove not to be as popular as you had hoped. And the good showrunners are the ones who are willing to make mid-course corrections.

The FRASIER writers were always looking to give their characters more dimension and Daphne proved to be a much richer character than was originally conceived so the psychic trait was really not needed.

Another example is Klinger on MASH. Once he went through every dress in the entire Twentieth Century Fox studio wardrobe department the writers decided to move on with him.

But characters need to evolve.  They lose traits along the way but gain traits as well.  

And finally, jake wants to know:

Will we continue to have baseball announcers with the kind of civic and team identities that Vin Scully, Dave Niehaus, Harry Caray, Jack Buck, Ernie Harwell (and many others) have/had? Or will things go the ESPN way, deep sixing the Jon Millers in favor of anodyne announcers but prominent ex-player analysts.

Unfortunately yes. The play-by-play trend is clearly towards young, generic, inexpensive, safe announcers. Storytelling and showmanship seems to be a lost art. As one listener put it, "It's like they all sound like they went to the same 'Baseball Broadcaster School.'"

It’s easier to just call play-by-play and fill the down time with statistics, and since that’s what teams are hiring, it’s understandable that young broadcasters coming up don’t feel the need to develop a unique style.

So will the new generation of announcers continue the tradition of identifiable voices for each city? No. They’ll all sound pretty much interchangeable. And that will be a shame.

But if you’re a young announcer, I will just say this: you can go down this path and you might even achieve a certain level of success. But if you hope to someday be GREAT you have to somehow distinguish yourself. Because if there are ten other guys who can do your job just as well and they’re younger or cheaper, what do you think is going to happen?

Of course that’s my philosophy in general: Strive to be the BEST in whatever you do. In today’s marketplace EVERY field is a competitive field.

What’s your question? Please leave it in the comments section.

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