Let’s be Yentl

Please just don't say: I'm the all white cast.

Let's not be yentl.

Mandy Patinkin was gorgeous!

Ms. Streisand was happy to have MP as a co-star, but she never would let him sing.

On another note Yentl does show a slice of life from earl 1900's Poland for middle and bit above class Jewish families. Despite pogroms and other violence along with discrimination eastern and western Jews in Europe did manage.

Lwów pogrom (1918) and other horrors leading up to and through years of WWI and WWII shattered that world, and things would largely never be same in many areas of Europe for Jews.

Yentl dodges a bullet by going off to America. Avigdor, Hadass, and their families along with friends likely met horrible fates.

Mandy P never did look so good again as he did as Avigdor. I used to freeze frame his nude scene on my VCR years ago, I admit it. You can sort of see his balls as he sits down. He had a nice ass and a very nice hairy chest. The beard and the hairstyle (wig?) really suited him back then. He was great in "Evita", though not really sexy. Without facial hair, his looks don't stand out.

[quote]Let’s be Yentl

Hard Passover.

When Yentil finally comes clean to Avigdor it's like a trans telling a guy things aren't what they appear to be....

Avigdor's reaction is somewhat similar along those lines; disgust, anger, bewilderment... But at least finally comes acceptance of situation, and there isn't any violence. When Avigdor says "I thought there was something wrong with me..." one of the group that saw film with was rather slow on the uptake.

At least we got to see Mandy Patinkin nude, well almost.

MP always had sort of Jew-Fro going on when he was younger. Hair in Yentl could be real or a wig. It's hard to tell.

Yentl, Sunday In The Park With George (Broadway and television), Ragtime, The Princess Bride, The Knife (Broadway),1980's were good for Mandy Patinkin..

I'm the stunning AND the bravery.

I'm Babs, travelling to the safety of the New World and leaving all my friends behind to perish when the Nazis turn up.

Mandy Patinkin was cute in Yentl and on stage, but he's a first class psycho pain in the ass. Not just annoying, but certifiably nuts.

Avigdor, wait!

I'm the wig with short hair all feathered back that was supposed to make Yentl look like a boy, but instead made her look more like...well, a girl with short hair all feathered back.

I'm the wig she cuts instead of her own hair.

Who's that lady

I’m the bedsheets hung up for inspection (after the wedding night.)

I'm the candle.

I'm a 12 year-old me being dragged by my mother to the theater to see this on Christmas day. I can still hear my dad say to her as we left the house , "you're corrupting that boy".

We are the cookies that impress guests because nobody can guess how Hadass bakes us all the same size. We have a secret.

I’m the Jewish cocks attached to Mandy lookalikes that R18 sucked in college.

LOL, yes, my first boyfriend in college was Jewish and that's been my "type" ever since.

Whatever dreck this piece of trash summoned, and however many milion$$ it cost, it was ALL worth every cent, for Michael Musto's immortal, one-word review in the Village Voice: "MENTL"

I'm Avigdor's relieved, bemused smile when he gingerly pulls Anschel's pants down to cornhole him- only to discover 2 holes/no waiting.

I am the only Oscar statuette that was awarded, for the gorgeous Original Song Score by Michel Legrand and Marilyn and Alan Bergman, which was by far the best part of the movie.

Oh, Barbra's singing was pretty wonderful, too! I also think she did the scene where she finally told Avigdor she loved him very well.

One of the guys on my floor in dorms played soundtrack to Yentl to death.

if I never hear "Papa Can See You, Papa I Can Feel You, Papa Watch Me Fly" again it will be too soon.

Ship carrying Yentl was not sailing directly to New York as many assume.

You see in closing moments of final scene that the ship has a Star of David on bow. Such steamer ships did short range trips for Jews from Pale of Settlement (Pale in Poland is where Yentl lived, and action takes place IIIRC), to either Cherbourg, France or Southampton, England. Once upon arrival at those ports Jews either could apply for a visa to remain in said countries, or arrange to continue traveling to North America or elsewhere.

If Pale is the "old country" for one or both sides of your family, and they came to America before WWI or maybe after, chances are they took same route as Yentl.

Babs wasn't the only woman in drag when Yentl was filmed. An uncredited actress can be seen in a deleted scene where all male yeshiva students are riding in a horse drawn cart.

Another deleted scene shows Yentl and the local matchmaker.

I'm the popular tie-in T-shirt

I´m all the schmucks who do not get how a "Let´s be" thread works.

You are a shanda for the neighbourhood.

I’m the parody MAD magazine did with Mentl, Avigdorable, and Hadassah.

[quote] Pale in Poland is where Yentl lived,

Polish jews were 50% of the 6 million holocaust victims. Avigdor can't catch a break.

I’m the suspension of disbelief required to accept a 40-year old Streisand as a twentysomething young woman. It was bad enough that Yentl in the novel was a teenage girl.

I found Streisand MORE believable as the "boy" of Yentl than the rock singer in A Star is Born.

Before Yentl the movie there was a play on Broadway...

Isaac Bashevis Singer who wrote short story "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy", was less than thrilled with Barbara Streisand's film treatment. To say he blew is top might be putting it mildly.

Leaving aside Yentl was supposed to be a teenaged girl; (Ms. Streisand split that difference by making the character 26 in film), Mr. Singer's larger objections came about fact film was nearly all about Barbara Streisand, and less about Yentl.

He didn't like how Barbra's Yentl sang but that was the only way she could get studio funding for the film.

[quote] Please just don't say: I'm the all white cast.

Oh, I wouldn't dream of it.

Isaac Bashevis Singer was an old curmudgeony idiot. You sell your short story/play and don't accept that it will be changed for the movie? The press gave this guy and big platform for his complaints in 1983, unlike the hundreds of other writer who were not satisfied with the movie version of their work.

Remember when Anne Rice went very public with her disgust on the casting of Tom Cruise as LeStat? Then she reversed course and lavished very public praise on the (horrible) film. I wish there were a recording of the phone call between Anne and Warner Brothers that made her change her tune. I can just imagine all the "career-ending" threats and the promises of lawsuits!

I bet the Cult of Scientology threatened to rough her up, too.

Singer sold Streisand the rights to his story knowing she planned to adapt it into a musical. A big Hollywood Streisand musical. What did he expect? I recall a critic saying Singer didn't take the money and run: he took the money and stuck around to kvetch.

R42, if Streisand had made a small serious drama out of Yentl, Singer would have been bitching on why she DIDN'T make it into a big Hollywood musical.

Maybe she no to his cameo because she thought it would draw too much focus

I´m the photo spread in candy magazine from the 90ies .

I'm the gorgeous cinematography and art direction.

I'm fucking still here Barbra.

Oh all right R131, I can go along with a gag...

I'm the chicken that's being studied, and the question is whether to roast or not roast.

It's alright, it happens.... all the time.....

For those who never read the book....

I'm the disbelief.

I have to be suspended every time Barbra appears in a scene and everyone is convinced she's a man.

I'm the patriarchy.

I'm the other passengers on the ship arriving in New York harbour, every one of whom, by a remarkable coincidence, is standing stock-still and silent at this emotional moment in their lives . . .

Except for Yentl as she bawls her lungs out.

I'm the Yeshiva where everyone else looks like a notably stereotypically skinny, unattractive, shtetl Jew whose muscles are all located between his eyebrows and his hairline Yeshiva bucha (sp.?) except Avigdor, who, oddly, looks a well-built, hairy, sexually mature 35.

I'm the utter illogic of Hadass not telling her mother within days, rather than weeks or months, that she has yet to be deflowered by her new husband.

Even nice Jewish girls in Poland in the late 19th century weren't that innocent. Especially as they all knew that their first duty as wives was to bear children.

I’m the reputation of the movie. I would be considered a minor cinematic gem, if not for Barbra’s insistence on singing, which has relegated it as a Streisand folly and testament to her ego.

I'm the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where Yentl is undoubtedly headed when she stops singing and gets off the boat, and in her staggering naivete, thinks every shul and yeshiva will open its arms to a female student.

Because, Yentleh, things really aren't "different" here. Not for decades where you're concerned, and by the time they are, you'll be dead.

I´m Garbo.

“My God, I've never seen such a picture!” she commented enthusiastically. “That's the most talented woman that I've ever known or ever heard about.”

I'm Yentl's great grandchild who hears the family stories about her bubbie in drag and goes on to become Dr. Renee Richards.

R53

They were still awed by the sight of a lady in an orange outfit and funny fur hat, leaving the harbour on A tugboat. Geshraying to them about rain and parades.

I'm the NY Ziegfeld audiences, show after show who burst into applause at the final sung note and never left their seats until the dedication to Barbra's father appears.

I wanted to be “Avigdor, wait!”

Gorgeous young John Shea played "Avigdor" in Yentl on Broadway.

I'd have paid good money to see that show.

I'm the Papa who can't hear her because I'm dead.

I am the beautiful color brown seen in this movie.

I am the liquid foundation that all young Jewish boys apparently wear.

I'm the wads of cotton wool that Poppa has crammed in his ears to block out Bab's impassioned plea....

I'm Barbra's right side of the face which she shows for the first time in cinema history.

I'm the sacred books.....you know, for men.

I'm the story books.....you know, for women.

I'm the place where it's written.

I'm a herring. Not a carp!

I'm the story books that people pretend are sacred books.....you know, for men.

I'm the back of a ship where Barbra does "Don't Rain on My Parade" only it's called something else this time.

R60 LOL. I wondered when someone would notice that. Babs and Boat Arias - a can't miss combo!

Saw her do this at Madison Ssquare Garden and I have t admit it was a bit thrilling.

R76 That suit is hijus. It looks like something Diana would jave6worn in the 90s, but much better.

I KNOW I remember Diana somewhere in a pink and white checked suit . . . Only she could have carried it off with that matching hat.

But I digress . . .

I'm sure the songs were better in concert, divorced from the absurdity of their original cinematic settings.

I´m eldergay heaven.

The 41st Golden Globes featuring Babs,Cher,Shirl McLaine,Paul Newman and Ann Magret collecting awards.

[quote]Babs and Boat Arias - a can't miss combo!

Not always a boat...any form of transportation will do!

I'm the secret prophetic Kabbalah codes hidden deeply within the Talmud. If Yentl had been allowed another thirty or forty years to study she would have found within me "Avigdor is a putz".

I’m the mirrors, which are covered, so we can’t see the pain on our faces from the ripped clothes and sitting on crates.

R80

Beg to differ; if there is a "putz" in film Yentl, it was the person her/his self, not Avigdor.

Having spent better part of over 100 minutes lusting over Avigdor, Yentl never sees him for what he was; a Jewish man not that much different than others she knew.

Yentl "comes out" to Avigdor at first believing that being and freeing herself, she and the object of her love (and lust), will live happily ever after. *WRONG*

After Avigdor gets over his initial shock, horror and quite frankly bit of disgust he realizes his love (and also perhaps lust) for Yentl. For a while he thought to himself " there must be something wrong with me.." hinting at a homosexual attraction.

Soon as Avigdor announces he is no longer in love with Hadass, but Yentl and starts making plans (I'll do the thinking for both of us...), Yentl starts having second thoughts.

Yentl thought she was going to get her man *and* together they would have some sort of marriage of equals. That is a husband not like other Jewish men of her sect who among other things allow Yentl to study Talmud by his side, and also not confine her to traditional Jewish female roles. Good luck with that....

[quote] Isaac Bashevis Singer was an old curmudgeony idiot.

That Nobel Prize-winning moron!

Yentl the play or musical is still performed often enough in USA. But since Babs owns the rights, one assumes everything has to get by her, and she gets a bit of "something" for her trouble.

[quote]Yentl the play or musical is still performed often enough in USA. But since Babs owns the rights, one assumes everything has to get by her, and she gets a bit of "something" for her trouble.

She might still own the movie rights, some expire, she probably never had the stage rights.

Wasn't there talk of doing the musical version on Broadway? I guess Barbra thought if other movie musicals can be done that way why not hers if money can be made. Of course she would never think of starring in it since she hated the nightly grind of theatre.

I´m Nehemiah Persoff (age 102) and as i told Barbra at her AFI-Tribute.

"You´re like a real daughter to me: You never write,you never call."

I'm the way he makes me feel.

I’m surprised that Lea Michelle isn’t begging Barbra to fund a stage production staring her.

R86

Yentl as a musical on Broadway has been talked about for over twenty or thirty years, it's just not going to happen for many reasons.

First and foremost the book is just too weak for supporting a musical. We've seen what happens in film version when one actor dominates all musical numbers as well as plot. As a one woman show, yes that might work. But to pay a cast of actors union rates to basically stand around while the star (Yentl) sings every number, doesn't seem like a winner.

If Barbara Streisand does have stage rights, give you three guesses who she'd wish to play "Yentl..."

Ms. Streisand wanted to do "Yentl" just after film "Funny Girl". Things kept falling apart and or various obstacles popped up. Jon Peters (Ms. Streisand's then partner) kept at her to take various lucative concert gigs (Las Vegas, London, UK, etc....), but Babs would have none of it.

Wonder if Yentl would have been a better film had those twenty or more years hadn't passed. Barbara Streisand would have been of course 20 years younger, so playing a 17 or even 20 something year old girl/boy wouldn't have been such a stretch.

Hadn’t Barbra Streisand been trying to get this filmed since the seventies? Had she made it then, I could have believed her as a younger woman. But as a 41 year old woman passing for someone in their twenties, she was far from believable.

Yes there was an interview with Barbra about wanting to do Yentl after Funny Girl - maybe it was in her interview with Geraldo Rivera - where she told of her agents negative response to the idea. Too Jewish films in a row - oh no!

She writes in Just for the record… how she wanted to continue from FG to Yentl as R91 wrote

[quote] But as a 41 year old woman passing for someone in their twenties, she was far from believable.

I don't see what the problem is.

[quote]But as a 41 year old woman passing for someone in their twenties, she was far from believable.

How about a woman in her 50s passing as a young army nurse?

Cough south cough pacific cough Glenn

I'm Amy Irving excited to be the first female to have a screen kiss with Barbra Streisand.

The talk about how things would go bad for everyone made me think of Fiddler on the Roof. I read somewhere Rags was supposed to how life would have been for people like Tevye who migrated to the new world - not being the great life they had hoped it would be. Then I was thinking the oldest daughter went to Poland, and if they did not continue on the America like they were hoping to do, they most likely would not survive through the next generation. The second daughter who ended up in Siberia would have a good chance of not surviving the civil war. The third daughter who married the Christian would maybe be in dangers of being on the czarist side later - although I suppose her husband could have eventually become a revolutionary later, but he seemed like a more traditional czarist.

I´m the Oscar snub.

I'm the cheap ring Amy got from Babs to give up her rights to appear on the soundtrack album.

It sounds like the stage Yentl is based on the book, not the movie. Even the songs are different.

I'm Barbra crying sexism after Robert Redford won the Oscar for directing Ordinary People and Warren Beatty won for directing Reds.

I'm Jon Peters shown the gate by Barbra after Polygram Pictures of which he was co-president passed on funding the film.

I am the songs, i am sung only by Barbara.

[quote]I'm Barbra crying sexism after Robert Redford won the Oscar for directing Ordinary People and Warren Beatty won for directing Reds.

Actually she didn't but could have. She directed three movies that earned 14 Academy Award nominations including a Best Picture but she wasn't even nominated. How the Academy can nominated a film Best Picture without the director, or a director nominated without a Best Picture never makes sense.

[quote]How the Academy can nominated a film Best Picture without the director, or a director nominated without a Best Picture never makes sense.

It happens all the time. Sometimes the parts are greater than the whole, or vice versa. If Director and Picture had to automatically go hand-in-hand, then the Academy would eliminate the Director category and instead include him/her as one of the Best Picture nominees, but they don't.

While I don't doubt that sexism was involved, I personally find Streisand's directing efforts to be quite pedestrian. Compare Prince of Tides with Ordinary People, both family dramas. Both films could have easily been Lifetime Originals, but Redford elevated the material into a damn fine film, while Prince of Tides was often times trite and overblown. I'm surprised it was even nominated.

OTOH, if a female celebrity had directed utter dreck like Raised By Wolves instead of Kevin Costner, I highly doubt it would have won the awards it did. So yes, I also agree that sexism has hurt Streisand's Oscar count. If male actors can win for directing crap, why shouldn't she as well?

I meant Dances With Wolves, not Raised By Wolves

I've never seen this clip. Barbra talks of the motif of crossing water as a motif.

I'm Marilyn Bergman giving the finger to the Academy for snubbing Barbra when accepting my Oscar for Best Original Song Score.

Let’s eat lentils, it’s more fun!

[quote]Hadn’t Barbra Streisand been trying to get this filmed since the seventies? Had she made it then, I could have believed her as a younger woman.

I'm all the many '60s teased falls Barbra would have worn as the young Jewish boy from an earlier time. And the lacquered fingernails and Egyptian eyeliner.

I'm Alan and Marilyn Bergman glancing at our well-worn rhyming dictionary that Steve told us about.

We're looking to see if we can squeeze one more rhyme into an already over-rhymed line of lyrics.

I'm the cut song The Moon and I.

Has Lee Daniels announced the remake yet?

I'm Donna Summer, who sang "Papa, Can You Hear Me" at the 1984 Oscars. Barbra specifically chose me to perform it, and I delivered the goods.

I'm Barbra at the 1984 Oscars, refusing to sing "Papa Can You Fucking Hear Me?" because I'm sulking over not getting nominated.

I’m the close of the 1984 Oscars after the cameras are turned off and Barbra and Donna do a rousing rendition of Enough is Enough (No More Tears) for the remaining audience.

I’m the gauze that bound bab’s breasts. I’ve…seen things.

I'm the townspeople inexplicably encouraging what seems to be a pre-pubertal 13 year old boy to get married.

I'm tomatoes. No, I'm potatoes.

I'm the problem of what should she do with her hair.

I'm this chair.

I'm that window.

I'm the way the light streams in.

I'm the matched set, from France, yet.

I'm the river of surprise flowing through Yentl's body.

I'm Papa's ears.

Yes I can fucking hear you, all day, all night! Shut the fuck up already and let me rest in peace!!

[quote]Ms. Streisand wanted to do "Yentl" just after film "Funny Girl".

Is there any documentation of this outside of what she said in the late 1970s-80s? I don't believe it for a second, it was part of Streisand's "clever" marketing campaign. Some of you people are extremely gullible.

R128

From NYT

"It wasn’t until 1983, with “Yentl,” that she finally got the chance to direct. She’d bought the rights to the Isaac Bashevis Singer short story “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy” in 1970. Her original vision was for a nonmusical, black-and-white art film, but “the only way I could get ‘Yentl’ made was to sing in it,” she says."

However LA Times says....

"Streisand bought the rights to the story in 1968, the year she made her Oscar-winning film debut in “Funny Girl.” However, she was told that audiences didn’t want to see her playing another Jewish character. But Streisand felt that it was a “universal story of the limits that are put upon a woman -- just because she wanted an education, she had to dress as a male. It was as simple as that.”

Ms. Streisand's website puts year at 1968 when she optioned film rights for "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy".

Funny Girl both on Broadway (1964) and film (1968) were huge hits. Barbara Streisand was a hot property and it seems quite logical that she would have bought film rights to Yentl at that time.

Wasn’t Singer a neighbor in Brooklyn or something?

R132

I.B. Singer like scores if not hundreds of other Eastern European Jews settled on Upper West Side of Manhattan upon arriving in USA, and that is where he remained for most of his life until moving to Florida.

Barbara Streisand went from Brooklyn to Manhattan (west 40's), then to a cold water flat on Third Avenue.... There would be other residences/apartments in Manhattan including a townhouse on East 80th street, but that was Upper East Side.

Isaac Bashevis Singer was firmly part of Jewish Upper West Side depicted in films like Portnoy's Complaint, Harry and Tonto, and other films/shows. It slowly begun vanishing by 1980's but a sizable Jewish population still manages to hold on.

I'll be I.B. Singer not holding back in the "Times":

"I must say that Miss Streisand was exceedingly kind to herself. The result is that Miss Streisand is always present, while poor Yentl is absent. Was going to America Miss Streisand's idea of a happy ending for Yentl? What would Yentl have done in America? Worked in a sweatshop 12 hours a day where there is no time for learning? Would she try to marry a salesman in New York, move to the Bronx or to Brooklyn and rent an apartment with an ice box and a dumbwaiter? This kitsch ending summarizes all the faults of the adaptation. It was done without any kinship to Yentl's character, her ideals, her sacrifice, her great passion for spiritual achievement. "

R134

And I.B. Singer was correct. There are reasons why in short story "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy" things end in a bit of disaster.

Mr. Singer was also correct in what was Anshul doing to do in America? What shul would have Anshul on some sort of equal to the men. What Ashkenazi man would have Ansul for a wife? Not one observant and pious enough that studied Talmud all day.

Again watch Hester Street which depicts Lower East Side of Manhattan at about same time. That little world of Jewish immigrants reflected various roles open to women within community at that time. Anshul fit none of them by temperament or anything else.

Anshul could marry a goyim who didn't care what she read/studied long as she didn't let thing slip in her primary role as wife and mother. Or maybe marry a Jewish man of western European background (reformed) who again indulged her studying . But that still would leave the whole wife, mother and housekeeping bit, none of which Anshul showed any great inclination or promise.

Not marrying was an option for women in early 1900's America. But Jew or gentile that was a hard lot for most women. Without the protection of a husband (or a wealthy family) life would have been very difficult financially and socially.

I’m a piece of sky.

I´m Jennifer Holliday at the Oscars - feeling it.

[quote]Anshul could marry a goyim.

Or a gayim.

I'm the Mad magazine parody.

Who cares what kind of life would have awaited Yentl in America? That wasn’t the point. Her journey was more symbolic. The movie ends on the boat, so that’s where the story ends. We don’t analyze what comes next in the same way that we don’t wonder if the lovers actually did live happily ever after in romantic comedies or fairytales.

R140 Yentl avoid a life of drudgery, prostitution, and impecuniousness in patriarchic America when the boat sank near Newfoundland.

[quote]Barbara Streisand went from Brooklyn to Manhattan (west 40's), then to a cold water flat on Third Avenue

Her 3rd Ave apt was on East 67th. The Central Park West duplex apt was on 92nd. In 1970 she bought a brownstone on 80th and Madison, at the top of the market, to renovate. Never lived there, and Warner boss Steve Ross arranged for the company to take it off her hands at a good price. It pays to be a star.

Rene Jordan's biography of Barbra published in 1976 was I believe the first book written about her. In it he writes about Yentl as a film project that was on her agenda for a while but dropped. He includes it as one of the examples of chances for her to grow and expand as an artist but finally writes" Who would lay down hard cash to make a period film, with transvestite undertones, even with Streisand as box office guarantee?"

I'm the much better illuminated remake of Yentl.

If Yentl were being made today, I wonder if a certain segment of society would have a strong opinion as to the "type" of actor to be cast in the lead role....

According to Barbra, she got the greenlight to do the film by dressing up as a man and waiting in Jon Peters home. When Peters came in, he thought there was an intruder and ran to call the police. When he realized it was Barbra, he told her she should do the movie.

I'm the reference in The Simpsons episode "Selma's Choice": A scene where Marge, caring for a sick Homer, offers some rental tapes, Boxing's Greatest Weigh-Ins and Yentl. Homer asks what Yentl is and Marge tells him it's about a bookish young Jewish woman who poses as a man so she can go to rabbinical school. When Homer says Yentl sounds great, Marge concludes that he's delirious.

If that's at all true, R146 (and I'm extremely skeptical), then she clearly ditched whatever she did to fool Jon Peters and went instead with a simple feathered back short hair wig and eyeglasses for the movie.

[quote]According to Barbra,

R148, any sentence that begins with those words should be taken with a large grain of salt.

Peters was totally against Babs doing Yentl because it would not appeal to the youth audiences. He was a low class literate who wanted her to play modern characters in modern films. How about a rock singer?

[quote]According to Barbra, she got the greenlight to do the film by dressing up as a man and waiting in Jon Peters home. When Peters came in, he thought there was an intruder and ran to call the police. When he realized it was Barbra, he told her she should do the movie.

That's an adorable story.

And just as believable as Barbra's father in heaven making the sun shine for her big crane shot across the St. Charles bridge when she asked him.

DRESSING the part before you HAVE the part is not a guarantee that you will GET the part.

I'm TradiTION!!!!

Oh, wait . . . sorry, wrong film.

I'm the irony of the last line of Anshel/Yentl's sad internal monologue at her first dinner in Hadass's home:

"No wonder he loves her/What else could he do? If I were a man/I would, too."

Because in the original story, it's Hadass Yentl wants, not Avigdor.

Yentl is a transgendered woman who wants to live as a man, and in the story, I believe, after coming to America, she lives the rest of her life in the identity of Anshel.

But that wouldn't have been quite as gorgeous a role for Babs, would it?

I'm the unfairness of it all. Why do the really sexy guys always go for women like Hadass instead of brainy, argumentative women who dress like men?

[quote]Yentl is a transgendered woman who wants to live as a man, and in the story, I believe, after coming to America, she lives the rest of her life in the identity of Anshel.

You're dreaming, You're dreaming , You're dreaming

Nice try, R153, but no.

R153

Entire short story is posted in R50 link; defy you to find anything I.B. Singer wrote to justify your views.

Actually, I'm not dreaming. Yentl does live the rest of her life as Anshel after the divorce, she is transgender, and it's Avigdor she loves but as male to male. What I got wrong was the same sex issue.

I went back and reviewed the story, which is called Yentl The Yeshiva Boy. The story makes clear that Yentl had a "male soul".

It wasn't just that she wanted to study instead of cook, clean, and bear children.

She felt herself to be a male. And that's what Streisand threw out: the whole transgender aspect of the original story, so she could give the audience a more appealing hetero love story with a feminist heroine. Singer's story was more complex and mystical.

Streisand cheapened and dumbed it down to suit herself.

R158

Women living as men wasn't unheard of in real life. A few famous cases occurred prior to 1900's.

Anshel did not want to change her sex, nor any of the other claptrap about being a "woman trapped in a man's body".

Problem was Anshel wanted to remain a female, but partake in sphere of Jewish life that was forbidden to her and reserved only for men. Her lack of domestic skills, feminine qualities and traits along with finding role assigned to women (wife, mother, housekeeping) an anathema wasn't unheard of either.

Anshel was like some trans in a way because she created her own particular Hell on earth. Now known as Yentl and enjoying fruits of "passing", how could she return to being a woman again? All the things she wanted would once again be denied.

Note in book I.B. Singer only says that Yentl continues to live out her life as Anshel, we don't know know how happily or not balance of her life was.

In film Yentl immigrates but back as Anshel where plot summary tells us she could go off and study Talmud in USA being herself (a woman).

[quote]She felt herself to be a male. And that's what Streisand threw out: the whole transgender aspect of the original story, so she could give the audience a more appealing hetero love story with a feminist heroine. Singer's story was more complex and mystical. Streisand cheapened and dumbed it down to suit herself.

Seems to me that there was a movie that did explore those ideas, but for the life of me I can't recall the title. Alfred Boobs? Albert Nipples? Something like that. I think Janet McTeer was in it and got a nomination.

I'm Steven Spielberg falling in love with Amy Irving when I watched a sneak peek screening.

R161

That bitch cost me $100 million USD.

Fucking California divorce laws...

[quote]Streisand cheapened and dumbed it down to suit herself.

How about Streisand cheapened and dumbed it down to suit the audience. Transexuals (the trem used in the 80's) were not embraced and supported as today.

'I'm David Brenner who Barbra resembles when she plays Anshel.

Would you PLEASE take that fucking poster down? I can't stand looking at her "soulful" mug.

Thank you.

[quote]The story makes clear that Yentl had a "male soul".

Translation for the very dumb: that means a woman who is smart and capable. People didn't know that way back when, and used to say things like, "she's as smart as a man!."

R166 - The quote is directly from Singer's original story (see infra). Yes, no shtetl housewife had smarts or ability, right?

'Her father Reb Todros, may he rest in peace, during many bedridden years had studied Torah with his daughter as if she were a son. He told Yentl to lock the doors and drape the windows, then together they pored over the Pentateuch, the Mishnah, the Gemara, and the Commentaries. She had proved so apt a pupil that her father used to say:

“Yentl—you have the soul of a man.”

“So why was I born a woman?”

“Even Heaven makes mistakes.”

There was no doubt about it, Yentl was unlike any of the girls in Yanev—tall, thin, bony, with small breasts and narrow hips. On Sabbath afternoons, when her father slept, she would dress up in his trousers, his fringed garment, his silk coat, his skullcap, his velvet hat, and study her reflection in the mirror. She looked like a dark, handsome young man."

Yentl believed she had been mistakenly born in a woman's body, and in the story she and Avigdor after he discovers the truth acknowledges that the love between them is as man to man, not disguised woman to man.

Take your simplistic platitudes somewhere else; Singer's story's nuances are clearly too hard for you.

Isaac Bashevis Singer was born in Poland in 1903. Enough said.

I'm the cinnamon in the baked apples. I make them smell good.

[quote]"she's as smart as a man!."

That is one of the things that stuck out for me when reading Dracula -- Mina was often described in such a fashion, or smart or level headed for a woman. There was no need to do that for Winona's movie version of the character....

I’m Irene Cara side-eyeing the posters in this thread who keep asserting Yentl won the Best Song Oscar.

I'm Jerome Robbins warning Barbra not to include the bottle dance in the wedding scene.

I'm Bab's version of Diana Ross's insistence on playing a teenaged Dorothy in the 1978 film version of "The Wiz" musical.

I'm the menopause that hits the young boy midway through the film.

I´m the gold reflector Barbra used to hold when the camera was on Amy in their scenes-for good lightning.

I'm Hadass and Avigdor's son, Anshel. I don't make an appearance in the film because the egotistical bitch director wanted to film her big "Don't Rain On My Parade/Let's Hear It For Me" number on the boat with an implausible ending.

I’m hungry after seeing this thread and going t9 make some lentil soup.

R168 - And Shakespeare was born in Stratford in the 16th century. He still managed to make a few sapient observations on human nature.

Homer also managed a view and he was born a few millenia earlier.

Singer, born in Poland in 1903, managed a half century ago to highlight the plight of someone like Yentl, with whom history has appeared to catch up recently.

He gets credit for that, not a contemptuous assumption that judges Singer for thinking that only a woman with a male persona could possibly be smart and capable.

Because, as we all know, women raising families in the ghetto in Poland in the early 20th century didn't need smarts and capability to survive, right?