When Julie Andrews Sang in Yiddish

To conclude with something lighter: Lior Zaltzman has discovered a scene from the 1967 Hollywood musical Thoroughly Modern Millie in which the protagonist, played by Julie Andrews, sings in Yiddish at a Jewish wedding. The song is a medley of traditional tunes, and Andrews’s pronunciation is reasonably good. André Previn, a Jew born in Berlin, arranged the film’s songs, and the famed composer Elmer Bernstein, the child of East European Jewish immigrants, wrote the score, so it’s possible either of them came up with the idea. In any case, the scene suggests a time when American Jews were fully part of New York City’s cultural mosaic, and such scenes didn’t raise too many Jewish or Gentile eyebrows.