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This entire chapter is devoted to the defining work of the Bock–Harnick partnership, Fiddler on the Roof (1964). It considers the musical’s origins in four stories by Sholem Aleichem, the process of adaptation in collaboration with writer Joseph Stein, the composition and evolution of the show’s songs, the history of the ethnic idioms employed by Bock to evoke Jewish culture, the creation of the main character, Tevye, by Zero Mostel, and the crucial role played by director-choreographer Jerome Robbins in the show’s development and unqualified success. Fiddler on the Roof played on Broadway for almost eight years between 1964 and 1972, longer than any previous Broadway show, and has remained vital and immensely popular, with Broadway revivals in 1976, 1990, and 2004 and countless productions around the world. The musical is also important for the serious issues it addresses pertaining to ethnic oppression and Jewish identity.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the values of theatrical liberalism caught the imagination of Jewish social scientists, who found it useful for explaining everyday behavior. At the same time, a newly emerging Jewish ethnic pride led to a celebration of “authentic” Jewishness in popular culture. This chapter explores the tension between these two impulses in the work of Erving Goffman, Sid Caesar's early television sketches, and the musicals My Fair Lady, Funny Girl, and Fiddler on the Roof. The debates over theatricality and authenticity reached a peak in the later 1960s and 1970s as theatrical activity spilled off of stages and screens, and boundaries between audiences and performers disintegrated.

Just as Mormons used musical theater to purchase whiteness in the early twentieth century, so too do Mormons begin in the 1960s to use musical theater to associate other racial minorities with white American values. By allowing certain groups the opportunity to voice whiteness through the conventions of musical theater, Mormons reimagined the genre as a tool to transform some minority members into exemplars of whiteness. This chapter first details the history of Mormonism in Hawaii and the musical theater productions at the Mormon-owned Polynesian Cultural Center that began there in 1963. Importantly, Mormons have long understood dark-skinned Polynesians, like themselves, to be a chosen people, rather than cursed--displaced Jews, in fact, whose origins are explained in The Book of Mormon. The chapter then analyzes the Mormon musical Life . . . More Sweet than Bitter, billed as a sequel to Fiddler on the Roof, for its narrative explicitly connecting Mormons to Judaism. The musical stage thus becomes for modern Mormons a reckoning device to demonstrate belonging and acceptance in exotic terms--“whitening” the dark-skinned Polynesians and demonstrating fluidity between Mormonism and Judaism.

The genesis of the present-day director-choreographer, starting with de Mille’s role as director-choreographer on Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ill-fated Allegro (1947), is explored. How she employed dance as a narrative and metaphorical device in support of the allegorical structure of the libretto, and how her artistic vision conflicted with her collaborators is investigated. De Mille’s directorial oeuvre is considered in the context of the male-dominated world of Broadway. Robbins’ ascendance as the most influential director-choreographer of twentieth-century musical theater is examined in a close analysis of his choreography for and direction of Pajama Game (1954 [co-directed with George Abbott, co-choreographer Bob Fosse]), Peter Pan (1954), Bells Are Ringing (1956 [in which he collaborated with Bob Fosse]), Gypsy (1959), and Fiddler on the Roof (1964). West Side Story (1957) will be discussed here as an anomaly in Robbins’ musical theater career. I argue that Robbins’ interest in movement innovation in relation to his choreography for the “Jets” in West Side Story (1957) differs from his previous musical theater works. In addition, I will examine Robbins’ West Side Story collaboration with co-choreographer Peter Gennaro.

This chapter offers continued reporting on the prolonged recession in Hollywood. United Artists became the last studio to invest in roadshow musicals by purchasing the rights to two 1960s Broadway hits: Fiddler on the Roof and Man of La Mancha. Fiddler went into production first, and was given a huge budget of $8 million. Guiding it as producer and director was Norman Jewison, who immersed himself in the project. Buoyed by a brilliant marketing campaign, Fiddler became a huge box office success. The film version of the Broadway musical Cabaret was made with a relatively tight budget, and was directed by Sweet Charity’s Bob Fosse. Opening just three months after Fiddler, and similarly blessed with shrewd marketing, Cabaret emerged as a spectacular and unlikely triumph. It had a unique structure, overcoming the artificiality that had been inherent in the film musical. It suggested new directions for the genre.

The epilogue connects tropes of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries of Jews, dance, and modernization with late twentieth- and twenty-first-century representations. Popular works such as Fiddler on the Roof (1964), Dirty Dancing (1987), Rebecca Goldstein’s Mazel (1995), Kerry Greenwood’s Raisins and Almonds: A Phryne Fisher Mystery (1997), Helene Wecker’s The Golem and the Jinni (2013), and Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver (2018) reveal the continued efficacy of the mixed-sex dancing trope in fictional representations of Yiddish-speaking Jews. These works are often less didactic than nineteenth-century predecessors; they envision more opportunities for female agency and frequently end happily. Not only is the dance floor a flexible space, the dance trope is a flexible metaphor for the concerns of Jewish communities in the face of cultural transitions. In other words, the trope of Jewish mixed-sex dancing charts the particularities of the Jewish “dance” with modern culture.

This chapter describes the musicals of the 1960s, including Frank Loesser's How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961), Mame (1966), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way To the Forum (1962), and Charles Strouse and Lee Adams' Golden Boy (1964). It discusses how the rise of the director-choreographer enabled that individual to conceive a work uniquely, “authoring” how it would look and sound as if he were writing it. Two notable superproductions validate the High Maestro's eminence: Hello, Dolly! and Fiddler on the Roof.