Jolson, Judy, and Jewish memory

Judaism, Fall, 2001 by Irving Saposnik

As a "rainbow hustler," Harburg introduced a Jewish vision into the drab Ozlandscape. In her signature song, Dorothy defines her dreams. Her rainbow bridge is reminiscent of the emigration from Eastern Europe, the crossing of the Brooklyn and Williamsburg bridge, the journey from poverty to success, the making of an American writer from a Yiddish-speaking immigrant boy. Always hopeful yet ever doubtful, Harburg set his wistful words to Arlen's plaintive tune, and both a song and a star were born. (22)

Harburg's own "rainbow" was the Yiddish theater, where he learned the art of Jewish dreams. Behind the stylized bravura of the actors, behind the mask of comedy Jewish aspiration and historical experience often clashed. Wrenched from an Eastern Europe that was home but never haven, thrust into an America that was haven but never quite home, the Jewish immigrants were cut in two the moment they landed at Ellis Island. Rooted without roots, they at best could long for an irretrievable past while in fear of an uncertain future. Literally and figuratively ever on the move, they cried at their misfortune, laughed at their condition, and sang of their need to transform the present.

Harburg's words were theatrical, Arlen's music liturgical. Together they transformed Baum's classic American novel by using music and song as the defining moments in the transition. As the flatland of Kansas was transformed into the yellow brick road and Emerald City, as the opening sepia-shot scenes burst into opulent color, the narrative was linked by the songs given to specific characters; the scarecrow, the tin woodsman, the cowardly lion. But no song became as linked to character (and singer) as the rainbow song they composed for Dorothy. "Over the Rainbow" not only gave voice to Dorothy's dreams, but it has come to represent the dreams of a generation and, for many Americans, it is the number one song of the twentieth century. (23)

Dorothy's Song

Arlen and Harburg had agreed that the ballad ... would be "a song of yearning. Its object would be to delineate Dorothy and to give an emotional touch to the scene where she is frustrated and in trouble.... The only colorful thing Dorothy saw, occasionally, would be the rainbow. I thought that the rainbow could be a bridge from one place to another." (24)

The difficulty of composing "Over the Rainbow" has by now become the stuff of legend: Arlen's search for a melody, his inspiration in front of Schwab's drugstore, Harburg's initial hesitation, and Ira Gershwin's reassuring approval. And even when completed, it was only after the final preview that it was allowed to remain in the film. (25) The one song that precedes the journey to Oz, it sets the tone for the fantasy to follow, and establishes the legitimacy of dream. (26) Framed by the farm that defines her-haystack, barn, chickens, wagon wheel, thresher-- Dorothy looks up to a cloudy sky and dreams of escaping her familiar surroundings to a place where, as her aunt suggests, "you won't get into any trouble." Is there such a place, she wonders, "there must be. It's not a place you can get to by a boat or a train. It's far, far away.... Behind the moon/Beyond the rain." (27)