It won’t have dawned on the multitude flocking to see the film of musical Wicked, but we know the man bedecked in emerald green to match the city is played by Pittsburgh’s most famous Jew.
Jeff Goldblum decided at his barmitzvah – a performance lauded by his mother, obviously – that acting would be his yellow brick road. Raised Orthodox, Jeff’s great grandfather left for America in 1911, but the family who remained in his village, Starobin, were all murdered.
Growing up in Philadelphia’s West Homestead where there were few Jewish families, like Wicked’s green-skinned Elphaba, Jeff felt like an outsider. But these days he is an insider, modelling for Loewe and Prada and performing as pianist and front man of The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra.
In time for the holidays, Jeff and the orchestra have released a jazzy version of Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn’s Let it Snow. Jeff has not shared his chrismakah list but counts his most prized gift as the record Katz Puts On the Dog, recorded in 1958 by Yiddish-fluent musician Mickey Katz, father of Cabaret star Joel Grey. So casting Jeff as Oz is inspired as finally a member of the tribe is described as “great and powerful.”
