Encyclopedia Categories | Jewish Women's Archive

Film Industry in the United States

Jewish women have played crucial roles in the United States film industry. Despite sexism and sometimes anti-Semitism, they have worked both behind the scenes, as writers, directors, and producers, as well as on-screen as both Jewish and non-Jewish characters.

Naomi Gryn and Hugo Gryn in Karlovy Vary, 1989

Filmmakers, Independent European

The substantial success of many European Jewish women filmmakers attests to their abilities to preserve or imagine what was lost as a community. The films of those born in Central Europe are reflective of the Jewish experience of loss, outsider-ness, and memory; others explore courage and individual acts of resistance during World War II. Western European directors re-tell personal stories of friendship and betrayal in a historical context of Europe without its Jews. A strong body of work from North African-born filmmakers reflects the relationship between Arabs and Jews.

Filmmakers, Independent North American

Jewish women directors have made significant contributions to independent film and have created mainstream and experimental works that attempt to redefine Jewish identity. Subverting male-dominated Jewish literary and Hollywood traditions, these filmmakers employ images of hybrid identities and illuminate the lives of Jewish women in their work.

Filmmakers, Israeli

Israeli filmmaking is a national cultural expression, and female Israeli directors have become major contributors to that expression. In their films, these directors deal with personal relationships and family conflicts, religious and professional issues, and the effects of the Holocaust on survivors and their descendants.

Sylvia Fine

Humorous composer Sylvia Fine created unique and influential music in her partnership with Danny Kaye. Fine wrote over 100 songs for Kaye to perform, including the music for The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Inspector General, and On the Riviera. She taught musical comedy at the University of Southern California and Yale and made philanthropic contributions to universities and Jewish organizations.

Carrie Fisher

While Carrie Fisher was best known for her early film roles, she spent most of her career as a script doctor, shaping characters for others to play.

Rose Franken

Rose Franken was a celebrated Broadway playwright and director, a Hollywood screenwriter, and a popular novelist whose fiction touched a sympathetic chord in American women. After much success as both a playwright and a novelist, she ventured into more problematic subject matter, exploring antisemitism and homophobia in her works.

Zsa Zsa Gabor

Known as much for her glamorous lifestyle and playful remarks about marriage as for her acting roles, Zsa Zsa Gabor thrived in the spotlight.

Tavi Gevinson

Proving the power of the internet to level the playing field, Tavi Gevinson launched her fashion blog Style Rookie at age eleven and was lauded by Forbes at age fifteen for the massive audience her feminist commentary had garnered.

Therese Giehse

Focusing on difficult roles written for older women, Therese Giehse earned a reputation as a talented actress who brought Bertolt Brecht’s works to life. She co-founded an anti-Nazi literary cabaret called The Peppermill in 1933 and was known for touring successful anti-fascist theaterical works. She had a long collaboration with Brecht and developed a reputation as an “intellectual popular actress.”

Melissa Gilbert

After a highly successful decade as the lead on Little House on the Prairie, Melissa Gilbert defied the odds for child actors by becoming a Hollywood power-broker as president of the Screen Actors Guild from 2001–2005.

Ilana Glazer

Ilana Glazer defied the odds for young female comedians by co-creating the popular and critical hit sitcom Broad City with Abbi Jacobson.

Jennie Goldstein

Jennie Goldstein was one of the foremost Yiddish theater tragediennes, beloved by the public and acclaimed by critics for her acting skills and outstanding voice. During the 1940s, as opportunities in the Yiddish theater waned, Goldstein transformed herself into a comedian.

Vera Gordon

Although she started acting in Russia at a young age, Vera Gordon initially struggled to build a career in the United States. She went on to a long career on stage and screen, however, known especially for portraying Jewish mothers in a positive light—with warmth and deep emotion.

Ellen Greene

While actress Ellen Greene has played a variety of roles, she is best known for her performances as Audrey in both the live and film versions of the cult classic, Little Shop of Horrors.

Gloria Greenfield

Disturbed by growing anti-Semitism in the women’s movement, Gloria Greenfield left the movement and began creating documentary films that brought national attention to anti-Semitism in America and around the world.

Maggie Gyllenhaal

Actress Maggie Gyllenhaal has garnered critical acclaim for her performance in difficult roles in 2002’s Secretary, 2009’s Crazy Heart, and 2014’s The Honourable Woman.

Alyson Hannigan

From her role as an unconventional flautist in American Pie to that of a lesbian witch on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, actress Alyson Hannigan has delighted in turning audience expectations on their heads.

Still from Israeli ultra-Orthodox film Entangled: one woman (right) in focus and woman out of focus behind her standing surrounded by trees

Haredi Women's Filmmaking in Israel

In the early twenty-first century, Haredi cinema began to flourish, first in Israel and then in the United States and elsewhere. Haredi women have made films that focus on relationships among women, that are often much more aesthetically elaborate than Haredi men’s films, and that address issues that until recently were considered taboo.

Kitty Carlisle Hart

Actress and singer Kitty Carlisle Hart was honored for her tireless crusade for funding for the arts when the New York State Theater in Albany was named after her.

Goldie Hawn

After beginning her career as a dancer, Goldie Hawn won many awards for her critically acclaimed acting performances. She has been one of the most successful women in Hollywood and, since executive producing Private Benjamin in 1980, she has continued to produce films with her own production company.

Melissa Hayden

Melissa Hayden showed unparalleled versatility and range in her ballet dancing during a successful career that spanned decades. Dancing in both the American Ballet Theater and New York City Ballet, Hayden thrilled her audiences with consistently excellent performances in a career that spanned four decades.

Ofra Haza

Born in Tel Aviv, Ofra Haza was an international singing sensation who performed across Europe, America, and Israel. Known for combining traditional Yemenite music with electronic pop sounds, Haza performed in the film Shlagger and in 1983 she placed second in the Eurovision competition. In 1998 Haza collaborated with many world-renowned artists and performed Naomi Shemer’s “Jerusalem of Gold” at the official ceremony marking Israel’s fiftieth anniversary.

Edith Head

Edith Head’s brilliant eye for design earned her a record eight Oscars for Best Costume Design for movies that included Roman Holiday (1954) and The Sting (1974).

Rina Yerushalmi's "Va-Yomer/Va-Yelech" with Neta Yeshchin and Noam Ben-Azar

Hebrew Theater: Yishuv to the Present

Of all the theatrical professions, only actresses were truly partners in the enterprise of reviving Hebrew culture in the early twentieth century, and only in the 1980s did women writers and directors begin to work in Israeli theater. In the last few decades of the twentieth century and the first few decades of the twenty first, howeverwomen playwrights and directors have taken on increasingly prominent roles.

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The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women

Performing Arts: Film