Word: mostellers
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...charter by schooling waves of immigrant youths, especially Jews, who were barred by many private colleges of the time. From the 1920s on, the "proletarian Harvard" produced more students who went on to doctorates than any other U.S. college, to say nothing of alumni as diverse as Zero Mostel, Bernard Malamud and Jonas Salk plus the current managing editor of the New York Times and the chief judge of New York State's highest court...
Similar misfortune has befallen The Angel Levine, Bernard Malamud's pithy and whimsical parable of an elderly Jewish tailor and his war with God. In the film Zero Mostel portrays Mishkin, a decrepit, latter-day Job on whom God has visited terrible plagues. His Manhattan shop has burned to the ground while insufficiently insured. His wife Fanny (Ida Kaminska) is on her death bed and driving him meshugge (crazy) with petty demands. His back is killing him and-ah, cruel Jehovah!-his only daughter has married an Italian. His faith is moribund, and to revive it an unlikely angel...
...early scenes contain some wildly funny dialogue-most of which has been taken directly from Malamud's story. Mostel is especially entertaining doing the tailor-on-the-roof routine that is his forte. But even Zero's comic genius cannot carry the lugubrious sermonizing about black-Jewish relationships and the mawkish comedy that goes with it. In a reverse insult, Levine calls Mishkin "nigger," to which Mishkin replies, "This is the way a Jewish angel talks...
With Zero Mostel, and a wildly improbable storyline, The Great Bank Robbery seems all set to snipe away at an inviting target-the standard western heist. Unfortunately, amid leathery gags and uninspired parody, the guns jam early and often...
...bogus preacher, Mostel, who has been long applauded as a light-heavy with all the graceful moves of a bantamweight, is restrained from dipping into his repertoire much beyond an occasional grimace and a few eye-pops. His performance is perfunctory; he may well have been bored. Kim Novak, one of his seedy band, wearily remarks of herself at the outset: "Sister Lyda's ass is draggin." Indeed, she bestirs herself only for the strategic seduction of Clint Walker, who has no trouble at all playing an oafish, one-dimensional Ranger. Despite The Great Bank Robbery's pretentious...