In exhausting ‘Bad Shabbos,' cringe-comedy clichés are observed a little too faithfully
It's another warmly contentious Sabbath at the Upper West Side Manhattan apartment of Ellen (Kyra Sedgwick) and Richard (David Paymer). The long-married couple will gather with their three adult children — anxious David (Jon Bass), put-upon Abby (Milana Vayntrub) and younger, neurodivergent Adam (Theo Taplitz) — for the family's weekly meal. Yet why is this Friday night different from all other Friday nights?
For starters, guess who's coming for brisket? That would be a chipper mom (Catherine Curtin) and dubious dad (John Bedford Lloyd), the parents of Adam's Catholic fiancée Meg (Meghan Leathers), winging in from 'goyish' Wisconsin to meet their future in-laws. (Can Grammy Hall be far behind?) Adam knows his quirky, noisy — read Jewish — family could easily alienate Meg's parents and he's desperate for an incident-free gathering. Fat chance.
That's because, aside from the observant Ellen's barely veiled disdain for non-Jews (she's pretty awful to the solicitous Meg, who's studying to convert), Abby's obnoxious boyfriend, Benjamin (Ashley Zukerman), will be joining her, and he never fails to antagonize the unstable, Klonopin-popping Adam. That Adam suffers chronic constipation and Benjamin has diarrhea-inducing colitis is no medical coincidence but one of several predictable signs that, well, something's gonna hit the fan.
In short order, an improbably staged accident leaves a dead body lying in the bathroom right before Meg's parents arrive. It sets off the evening's desperate downward spiral, lots of silly mayhem and an absurd cover-up. Suffice to say, any sane person would have immediately reported the guest's untimely demise to the authorities — but then, of course, there would be no movie. Still, co-writers Zack Weiner and Daniel Robbins (Robbins directed) don't provide a plausible enough reason for the group to so haplessly hide the corpse, making the death feel like more of a slapdash device than a cogent story twist.
As a result, some may find the film as painful and awkward to watch as it is for the characters to experience. One bright spot is actor-rapper Cliff 'Method Man' Smith's endearing turn as Jordan, the building's hip doorman ('It's Shabbos, baby!'), who considers the Gelfands his favorite tenants and jumps in to help them out of their mess. At one point, he even amusingly dons a yarmulke and pretends to be an Ethiopian Jew (long story). But the ticking clock wedged in to add tension to Jordan's 'assistance' feels undercooked.
The rest of the cast does their best to rise — or descend — to the occasion, with Sedgwick quite good in her largely thankless role as the controlling Jewish mother. Leathers is winning as David's devoted bride-to-be, with Curtin enjoyably nimble playing a kindly Midwest mom. But the usually reliable Paymer seems a bit lost in his oddly-conceived part as the befuddled Richard, a fan of self-help books.
Because the film leans so heavily into its breakneck antics, the folks here mostly come off more as a collection of stereotypes than as realistic people tackling a credible crisis. Sure, it's broad comedy, but that shouldn't preclude sharpening the characters to better sweep us along on their nutty journey. (At just 81 minutes plus end credits, the film had room to grow.)
In particular, Adam, a wannabe soldier for the Israel Defense Forces, starts out too troubled and extreme for his depiction to fade as it does. And though the writers may have been reaching for dark laughs, Ellen and Richard's excuse-laden coddling of their challenged child, presumably now in his 20s, teeters on negligence — or, at the very least, bad parenting.
By the time the film gets around to revealing its more human side — epiphanies gained, lessons learned — it's too little, too late. Near the end, when an appalled Ellen says of the dizzy bunch, 'We're all horrible,' it's hard to disagree.
Ultimately, the movie's heart may be in the right place (Robbins has said the film is inspired by his own New York Jewish roots), but its head not so much. Want to watch a Jewish guy and a gentile woman humorously navigate their relationship? Best to wait for the next season of the Netflix series 'Nobody Wants This.'
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New York Post
7 hours ago
- New York Post
Michael Rapaport claims comedy show was yanked after threats over his support for Israel
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Boston Globe
11 hours ago
- Boston Globe
He wanted to make a patriotic movie. He was prosecuted for it — and then disappeared.
At the defense table, looking so nervous he might shake apart, was the defendant, Robert Goldstein, 34, the American-born son of a Jewish immigrant from Germany. He was 5-foot-3⅜-inches tall and 140 pounds, with a high forehead, gray-blue eyes, and a clean-shaven, pleasant face, if not an especially handsome one. He spoke too softly in court and radiated fear, like an injured bird. Goldstein had one production to his credit, The Spirit of '76, a lavishly-produced film about the American Revolution. He had finished the 12-reel extravaganza in the spring of 1917, around the time the United States entered World War I. Running over two hours, the film was a fictional love story entwined with historical events, many set in Massachusetts, such as the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, and a galloping Paul Revere. The action of the silent movie, with violent battle and massacre scenes, was synchronized in the theater with a live orchestra. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up All I ever wanted to do was make a patriotic movie, Goldstein pleaded to anyone who would listen. Advertisement It seemed an incredible twist, Goldstein thought, that he stood accused of betraying his country by producing a film about its origin — a film hostile to Britain, the government insisted, America's ally in the Great War. The prosecutor in Goldstein's case rose for closing remarks. Advertisement 'Gentlemen of the jury,' he began. 'When you go to the jury room the first thing you want to do is to put a label on this defendant. Which class does he come in? Is he a traitor or is he a patriot?' Being called traitor was so uncanny to Goldstein that he experienced a sense of dissociation, as if he were merely part of the audience at this sensational trial, rather than the main character, facing up to 20 years in prison. With the United States at war, the government said, there were only two classes in America. 'Traitors or patriots,' the prosecutor repeated, and then, indicating Goldstein, 'Which is he?' I have been chasing Robert Goldstein and the largely forgotten story of his prosecution for five years, after learning about him while writing a book about espionage and propaganda in World War I. As a journalist, my professional life, my very identity, rests on the First Amendment and free expression. The Goldstein saga speaks to me as a warning shouted through time, a tragic harbinger from America's past about the damage done to individuals and to the nation when the White House perverts justice to silence its critics and punish those who don't fall into line. We'll never know what art was not made, what opinions not voiced, because of Goldstein's high-profile prosecution. There is another reason I have chased Robert Goldstein. He disappeared in the 1930s, vanishing from history as if plucked from the face of the earth. For years, history sleuths thought he probably died in the Holocaust, an American Jew who, after his legal troubles ended, sought refuge in Berlin. Advertisement I needed to know for certain what happened to Goldstein, this unwitting martyr for the cause of free speech, unjustly prosecuted for making art. Returning him to the historical record was the only bit of redress I could offer. So I became, in a word, obsessed. I began to accumulate a file, which eventually grew to hundreds of pages in length, filled with court records, declassified FBI files, old newspapers, census records, and materials from microfilm archives. I followed others who had pulled these threads before me; compelling new evidence continued to emerge, as paperwork long lost in the files of bureaucracy was digitized and made searchable. For years, the file grew. Then, in June, I received the clue that changed everything. G oldstein's early life emerges readily from records and his own writings. The Goldsteins of San Francisco were an immigrant success story. Robert Goldstein's father, Simon, came from Germany as part of the wave of European Jews who resettled in the United States in the latter half of the 19th century. Goldstein's mother, Margaret, from Lowell, was the American-born daughter of Irish immigrants. She gave birth to Robert in San Francisco in 1883. Simon was a serial entrepreneur best known for his theatrical costume shop. When producers of plays or films needed to dress a brood of pirates or some Roman centurions, they called Goldstein. The business allowed him to befriend many of the biggest stars of his time, including Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth, brother of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth, and director D.W. Griffith, whose 1915 film The Birth of a Nation, a glorification of the Ku Klux Klan, became the first ever blockbuster movie and inspired the terror group's rebirth. Advertisement Being around famous actors, Goldstein developed an insatiable appetite for performance. From his earliest memories, according to a letter he wrote, he spent several nights a week in San Francisco theaters with his mother, seeing all the new plays. He would later spend a year in Europe as a theater apprentice, painting scenery and making costumes. As a young man, Goldstein wrote plays nobody read and musical compositions nobody played. Those things did not satisfy his creative itch, nor his ambitions. When he was 25, he discovered moving pictures. In these first primitive silent flicks Goldstein saw, actors performed the story while a mechanical organ played the William Tell Overture. Film moved him like no stage play ever had. 'There was dramatic suspense,' Goldstein wrote later in a letter, 'a charming mystery about this miracle which the stage or printed page lacked.' He saw every new movie that came out. In 1911, a patriotic film, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, thrilled him 'to the roots of his hair,' he wrote. Throughout the audience, tears streamed down faces. Goldstein was astonished that fleeting images on a screen could raise so much emotion. His life's wish was set: to make a movie. T he brief glimpses of a young Goldstein that appear in the public record paint him as an eccentric and vulnerable personality — soft-spoken, averse to confrontation, and easily steamrolled. Goldstein married in 1908, when he was 24. His 20-year-old bride, Adele, went by Della. In the coming years of their tempestuous union, Della pursued divorce, only to change her mind. They never had children. She left Goldstein often, apparently for affairs with other men. Advertisement Adultery was still scandalous enough in 1912 that the Goldsteins' marriage problems were splashed across the front page of The San Francisco Call. Under the headline 'MATES ARE MISSED,' the wife of a prominent architect publicly accused her husband of running off with Della Goldstein. In the story, Robert confirmed that his wife had vanished with a cart full of their household effects, leaving him with nothing 'but an aching heart.' They reconciled, but that was not the end of it. Four years later, Goldstein took out a humiliating classified ad in The Los Angeles Evening Express: TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: YOU will please take notice that my wife, Adele J. Goldstein, having abandoned me and having left my bed and board, I will not be responsible for any debts or obligations incurred by her or any articles or property furnished to her. ROBERT H. GOLDSTEIN. A 1917 advertisement for The Spirit of '76. wikimedia commons Once again, the marriage survived. By then, they had moved to Los Angeles, where Goldstein ran a thriving branch of the family costume business. He had provided costumes for Birth of a Nation, and the stock shares Goldstein owned in the movie paid a substantial profit. Birth earned an estimated $10 million in its first run, an astonishing amount at the time. Its total earnings are far higher, though opinions differ on how high. Birth' s original title was The Clansman, like the 1905 novel by white supremacist Thomas Dixon Jr. on which the movie was based. In the film, robed Klansmen on horseback are portrayed as heroically defending the South from rampaging Black men after the Civil War. Regarded today as perhaps Hollywood's most racist production ever, the film sparked nationwide protests in its time, including in Boston, where Advertisement There is no evidence that Goldstein was morally conflicted by his connection to Birth. While his writing is not racially disparaging, there are also no passages expressing regret or concern. By all appearances, he considered his involvement with the film to be a smart investment. A few months after Birth debuted, Goldstein struck a partnership in a movie venture with a former newspaper publisher, George Hutchin, and several others. Given the massive profit the director, D.W. Griffith, had made with Birth, a Civil War-era picture, Goldstein suggested they make a movie about the real birth of the nation, the American Revolution. It would be a flag-waving appeal to patriotism, with what was then an enormous budget of $250,000, the equivalent of nearly $7 million today. Goldstein hired professional actors, including Howard Gaye, who played Robert E. Lee in Birth, and Jane Novak, whose movie career would extend into the 1950s. Like roughly 90 percent of movies from its era, The Spirit of '76 is considered a lost film — no known copies exist. Goldstein wrote the script, a synopsis of which survives. He also summarized the story in a letter written a decade later. The film, shot mostly in and around Los Angeles, weaved events of the American Revolution with a convoluted love story. The short version of the plot — stay with me here — is that the secret, half-Native American wife of British King George III is exiled to the colonies with a plan to take over the Iroquois tribes, put down the Colonial rebellion, and become queen of America, while in the meantime she falls in love with a man who she doesn't realize is her own brother. Goldstein learned much from Birth of a Nation, which pioneered new techniques of cinematography. He also concluded that the controversy around the film had been good for its bottom line. Goldstein could not always make the film's payroll, despite backfilling cash shortfalls from his own pocket. Creditors sued. Goldstein's associates tried to fire him. Still, the production was lavish: For one scene, Goldstein needed snow to film George Washington at Valley Forge — snow in California. Every morning during the winter of 1916-17, a film assistant called a lodge on Mount Lowe — a 5,606-foot peak in the San Gabriel Mountains — to ask if there was snow. A thousand extras who would play Washington's army stayed ready to rush to the mountains within hours. When snow finally fell, a convoy of trucks and train cars whisked the men to the mountain to film the scene before it melted. For another scene, he researched a minor but brutal event of the revolution. In 1778, British loyalists and their Iroquois allies attacked the village of Cherry Valley in central New York, slaughtering about 30 civilians. Goldstein filmed scenes of fictionalized atrocities based on the raid. Others involved in the film cautioned Goldstein that the violent scenes went too far. Nonsense, Goldstein thought. The atrocities, he said, would give the movie 'punch.' W orld War I had split the major powers in Europe: Britain, France, and Russia against Germany and Austria-Hungary. When the war began in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson had declared that the United States would remain neutral. In early 1917, as Goldstein tackled his final edits, world-changing events cascaded one upon another. Germany announced on January 31 that it would unleash 'unrestricted submarine warfare' on shipping to prevent supplies from landing in Britain. That put US ships and passengers in jeopardy. President Wilson severed diplomatic relations with Germany. Then on March 1, 1917, the infamous Zimmermann Telegram became public. The secret diplomatic cable, decoded by the British, revealed that Germany was trying to provoke hostilities between the United States and Mexico. Congress declared war on Germany on April 6, bringing the United States into the conflict. Goldstein's movie about the nation's founding was about to debut in a very different America. G oldstein chose Chicago's Orchestra Hall to debut The Spirit of '76 in May 1917, with a 40-piece live orchestra. An advertising campaign hyped 'The Greatest Motion Picture Ever Produced,' and boasted of a $500,000 production budget, exaggerating the cost by double. The planned premiere quickly snagged. Chicago police Major Metellus Funkhouser, the city's 'censor of public morals,' refused to issue a permit to show Spirit. In his judgment, some of the scenes would be offensive to the British, who were America's ally in WWI. Funkhouser considered it his duty to block anything that might undermine American support for the war. The atrocity scenes from the Cherry Valley massacre were too much for Funkhouser. These included the bayoneting of a baby, the murder of an unarmed Quaker, and the suggestive carrying off of a young woman by a soldier. There's no evidence those exact things happened at Cherry Valley, though what did happen was no better: Women and children were hacked to death or had their skulls caved in. A battle scene filmed by Goldstein for "The Spirit of '76." rom Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences After a lawsuit and two weeks of wrangling, Goldstein relented. He made substantial cuts in the movie — almost certainly the most violent scenes — and received his permit. When Spirit finally opened, The Chicago Tribune published a warm review. The audience responded with 'frantic applause' to Paul Revere's ride, the Battle of Lexington, and Valley Forge. Cuts made to the film, the Tribune reported, had rendered the production 'highly innocuous.' By the fall, Goldstein was in California to relaunch the movie at a prestigious location, Clune's Auditorium in Los Angeles, where Birth of a Nation had been shown to huge crowds in 1915. Officers of the US attorney's office demanded a preview showing, to check for violations of the Espionage Act. The federal law, which had passed months earlier in June, made it illegal to even 'attempt to cause' insubordination or disloyalty in the US military. The Wilson administration stretched the law to police criticism of its war efforts. Goldstein reluctantly screened the film for the officials. Whether the version they previewed contained the atrocity scenes would soon be in dispute. The feds, it turned out, had been interested in Goldstein for months: In May 1917, a British diplomat in Chicago had passed along some intelligence to the US Bureau of Investigation, what is now called the FBI. The intel included that Goldstein was 'a German Jew' who was 'rabidly pro-German.' Antisemitism in the United States was at a peak in the early 20th century; Jews in Goldstein's time were routinely caricatured as conniving and openly blackballed from many elite social clubs, company boards, and schools. The diplomat also alleged, wrongly, that The Spirit of '76 had been financed by German interests, and speculated that the whole film project may have been a propaganda vehicle of the German Empire. This information went to the highest levels of government, by secret memo to the chief of the Bureau of Investigation. For Spirit' s public California premiere on November 27, a Tuesday, the theater was decked out with huge replicas of early American flags. Ushers were dressed in Colonial costumes. The movie was scheduled for two shows daily. The audience for Spirit' s California debut was about 1,500. Clune's Auditorium could seat nearly twice that, but Goldstein was pleased with the interest. The reviews published the next day were generally good. Tickets sold well. On Thursday, which was Thanksgiving, Goldstein eavesdropped among the matinee crowd after the showing and heard nothing but praise for his film. The evening show that night, Goldstein learned from the box office, was a sellout. Robert Goldstein on the set in King George's court during filming. from Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Delighted, he walked to a restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner convinced that Spirit was a hit, and he was destined for a career making movies. At last! At last! Success! he thought, as he wrote in a letter 10 years later. He returned to the theater 15 minutes before the evening showing was to start. The place was dark. The audience was still outside. Federal agents were in the theater with a warrant, impounding all 12 reels of The Spirit of '76 under the Espionage Act. A federal grand jury indicted Goldstein five days later. He was charged with attempting 'to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny and refusal of duty' in the military with his movie. How? By arousing antagonism between Americans and Brits. The government's entire case came to this: Goldstein made the British look like bad guys in a movie about the American Revolution. To win a conviction, prosecutors did not have to prove the movie actually caused insubordination or disloyalty, only that it was Goldstein's intention. It was not just a speech crime, but a thought crime. Goldstein's case was unique because he was charged for making a film, but across the nation the Wilson administration wielded the Espionage Act like a club, smashing criticism and dissent. In the following months, the pacifist socialist and labor leader Eugene Debs would be charged for making an antiwar speech in an Ohio park. Ultimately, the US government prosecuted more than 2,000 people for speech during the war. Fear radiated from these criminal cases, permeating the country. The government encouraged people to report their neighbors for making disloyal comments. The Department of Justice threatened to revoke the citizenship of naturalized Americans who engaged in 'seditious speech.' German language books were burned. Playing music by German composers was discouraged or prohibited. South Dakota banned the speaking of German in public. The uncounted victims of the administration's crusade against its critics were those whose speech was chilled — those who got the message that it was safer to shut up than speak out. In Goldstein's case, the government accused him of adding several scenes depicting British war atrocities after members of law enforcement had previewed the film. Goldstein was mystified. He would give conflicting accounts of whether the scenes were added before or after the screening, but, either way, Goldstein considered the scenes merely atmospheric. 'They gave only a fleeting impression, to increase the suspense and excitement of this part of the picture,' he later wrote. 'Every picture has hundreds of such scenes in battle sequences.' A photo from The Los Angeles Times on June 21, 1918, showing Goldstein leaving county jail on his way to federal prison. From the Los Angeles Times He spent the night in county lockup, with his chest so tight from nerves he thought he might suffocate. The government conducted its prosecution of Goldstein backward: First it indicted him, then it sent out investigators to find evidence to make the charges stick. The FBI interviewed dozens of people in and around the film, according to declassified files. They found nothing criminal, but plenty that could hurt Goldstein in an emotional jury trial. A former stock salesman for the movie revealed that Goldstein had remarked that the British barbarity scenes would be good for ticket sales. Investigators were told that Goldstein's company had placed an ad for stock in the film in a German-language magazine. And the FBI learned that Goldstein had opposed the US entry into the war and had written to his congressman urging him to vote against it. Goldstein went to trial in Los Angeles in April 1918, before Judge Benjamin Franklin Bledsoe, a passionate supporter of the war. Throughout the trial, the press hammered Goldstein with innuendo. The Los Angeles Times published on its front page a photo of a storage shed Goldstein had used in his production. A canvas sign on the shed had once read 'SPIRIT of 76,' but after damage from 'a curious freak of the wind,' the sign read 'SPI 76,' playing into the antisemitic trope of the disloyal Jew. Goldstein was so humiliated by the suggestion he was a German spy that he could barely face his fellow prisoners in lockup. Blockbuster testimony came from Goldstein's old business partner Hutchin, who said Goldstein told him early in their efforts that Franz Bopp, a disgraced former German diplomat in San Francisco, would help finance the movie. There was no evidence Bopp actually invested in Spirit. Prosecutors called Goldstein's father to the stand, asking him biographical questions about his son. It appears they merely wanted the jury to hear Simon Goldstein's strong German accent. Goldstein's lawyers entered passages from history books into the record, arguing that the basic thrust of the movie was true. A courtroom was turned into a cinema so the jury could see the picture. Goldstein's defense bitterly argued that the session be moved to a real theater so the film could be seen as intended, with an orchestra. 'There is not the proper spirit or atmosphere,' one of the lawyers complained. A clip from the front page of The Los Angeles Times on April 3, 1918, mocking Goldstein during his trial. From the Los Angeles Times Judge Bledsoe overruled the objection (he also brought his wife to court to see the movie). Testifying in his own defense, in a hurried whisper, Goldstein said no customer in LA ever complained about the scenes the government considered unpatriotic. The prosecutor was unsparing in his arguments. He called Goldstein a 'beast' and 'a vile thing.' He reminded the jury that while Jesus Christ was a Jew like Goldstein, so was Judas. G oldstein waited 'in a fever' while jurors decided his fate. They deliberated for one hour in the afternoon, broke for dinner until 8 p.m., and then returned their verdict at 8:30. Guilty. Goldstein choked up as if he could not breathe. He sobbed uncontrollably. Two weeks later the moviemaker stood again before Bledsoe, for his sentencing. Goldstein 'shook like an aspen,' one reporter noted. 'The defendant is lucky,' Bledsoe said, 'that he is not in some countries where such conduct as he has been guilty of would have met with the supreme penalty.' He sentenced Goldstein to 10 years in prison. Goldstein got his first view of McNeil Island from the motorboat transporting him to the federal penitentiary in Puget Sound, Washington, where he would serve his sentence. It was 'desolate and depressing,' he later wrote. He had to learn how to use a shovel on work details. Lift with the legs, not the arms. 'Some natures can stand the bleak monotony of prison life,' he wrote, 'others waste like the sparrow in a cage.' Goldstein was a sparrow. While Goldstein was incarcerated, lawsuits from his creditors piled up. His wife finally divorced him. A Pasadena man named Jesse Goldstein made headlines when he filed in court to change his name, so people would stop asking if he was related to the seditious filmmaker. Others convicted under the Espionage Act received similarly severe sentences. S even months into Goldstein's sentence, in November 1918, Americans poured into the streets to celebrate victory in the Great War. The celebration was short-lived, though: The US economy was in a recession, and the public mood quickly soured. In February 1919, a friendly newspaper editor suggested to President Wilson that the nation would be uplifted if the president offered amnesty 'for all those persons who have been convicted for expressions of opinion.' Wilson wouldn't go that far, but he shortened many of the long sentences imposed for speech. Goldstein's term was commuted to three years. He earned seven days off his sentence each month for good behavior, and was discharged from custody in October 1920. Prison seemed to have broken something in Goldstein. Not only had he lost 40 pounds, his writings of the time reveal deep paranoia. Everyone was secretly against him: his own lawyers, his family, even his dentist. He was convinced that strangers everywhere were laughing at him, plotting, and trying to drive him mad. 'He must escape them somehow,' Goldstein wrote about himself. 'But if they followed him everywhere he went, how was this possible?' In the years after the war, a sort of national reckoning over the speech prosecutions played out, beginning at the Supreme Court. Boston-born Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, after voting in 1919 to uphold Debs's conviction, seemed to change his mind later that year. Writing in dissent in another case, Holmes laid out the concept of the public square as the marketplace of ideas, which shaped future speech rulings. The next year, free speech advocates formed the American Civil Liberties Union. And, the Supreme Court affirmatively extended First Amendment protections to films in 1952. G oldstein was just 37 when released, yet his film career was effectively over. He recut The Spirit of '76 and showed it for three weeks in New York in 1921. The press savaged the picture with bad reviews. He moved to Europe, chasing job opportunities in film that did not pan out, and eventually settled in Berlin with his aunt. In 1927, he became engaged to a 25-year-old woman named Erna Prange. She had dark eyes and light, wavy hair, cut fashionably short. Goldstein, then 43, was tortured by fantasies that his neighbors were conspiring to corrupt Erna, trying to seduce her and get her addicted to cocaine. 'I began to watch her,' he was quoted as saying in a 1928 celebrity news story about the end of their relationship, 'But she always eluded me and those in the plot helped her.' Goldstein believed the plotters were whisking his fiancée through underground tunnels for her to perform in secret strip clubs. His neighbors went to these lengths, according to Goldstein's tangled thinking, to punish him for being imprisoned over a movie. Twice, Goldstein failed to show up on the date of his own wedding. On the third try, he made it to the ceremony, but when the minister asked, 'Will thou take this woman?' Goldstein shouted: 'No!' The spurned bride nearly fainted in embarrassment. The relationship ended. Erna came to believe that Goldstein suffered from 'persecution mania,' she was quoted as saying, 'possibly as a result of his prison experiences in America.' The American movie star Mary Nolan, who made films in Germany in the 1920s, befriended Goldstein in Berlin. She told reporters that her friend Robert Goldstein had tragically begun to confuse movie plots with his real life. A nd then Goldstein disappeared. He was soon forgotten, even by those closest to him; when Goldstein's only sibling, Louis, died in 1950, his obituary made no mention of Robert. In 1991, 'I feel sorry for him because it's sad,' Slide, now 80, recently told me. 'It's something the American government caused, not only his professional downfall but his mental and emotional downfall.' When Slide wrote his book, there was no known record of Goldstein after a letter he sent from Berlin in 1935, two years after Hitler rose to power. Slide surmised that Goldstein was killed by the Nazis. Subsequent to the publication of Slide's book, another letter from Goldstein to the academy turned up, dated 1938, sent not from Berlin but New York City. The letter is in the academy's collections at the Margaret Herrick Library, in Beverly Hills. Keith Negley for the Boston Globe In this note, Goldstein suggests that Germany deported him in 1935. A ship manifest from that era confirmed that he had sailed from Hamburg to New York that August. His letter begged the academy for a job. 'It may be merely superstition on my part but perhaps the whole [industry] might have more luck if they did something decent by me,' he wrote, 20 years after his conviction. Goldstein applied for Social Security benefits in New York in 1940, digitized records show. From there his path grew hazy. The 1950 US Census, made public in 2022, lists someone named Robert Goldstein as a resident of Willard State Hospital, a psychiatric facility in New York. The name is not that unusual and the records were not conclusive — though they were interesting. Online records of The Hebrew Free Burial Association, a New York charity that arranges respectful funerals for impoverished Jews, were equally interesting. The organization recorded the burial of a Robert Goldstein in 1957. This man died at age 74 as a patient at Harlem Valley State Hospital, a former psychiatric facility on a campus of gloomy redbrick buildings in Dover, New York, where lobotomies were performed. The facility closed in 1994. The Hebrew Free Burial Association is still around. I wrote to them in June. T he document from the Burial Association appeared in my inbox less than two hours later. It was a one-page burial application, dated November 1957. Name of deceased: Robert Goldstein. Occupation: Theatrical costumes. That was when I knew. After years of searching, this was the right man. I jumped screaming from my chair, and then had to explain myself to co-workers in the Globe newsroom. The document also correctly named Goldstein's parents as Simon and Margaret. The proof is irrefutable. This dogged maker of a lavish movie spectacle about America, who profited from bigotry and was wrecked by antisemitism, died in ruin, madness, and quiet anonymity in a mental institution, after his government put him in prison for speech it did not like. Robert Goldstein, filmmaker, is buried in Mount Richmond Cemetery on Staten Island, beneath a donated stone. Mark Arsenault is the author of and an investigative reporter at The Boston Globe. Send comments to Mark Arsenault can be reached at
Cosmopolitan
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- Cosmopolitan
Are Love Island's Meg and Dejon still together? Relationship timeline and latest news
Meg and Dejon's Love Island journey officially came to an end a day before the final, as former Islanders returned to the show and voted them out for being the most incompatible couple. The duo coupled up from the very first episode and remained together until the end, but their journey was anything but smooth sailing. Despite the pair insisting that their connection was genuine, many weren't convinced - especially as Dejon repeatedly explored connections with bombshells throughout the season (Malisha, Caprice, Yasmin, Billykiss, Andrada... need we say more?) Others questioned the timing of their relationship milestones, which always seemed to coincide with moments of doubt or criticism from the other Islanders - from going exclusive, to becoming boyfriend and girlfriend a couple days later, and even dropping the L-word. Here's everything we know, including their full relationship timeline. As far as we know, Meg and Dejon are still together. They left the show as boyfriend and girlfriend, with Meg saying that they'll be "proving to everyone we are actually going to stay together! Spending time together and introducing one another to family and friends." Dejon added: "I definitely want to have a conversation with her family, get to know them and have her meet my family so they can see the real us. A lot of the Islanders saw how genuine we were and I have no doubt it will be like that with our families. After that hopefully we can move in together as I can't imagine not living with her." Meg and Dejon coupled up on the first day of Love Island. Meg chose him from his dating profile alone, and while she wasn't too sure in beginning, saying that her feelings were at "50 per cent", that attraction grew very quickly. Just days into the show, Malisha entered the villa and took Dejon on a date, and Meg wasn't happy - cue the iconic Tape Nightclub argument. Meg even snuck up to the terrace to eavesdrop on Malisha and Dejon's chat. Nevertheless, Dejon chose to stay in a couple with her, sending Malisha home. Their next test came during the sleepover when D got to know Caprice away from the main villa. The pair flirted and he even fed her grapes on one night. They also shared a few kisses during the game, however, D said that what he had with Meg was stronger and returned to the main villa to be with her. But, it didn't stop there. Dejon soon flirted up a storm with Yasmin, talking about threesomes and getting intimate, and during a game they kissed, which didn't sit well with Meg. Next was Billykiss, who Dejon seemed keen to get to know on their date. Despite all this, they remained in a couple and made it to Casa Amor together. During Casa Amor, Dejon got flirting with Andrada and even shared a kiss with her (during the games). He told Andrada that he hoped she was coming back to the main villa so that he could carry on getting to know her, however, didn't make clear whether he'd be choosing to recouple with her. Dejon slept outside on the day beds during Casa Amor, while Meg shared a bed with Martin, as she expressed her worries to Helena and Emily. She felt she'd let a lot of things slide with D and that he needed to make it clear whether he wanted to be with her or not. The pair decided to stay with one another and when Dejon returned to the villa, Meg went off on him saying that her name is "Meg not Mug", after Andrada revealed that they had a connection in Casa. After a day or two, Dejon decided to make things exclusive with Meg. Movie night ruffled some feathers in the villa, as Dejon's flirty ways were broadcast to the rest of the villa in 4K. Meg was upset and confronted Dejon about this, at which point he told her he could take back the exclusiveness - yikes. A few days later and after making up, they were sent on their first date. They returned to the villa as boyfriend and girlfriend - something that raised a few eyebrows amongst the cast, with Shakira and Toni pointing out how soon it had happened after weeks of Dejon exploring other connections. During the family and friends visit, Meg gushed to her mum and sister, telling them that D does everything for her, to which her sister revealed that they didn't see that watching at home. Despite this, they continued in their couple, and Dejon later revealed that he's in love with Meg. As the final neared, the couple started to experience a few issues in their relationship. During the final dates, Meg called out Dejon after he chose Yasmin as the person he'd be coupled up with if he wasn't with Meg during a challenge. D then asked her if she was trying to make him look bad in front of the cameras. Nevertheless, they managed to smooth things over and went to the terrace to talk and hug it out. The conversation comes after Blu told Dejon that the public were backing Toni and Shakira, while Meg and the other girls didn't have the same support. When the former Islanders returned to the villa, Meg and Dejon received the most votes and were dumped from the villa. Explaining why they chose them as the most incompatible couple, some said they "always argued" and that they shouldn't be together if they're not "happy" - to this Meg insisted they're happy. Andrada brought the receipts, specifically mentioning moments from their final date. She told Dejon it was a "bad move" from him to mention the cameras, and said to Meg that she genuinely felt bad for her watching the show. Following their exit, Dejon said: "I wasn't shocked to leave because of the timing of mine and Meg's argument that we had. I knew people might not like that, so I wasn't shocked to leave, but I know what we have is real and in real relationships you have disagreements. I'm still grateful for our experience and I wouldn't have changed it." Outside the villa, the couple have wasted no time, already sharing their first Instagram collab post. "To growth, love, and our next chapter. Thank you all for supporting our journey , it doesn't go unnoticed," Dejon wrote alongside an image of him and Meg dressed in white outfits. Love Island is available to stream on ITVX.
