1920s

Most critics loathed Abie’s Irish Rose (1922 / 2,327), a sentimental comedy about the marriage of a Jewish man and an Irish-Catholic woman, but enthusiastic audiences—and the sheer determination of writer-producer Anne Nichols—turned it into the biggest hit of the 1920s. Along with positioning the play in relation to conflicts surrounding immigration and assimilation, this chapter illuminates the tension between art and commerce, and between “highbrow” and “lowbrow,” evidenced in Abie’s five-year run. It also traces how the significance of the play shifted after World War Two, with changing notions of ethnicity, religious difference, and the “American Melting Pot.”