Really? I thought that was good ol’ Sam Etic.
Well, heavyweight champ Max Baer in “Cinderella Man” was certainly a tough guy (and he wore a Star of David on his trunks)… though the movie unfairly made him out to be a bloodthirsty brute.
I say unfairly because in real life, even Jimmy Braddock LIKED Baer. Braddock’s take (probably accurate) was that “Max was a very nice fellow, but you know, I don’t think he really liked boxing. I think he really wanted to be a movie star or something like that.”
Barry Levinson’s Baltimore-based comedy-dramas are populated with a lot of implicitly or explicitly Jewish characters, but WRT the OP, one character stands out. The Ben Kurtzman character at the center of Liberty Heights is a Jewish teen whose father makes a middle-class living as an independent player in the numbers racket, but the father (who goes to prison at the movie’s end) isn’t the bravest, most independent member of this family. That honor should go to Ben, who has a black girlfriend, dresses as Hitler on Halloween, stands up to the thug who kidnaps him, his girlfriend, and his best friend, and, with two or three Jewish friends, very visibly breaks the “No Jews” rule at the local swimming hole.
It hasn’t been released yet, but the upcoming movie Defiance will feature Daniel Craig as a Jewish resistance fighter against the Nazis.
And he’s so tough his bris involved a hammer and chisel. (I wonder if it was a Hebrew hammer?)
OK, another movie - School Ties, with Brendan Fraser, about a football player who is struggling against anti-Semitism at an upper-class prep school in the 50s. The character, David Green, is hardworking, loyal, honest, strong, and intelligent. It is one of the only portrayals of a Jewish character that I can think of, that doesn’t cast him as a nebbish or a sleazeball. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are also in it.
So far, though, this thread has been pretty depressing - and pretty much along the lines of what I expected, too. I think American society just has a preconceived notion of what a Jew is supposed to be, and that notion is a negative one, and I think no amount of Jewish directors and actors is going to change that because ultimately movie makers are concerned with what will sell, and stereotypes sell.
And virtually any movie featuring Dutch Schultz – The Cotton Club, Billy Bathgate, Hoodlum. Schultz was an utterly worthless piece of shit, but nobody can say he wasn’t a tough guy.
Curiously, the enigmatic last words of Dutch Schultz, which played such an important role in Illuminatus!, never figure in any cinematic portrayal of his murder.
Well, if you have to be stereotyped then “intellectual, well educated, responsible with money, non-violent liberal proessionals” is a lot better than many alternatives. As a gay southerner I’m afraid I’m not overly sympathetic. 
(Must run: I’ve got to leave my current boyfriend to go have an unprotected quickie with my underage double-first-cousin Bobby “Red” Ray in an El Camino with Judy Garland blasting from the speakers; if the sex is good then afterwards we’ll each light up a cross and rearrange each other’s centerpieces.)
“Intellectual, well educated, responsible with money, non-violent liberal professionals” is one way to look at it, the other way is “wimps.” And the latter is the way it’s always spun in the movies. “Jew” is seen as something less than what an ideal man is supposed to be, and that bothers me.
Frankly, my ideal man is what many would call a “wimp”. I think a lot of other gay guys and women would echo me. Give me Paul Rudd or Neil Gaiman over John Wayne or Vin Diesel any day.
For that matter, Tevye- perhaps the most famous Jewish main character in theater or movies (adjusted for inflation Fiddler is one of the biggest hit musicals in cinematic history) is, to me anyway, every bit a “real man”. He’s a very admirable character and far more of a man than most action heroes. He keeps a family together, maintains a sense of humor, adores his daughters and keeps his faith all in horrible and changing times. He stands up to the constable and to the thugs who disrupt his daughter’s wedding but at the same time knows to get out of Russia rather than stay and fight in what would be a quick and hopeless battle), and keeps his faith through it all.
I’ve also said (and meant) several times on these boards that I think Jon Stewart is one of the sexiest men in show biz and one of the most important men in politics. While I know he went to college on a soccer scholarship, I somehow doubt you’ll see him taking over as James Bond when Craig retires or starring in DIE HARD VI: JEW ON THIS.
Fair enough, I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree on that then. You bring up Paul Rudd, he’s a handsome, charming, likable actor who always plays likable, charming guys - NOT nebbishes, NOT nerds, but “cool” guys. True, he never plays tough guys, but he doesn’t play dorks either. Rudd is a Jew, but he never plays Jewish characters. See what I’m getting at? There are Jewish actors who play cool characters, but those characters are never Jews.
Before someone brings up Seth Rogen, I should just go on the record as saying that I don’t think “pot-smoking slob” is a positive character, even if he gets the girls.
Also, is there a single person alive on this Earth who actually wants to fuck John Wayne?
And Dutch Schultz was murdered by mobsters from Murder Incorporated, which was headed by another tough Jew, Louis Lepke.
Okay, what we have here is the appearance of a mensch vs a schlemiel. In all his big movies Bruce Willis, a half-breed, is a mensch. Ben Stein, not so much. Paul Newman, another half caste? ALWAYS a mensch. Hell, he’s the the UBERMENSCH. Ben Stiller, yet another half-Jew leading man? A total schlemiel, but he does well at the box office.
So, looking at leading men who are at least partially Jewish, I’m seeing a balance. And I wouldn’t be so quick to judge Hollywood. It’s done fine by its own.
I thought the character of Bobby Gold portrayed by Joe Mantegna in 1991’s “Homicide” would have been mentioned by now. He is tough, he’s the first one through the door and so on.
However, throughout the movie he comments on the negative stereotypes he has experienced. Still, I think he plays a macho Jewish hero.
Well not now… but in his prime. Hell, he got Maureen O’Hara, who in her prime I think I could beget an heir with if I had to for the realm.
Slightly off-topic, but who are some famous Jews who never (or at least very rarely) played Jews? Some I can think of off the top of my head-
Leslie Howard (bka Ashley Wilkes, Henry Higgins)
Harry Morgan (bka Col. Potter and for Dragnet)
Michael Landon (Little Joe and Little House)
Who are some others? (IIRC Charlie Chaplin was half-Jewish and did play a Jewish character in The Great Dictator).
The same way that many aspects of southern culture and black culture have merged as one in identification of the American Simplification Mindset outside of the south and for those who don’t know a lot of black people or southerners (e.g. fried foods/turnip greens/gospel/matriarchal families/sports obsession- some think of this as “a southern thing”, others as “a black thing”- it can be either, neither, or both of course) I think a lot of NYC culture and American Jewish culture have merged to those outside of NYC and who don’t know many Jews or New Yorkers (the abrasiveness, what you call “wimpiness”, neurotic, etc.). I associate these, right or wrong, with New Yorkers as much as I do with Jews, though as with southerners/blacks there’s considerable overlap and interchange and of course no shortage of exceptions to the stereotype (I’ve known Jews who were anything but wimpy/financially responsible/intellectual/liberal, I’ve known a family of native NYC’ers who were as fundamentalist in their Christianity and conservative in their politics as any Mississippi Pentecostal, etc.), I even knew a black guy who was absolutely obsessed with medieval Welsh culture he learned [the Welsh language] Cymraeg and owned a tailor-made tunic with the Welsh lion on it [and he was straight! People are people.
Back to the gays- you wouldn’t believe how many people think of gays as effete show tune loving sports shunning intellectual neat freaks like on Will & Grace. I am the only show tune loving gay guy I know and I’m far more slob than snob and I loathe the concept of gardening or interior design, while in Atlanta there are gay sports bars for gay guys who take their football as seriously as millions of others do down here but who in the morning might be interior designers or might be malt liquor swilling construction workers or anywhere in between. Most people have some elements of their demographics stereotype combined with a whole bunch of "doesn’t really fit any stereotype, and anybody who draws their opinions of a whole group from their depictions in movies isn’t likely to have an opinion that’s worth changing anyway.
In the book The Book Thief the character Max Vandenburg is a decidedly non-wussy Jew. He bare knuckle fights with young Nazis before the war and dreams of fighting Hitler while hiding from the authorities.
Dropzone, Bruce Willis is part-Jewish? That’s news to me. Though I did always think he looked Jewish.
My all time favorite Jewish cop was Starsky from Starsky and Hutch. Hutch was the smooth-talking, sensitive one who got all the girls, but Starsky was just a total fucking badass, and that’s all there was to it. He did all of his own stunts. In one of the early episodes in the first season - can’t remember what it was called - there’s this setup where they’re chasing after some guy, Starsky gets on this Kawasaki scrambler bike, with a scoped rifle slung over his shoulder, chases the bad guys’ car down an alley, jumps the bike over some ramp thing, rides through another alley, lays down the bike into some trash cans to break the fall, gets up, aims the rifle, shoots the car, and it explodes.
Now, we all know that you can’t just make a car explode like that, but the whole thing was fucking badass as all hell. And Paul Michael Glaser actually did all the stunts. He was a very skilled motorcycle stuntman. (Well, I should say, IS, because he’s still alive, though I doubt he’s still doing stunts.)
See, you can talk about the smart sensitive type until the cows come home, but that one scene, that’s the kind of shit I’m talking about here. Give me a Jew who does that, and I’ll be happy.
Isn’t being whiny and neurotic over the lack of tough-guy Jews kind of a mixed message?
I’m not being whiny and neurotic, unless it’s whiny and neurotic to point out what I see as an unreasonable absence of Jewish heroes when Hollywood is so dominated by Jews. (I know that’s a stereotype but it happens to be one that’s rooted in truth.)
Oy. I could use a shot of Mogen David and a bagel about now.