Musical play: Bit part of a pushcart peddler who emigrates to America, becomes Hollywood mogul

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

I don’t watch or attend a great many musicals; in fact about the only one I remember actually buying tickets for, other than school productions, was Ragtime. I’ve also seen Fiddler On The Roof live, and once or twice on film, which is probably why I’m confused.

One of these shows has a bit character who in one scene pushes his vendor’s cart across the stage; it’s explained that he’s going to emigrate to America and become a Hollywood movie mogul. At some later point it’s revealed that he’s done exactly that. Just for fact-checking purposes, I need to know which play that came from. I think it’s Ragtime, but I need to be 100% sure.

When I saw the scene, I thought no person could have done that all in one generation, until I read about Shmuel Gelbfiscz, who did exactly that and became the G of MGM Studios.

ETA: L.B. Mayer did the same thing, it turns out.

[Horatio_Hellpop]

Well, there’s Ali Hakim from Oklahoma. He didn’t become a Hollywood mogul, but he was loosely based on Levi Strauss.

[Sampiro]

Tateh (which means, roughly, “Daddy”- you never learn his given name, though he’s given the surname Ashkenazy [since he is one] at Ellis Island) is the character in Ragtime. He’s a silhouette maker and artist and socialist who leaves Latvia and becomes an ‘artist’ in America (‘artist’ because he comes to be self-mocking over his lack of success) and ends up working in steel mills and other manual labor jobs. He makes a little flip-book out of silhouettes for his daughter that gives him his start in movie making (there used to be flip machines that showed short movies) and parlays that into a film career.

In the book his wife comes with him but she’s written out of the musical. While they’re broke and struggling she begins to turn occasional tricks to make ends meet and when Tateh learns this he throws her out- you never learn what becomes of her. (In the movie version Mandy Patinkin played Tateh and his wife was played by a very young Fran Drescher.)

Belmont U. did a really good professional-quality production of Ragtime a couple of years ago. This is their introduction of Tateh.

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@Sampiro

Tateh (which means, roughly, “Daddy”- you never learn his given name, though he’s given the surname Ashkenazy [since he is one] at Ellis Island) is the character in Ragtime. He’s a silhouette maker and artist and socialist who leaves Latvia and becomes an ‘artist’ in America (‘artist’ because he comes to be self-mocking over his lack of success) and ends up working in steel mills and other manual labor jobs. He makes a little flip-book out of silhouettes for his daughter that gives him his start in movie making (there used to be flip machines that showed short movies) and parlays that into a film career.

In the book his wife comes with him but she’s written out of the musical. While they’re broke and struggling she begins to turn occasional tricks to make ends meet and when Tateh learns this he throws her out- you never learn what becomes of her. (In the movie version Mandy Patinkin played Tateh and his wife was played by a very young Fran Drescher.)

Belmont U. did a really good professional-quality production of Ragtime a couple of years ago. This is their introduction of Tateh.

Excellent! Thank you.