PJ Grisar is a Forward culture reporter. He can be reached at [email protected] and @pjgrisar on Twitter.
PJ Grisar
By PJ Grisar
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Culture You Can Own Marilyn Monroe’s Menorah – That’s Lit!
Even before her 1956 conversion, Marilyn Monroe, was attached to Judaism. One of the most famous photos of the screen legend, with her white skirt fluttering in a jet of subway exhaust, was snapped by Garry Winogrand. The picture was promotion for Billy Wilder’s “The Seven Year Itch” (1955). A year after the film’s debut,…
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Culture Q&A: How Stan Lee Changed Comics – And The World
If comic books have a face — one that isn’t penciled, inked and boxed into a panel — that face is Stan Lee’s. For Lee, this fact proved to be both an asset and a sore subject throughout his life. Lee created — with Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and countless other artists, letterers and writers…
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Culture The Warrior Skeleton Claimed By Nazis — And Then By Soviets
The skeleton of the unknown warrior lay beneath the courtyard of a ninth-century Czech castle, one hand on the pommel of an iron sword. 1,000 years after his death, his life became the subject of speculation in the emerging field of race science — with potential global consequences. Two great powers strained to link the…
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Culture In Utah, The Spooky Tale Of A Haunted Jewish Mausoleum
On the surface, there’s nothing remarkable about the Moritz mausoleum. On the grounds of the B’Nai Israel Cemetery in Salt Lake City, Utah, the simple stone vault is cut with its occupant’s last name on the lintel, and its metal door is bordered with floral motifs. It doesn’t appear to be worth a second look….
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Culture Robert Evans, Who Changed Movies And Saved Paramount, Dies At 89
The kid has left the picture. Robert Evans, the flamboyant movie mogul whose connoisseurship shaped the late 1960s and 1970s cinema landscape, died Saturday at the age of 89. Evans was both a new kind of movie producer and a throwback. He was not a dynastic studio head; he was Robert Shapera, the son of…
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Culture Is It Kosher To Boo The President?
President Donald Trump had a busy Sunday. He began it with a 9 AM press conference announcing the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and ended the evening at Nationals Park, where he was booed by a crowd of baseball fans. Probably not how he thought the day would go. The jeering — courtesy…
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Culture Kanye Features Kenny G, Name-Drops Barry Manilow ‘Jesus Is King’
Kanye West’s long-awaited ninth studio album, “Jesus Is King,” dropped Friday, breaking the internet in a manner only he and his wife, Kim Kardashian, know how to do. An extension of West’s Sunday Service gospel-rap group, it is Yeezy’s most explicitly religious record to date, nodding to old gospel standards and quoting scripture in between…
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Culture The Real Mark Zuckerberg Is A Lot Less Impressive Than The Movie Version
Screenwriter and playwright Aaron Sorkin has written for politicians, presidents, news anchors, colonels — all, for the most part, fictional. But Sorkin did have a rare real subject in his 2010 film “The Social Network,” gifting Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg with some of the most sardonic and arch lines in the entire Sorkin-verse. Lately, some…
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