Ann Landers, Onstage
By Benjamin Ivry October 23, 2009
A one-woman play, “The Lady With All The Answers,” honoring the late Jewish advice columnist Ann Landers has just opened at New York’s downtown Cherry Lane Theatre. This New York premiere of a play that has been touring regionally is an affectionate portrayal of what the British press refers to as an “Agony Aunt.” In both the United Kingdom and the Bintel Brief, Jewish women who followed in the tradition represented by The Forward’s “Bintel Brief”, which offered advice to disoriented immigrants, felt a need to de-ethnicize their personae.
Like Britain’s Marjorie Proops (born Rebecca Marjorie Israel in East London; 1911–1996, a noted agony aunt in London’s “Daily Mirror,” Esther Pauline Lederer (née Friedman of Russian Jewish ancestry; 1918–2002), not only took over an “Ask Ann Landers” column in 1955, after its creator, Ruth Crowley, died, but also assumed the name Ann Landers in public. Landers had competition in the form of her twin sister Pauline Phillips (born 1918 as Pauline Esther Friedman), who assumed the name Abigail Van Buren to launch the “Dear Abby” column in 1956. In 1992, the immortal actress Estelle Getty proclaimed in an episode of “The Golden Girls”: “Simpletons read Dear Abby, fools read Ann Landers.”
The sisters’ plastic identities may have been partly to blame, and playwright David Rambo, with acclaimed actress Judith Ivey, strive to get past these facades, to widespread critical plaudits. Fortunately, today’s Jewish advice columnists, from Ruth Westheimer to Emily Yoffe, discard any such attempts at pseudo-goyishe identity and thereby remain anchored in reality, like the Bintel Brief of yore.
Watch a preview of the New York production of “The Lady with All the Answers”:
Watch Ann Landers, during a 1958 Canadian television appearance:
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news. All donations are still being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000 until April 24.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
