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April 08, 2007
Is Richard Gere Jewish?
In my favorable review of "The Hoax,'' I wrote that
Richard Gere gives perhaps his best performance as
Clifford Irving, the man behind the psuedo-auotobiography of
Howard Hughes, despite not being particularly convincing as a Jew. A couple of readers wrote in to claim that Gere was, in fact, born a Jew. Which sort of surprised me, since America's best-known Buddhist was widely criticized for being ethnically inauthentic in his two previous Jewish roles, the titlular monarch in the best-forgotten "King David'' (1985) and the more recent "Bee Season.'' Anthony Lane even begins his review of "The Hoax'' in the New Yorker "...can you swallow a Jewish Richard Gere?'' I asked the readers for their sources and turned to
Kenny in The Post's library. All he could find on the subject was this sentence in a 2005 article in The Vancouver Sun: "..some sources say Gere was born Jewish and raised Methodist before his right turn into Buddhism.'' Some sources? Fortunately one of the readers, Brian, scoured the Internet and found this in an interview Gere gave to
The Cinema Source to promote "Bee Season":
"My father was always really close to the Methodist Church and my mother was a Presbyterian,” Gere recalls. “We went to Methodist Churches growing up and there were certain rituals to be a Methodist. I remember the singing more than anything, the sense of joy and singing hymns in the atmosphere of people somehow trying to engage that mysterious energy.”
That's good enough for me. Those wishing to do further research might want to do some freeze-framing on early Gere films like "American Gigolo,'' "Breathless'' and "The Honorary Counsel,'' where he frequently tropped trou. Somehow these were omitted from Screen Grab's recent roundup of nude scenes, which included clips of money shots featuring everyone from Sissy Spacek to Jaye Davidson. (Warning: the latter contains a spoiler)
Posted by Lou Lumenick on April 8, 2007 07:02 AM
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