Not So Far Away

THEATER

JULIE SMITH YOLLES CONTRIBUTING WRITER

JOAN MARCUS

Growing up in the Bronx, Paul Blake had never experienced antisemitism. His classmates in high school and City College of New York were all Jewish.

“I never thought about it,” said Blake, who started out as an actor and is now a prolific Broadway producer bringing Beautiful — The Carole King Musical to the Fisher Theatre Jan. 4-9, 2022.

Like all struggling actors, he’d go on countless auditions and look for ways to make supplemental income.

“I was a character actor with a very heavy New York accent, so there were lots of roles that I couldn’t play,” he said.

As an ironic twist, the self-professed “skinny, short kid” got cast as Santa at a local bank.

“Three days into the job, I got fired because ‘Santa Claus isn’t Jewish,’ the manager told me. I was shocked. I called up the human resources person and said, ‘There’s a woman who is antisemitic working at the bank.’”

Blake worked as an actor for seven years until his girlfriend’s mother encouraged him to take a directing job at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, a Reform synagogue in New York City’s Upper West Side.

“And that was the turning point of my life when I found my real career,” Blake said. “My acting teacher who came to the show said that I could be a director for a living. And the rabbi who saw the show told me, ‘You need to go work at the Catskills and be with our people.’

“Working with all of those people, I became very cognizant of my Jewish background and heritage. I picked up Yiddish and became a showbiz Jew,” Blake laughed.

That was more than 60 years ago. Since then, Blake was the executive producer of the St. Louis Muny for 22 seasons where he produced and/or directed more than 150 shows. He left the Muny in 2011 to begin development of the new musical, Beautiful, based on the early life and career of singer/songwriter Carole King. King changed her name from Carol Joan Klein in high school. She’s written more than 118 pop hits on Billboard’s Hot 100.

“Carole grew up in Queens at the same time that I was growing

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JOAN MARCUS