Thread by @Shakeenz

Here’s my #nepobaby story if anyone wants to make a graphic. My great great uncle Nicholas Nayfack (1909-1958) signed Judy Garland to MGM & produced 2 iconic films, Border Incident (1949) & Forbidden Planet (1956). Family lore, he wouldn’t give my great uncle Julie a job.

On my mom’s side, her grandfather Alec Roseman (who I’m dead named after) was a scenic carpenter who worked on all the old motion picture lots. Family lore is he wasn’t a great guy. When his wife died he left my papa and his other kids in a Jewish orphanage Boyle Heights (1930s).

My mom’s maternal grandparents ran a dry cleaners in River Forest, IL, and set up shop again in Hollywood when my grandma met my papa at UCLA. Family lore tells that the house they lived in belonged to a concert pianist first, with a living room designed to be a music parlor…

Supposedly, after several owners and changes in property value, that house most recently belonged to @Sethrogen? I’ve never seen it or been there by my mom Zillowed it during that phase of her panny anxiety.

My mom’s uncle Jerry Steinholtz (my grandma’s little brother, 1937-2013) grew up to be a brilliant percussionist & beloved music teacher who played bongos for Diana Ross. Of his illustrious pupils, my friend & collaborator @CRosenMusic—we didn’t know the connection when we met.

How here’s where it gets closer to home… my aunt Marilee Bradford (Auntie Mar), Jerry’s niece and Alec’s granddaughter, is the *original* multi-hyphenate of Hollywood. She was an actress who became a choreographer and director, created a musical revue for Carol Burnett and more

Auntie Mar became a producer for MGM (where Nick Nayfack signed Judy, don’t forget). She produced the MGM golden age of musicals documentary That’s Entertainment III and so many other collections of film music. Then she married my uncle, TV and Film music writer @jonburlingame

Now she runs (and will likely entrust me with) The Film Music Society, which preserves classic Hollywood scores, for years she published The Cue Sheet, a journal of tv and film music history, appreciation, and criticism. filmmusicsociety.org/about/about.ht…

Family lore is that after Auntie Mar’s hit Carol Burnett show she created a Gershwin Revue (Let’s Call the Whole Thing Gershwin) that my papa Steve Roseman (Alec the set builder’s son who grew up in an orphanage) helped produce at the Westwood Playhouse (now the @GeffenPlayhouse)

The show marked the first time the Gershwin estate allowed their songs to be presented on stage. It was poised to open at the Helen Hayes Theater on Broadway but at the last moment Ms. Gershwin pulled the rights and gave them to someone whose name we do not speak in my family.

He who shall not be named opened his Gershwin musical on Broadway soon after (with familiar choreography and some poached dancers from LCTHTG) after a painful legal battle over dramatic vs non-dramatic rights, musical revue vs book musical.

This defining moment happened around the time i was born & shaped my entire life. My first self-produced new musical reading in NYC (JUNK: A Rock Opera, 2009) I wore a Let’s Call the Whole Thing Gershwin tshirt. I keep a pair of white gloves from the original costumes on my altar

And if you wanna trace my nepo baby roots even farther back, My paternal grandma, Marjorie Maxine DeSure (before she married my grandpa James/JIm Nayfack & became a WWII riveter), used to tap dance before the picture shows on Hollywood Blvd, back when movies had live stages.

75 years later when I moved to New York she gave me a few hand written notes she had saved and pieced together regarding the origins of our family, crossing over from Russia through Ellis Island and what not. We always knew we had family in the Yiddish theatre here in NYC, but…

My then 88 now 99-year old grandma gave me a clipping of the De Jur Settlement Playhouse (@HenryStreet @AbronsArtsCtr) with the handwriting “could this be our family?” (remember, her family name was DeSure, but they changed everyone’s names getting off the boats back then).

If you know anything about Henry Street and the settlement Playhouse, it was immigrant theater, Jewish theatre, and vanguard theatre. It’s still home to cutting edge new plays and musicals. Named after an immigrant boy who grew up seeing shows there and one day joined the board.

Family lore is that great grandma Fanny Kaplan (my papa’s mom, not the Ukrainian socialist assassin) was a Yiddish comedy QWEEN. Odds are she played Henry Street before moving to LA with Alec the set builder, never knowing her granddaughter (my mom) would marry a DeSure (De Jur?)

So yeah, this is my heritage. Yiddish theatre and immigrant settlements, Judy Garland and Gershwin, MGM musicals and Diana Ross, hoofing & sci-fi & Mexploitation pulp/cult cinema, stolen choreography and shattered dreams, building & rebuilding sets and scores until this moment.

You know the expression “I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams?” It’s very that. And Musical Theatre Factory (@MTFmusicals) the org I started in a gay porn studio over the old Drama Bookshop giving rise to countless artists/shows (@StrangeLoopBway @bemorechil) is part of that legacy.

Barring any edits/corrections from my fam on the facts or lore, consider this (me) the end of this (that) thread!—altho I did just nepo baby in my niece Julia Ihly, a teenage actor, writer, athlete & disability rights activist, who I got to be an extra on my Quantum Leap episode!

Updates from mom: Nicholas Nayfack was the treasurer at MGM, small detail that makes the whole Judy Garland film producer thing make sense. Also my great great grandpa Alexander Roseman immigrated from Hungary & was a carpenter for 20th Century Fox. As for my middle (dead) name:

Another update from my Dad’s side, my grandma Margie’s older brother Eddie opened a little bar near downtown LA called Club Oasis. It was part of the LA jazz scene. When my grandparents got married they lived upstairs and would listen to all the greats playing all night long!

My family’s Seder in 1932, my grandma Shirley is sitting on the lap of her papa Dave Steinholtz (lower left). We still use this photo in our family haggadah. My whole life I believed this is what heaven is like, a big banquet table with your ancestors waiting for you like Elijah!

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