Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein in the film “Maestro.”

by Debra Rich Gettleman

Don’t you just hate when you spend millions of dollars to write, direct, produce, and act in a major motion picture only to be doused by social media criticism the minute the trailer is dropped? I know I do.

So yesterday, with the trailer release of Bradley Cooper’s up-coming biographical romance about Leonard Bernstein, Cooper felt the slings and arrows of a cadre of antisemitic organizations and individuals who found his prosthetic nose to be more than a little insulting.

While some of the backlash was aimed at the portrayal of Bernstein, the Jewish composer of West Side Story and a slew of other iconic musicals, by a non-Jew, the bulk of criticism centered around Cooper’s “Jewface” which pushed an ugly (both physically and metaphorically) convention of Jews as having large hooked noses, a deeply antisemitic cultural stereotype.

“Hollywood cast Bradley Cooper — a non-Jew — to play Jewish legend Leonard Bernstein and stuck a disgusting exaggerated ‘Jew nose’ on him,’” posted StopAntisemitism, an organization aimed at countering antisemitism.

Another poster lashed out about having seen Cooper play the elephant man on Broadway without the use of any prosthetics. “But then he plays a Jew and decides he needs a huge nose?

And one comment pointed out, “He’s the director too so don’t blame anyone else.”

Bradley Cooper

According to The Media Diversity Institute (MDI) website, portraying Jews with large hooked noses had its roots in Nazi propaganda from the 1930s. “It is a technique used to stir up a sense of disgust and repulsion towards Jews, either collectively or individually, and is often found alongside other antisemitic motifs involving money, power, conspiracy and blood.”

MDI goes on to explain that it is virtually impossible to find a single piece of propaganda from the time that does not depict Jews with an exaggeratedly large, grotesque, hooked nose. “It is easy to see how these strikingly evil and sub-human looking images stayed with those who saw them—subtly entrenching the association between Jews and large noses, using this ‘defining characteristic’ to encourage people to identify, and discriminate against Jews.”

There’s an old saying that no press is bad press. But I beg to differ on this one.

Leonard Bernstein

“Maestro” will have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September and is expected to have a limited theatrical release on Nov. 22. The question now is how limited this release will be.