The year 1970 is not considered a particularly significant turning point in Israeli history, but some would argue that it marks the culmination of an era. Three years after the sweeping victory in the Six Day War and exactly three years before the trauma brought about by the Yom Kippur War, for the fledgling country the year that opened the 1970s symbolizes the height of euphoria between the wars.
Three years earlier, the anti-war musical "Hair" was released in the US, which describes the mood of turbulent America and presents the great conflict between the Flower Children movement, who seek peace and free love, and the war that was going on at the same time in Vietnam. " - itself an anti-war protest by young Israelis before conscription. "Queen of the Bath", Hanoch Levin's biting satire, criticizes the government of Golda Meir and brings a wave of protests from viewers and political organizations, and even comes up for discussion in the government, until finally the management of the Chamber Theater decides to take it off the stage .
The Chamber Theater, photo: Moshe Shay
In February of that year, two producers who hold the rights to the successful hippie musical from Broadway arrive in Israel, and are looking for an Israeli producer to help them upload a version of it in Hebrew.
When the late Zvika Pick passed away in August, many marked his role as Claude in that musical as the moment of significant breakthrough in his career. But the Israeli "Hair", which appeared in the summer of that year, is considered more than the starting point in one person's career. For many who participated in it, "Hair" was no less than an important junction in the field of Israeli culture.
"Hair came to me, quite simply and in one word - by mistake," says Orgad Vardimon - later a poet, writer and social activist, but then, in 1970, he was a young producer and entrepreneur.
Vardimon managed movie theaters and produced CCTV broadcasts (events such as the IDF parade and Maccabi Tel Aviv games), and he had just left his job as CEO of Philips' service company in Israel.
"On February 14, I was approached by Jean Laris and Michael Hurst, guys from England, one was originally French, who participated in the production of the musical in London," he says.
"They were looking to bring the musical to Israel, they fought with all the immediate suspects such as Giora Godik and Avraham Desha Peshnal, and they turned to me to help them find a place to show the play. I was managing the Allenby Cinema at the time, but it was too small. We found the Oasis Cinema in Ramat Gan, they offered That I will produce the show and I agreed. I've done a lot of crazy things in my life, and this is one of them. It's only when I talk about it today that I realize how much."
Tzvika Pick, photo: L.A.M
One of the first tasks in bringing "Hair" to Israel and making it accessible to the audience living in Zion was choosing the right person for the job of translation.
In his book "I have no other country" (published by Daniela Dinor and the Kibbutz Ma'ohed), the late Ehud Menor wrote: "In the fall of 1969, when Orgad Vardimon approached me with the offer to translate the American rock musical 'Sheer' into Hebrew, Israel was still immersed in the euphoria of the victory of the Six War the days.
I myself was far from euphoric: about a year before, in the summer of 1968, in the war of attrition, in a tank near the Suez Canal, my younger brother Yehuda was killed.
Later I learned that the offer to write the Hebrew version of 'Hair' was directed to me on the recommendation of the poet Helit Yeshuron and the film director Jacques Catmore, who were close to one of the foreign rights holders of the musical.
In those days, 'Achi HaHatsir Yehuda' played over the airwaves, performed by the Hasharion band with the young Solania, Tiki Dayan and Avi Toledano.
"I spent some time in Paris, I worked there as a model," says Yeshuron, "and a year or two before the play came on in Israel, I met Jean Laris, the French producer who owned the rights to the musical. Then, when I was already back in Israel, he and someone else met with Jacques Kathmore, who was my husband at the time, and with me. They asked me who could translate the musical into Hebrew. I had not seen the original musical before, I had only heard about it. Shortly before that, I had heard 'My Younger Yehuda', and it seemed to me that the person who wrote this song was The one who can translate 'hair'."
The historical context, right in the middle between the two wars that will define the character of the emerging Israel, plays an important role in choosing Ehud Menor as the translator of the musical.
"These were the years of the war of attrition, the late 1960s, after the Flower Revolution and after Vietnam," she says.
"There was such a historical moment, when the sweetness of the flower revolution, or what in my eyes was perceived as sweetness, was replaced by a deep consciousness of the tragedy of the war and of the fallen. I thought that a person like Ehud Menor, who experienced bereavement and death, was the one who could give it the Hebrew words The readiness, that there should not be too much pathos, but not too little either. Throughout his writing, he always had the right balance between emotion and coldness, between warmth and coldness."
Ehud Manor, photo: Rachel Hirsch
"And so," Manor writes in his book, "by chance, years after my first translation job was completed, I learned that it was my beloved younger brother, who had died, who 'got' me that job, which I had for school and a private workshop for translating plays and writing hymns."
"I really liked Ehud Manor and we were on friendly terms," says Vardimon, "He was of the opinion that he was chosen to translate 'Shiar', among other things, also because of the death of his brother. Helit thought it was a good idea, it may even be that Helit was the one who recommended it. When they told me the name, I recognized him, but I didn't know at all that his brother had been killed. And this is the point: I took him because from the beginning I came with a decision, and this was my policy, not to take ordinary theater people because it was the rebellion represented by 'hair'. He was so extreme, Which, in my opinion, was a mistake to try to rely on ordinary professionals."
Manor also writes in his book: "For over a year, I was immersed in 'hair'. My soul was bound by the thickness of pain and love in this wonderful and special musical. A truly revolutionary musical, innocent and wild, which strives to turn every rock of social and political discord (war, racism, poverty, drugs, free love, homosexuality, pornography), but in his heroes there is not a trace of hatred or evil."
The advantage of inexperience
Beyond the Hebrew translation that would turn out to be masterful, Manor was also responsible for the casting of a not so well-known actor, who actually already stood with one foot outside the realm of acting.
"At that time I left the theater, I worked as a bartender and I had a beautiful life," says Tsadi Sarfati, who although he did not star in the play in a leading role, but got to play several characters in it.
"Before that, I worked for many years in a repertory theater and decided to leave the profession altogether, because I felt that I did not have a great future as an actor. I did roles and supporting roles, I shuffled around and felt that it did not satisfy me. I felt that it was like stagnant water, that nothing significant was happening to me, and probably I didn't have the mental strength to continue it either.
"One day Ehud Manor visited the bar where I worked and said 'They're putting on 'Shi'er' in Israel, maybe you'll come to the auditions?" . I told him I wouldn't come to the auditions, I was already done with the theater, and he told me, 'Listen, it's not theater, it's something else, it's not a musical either.' Then I also met the English director, who came to the bar and laughed with me about it. I said 'I I'm not a singer and I'm not a dancer, what will I do there?'
But I went. Why? Because of the music. The music of 'Hair' blew my mind at the time."
French sides, photo: Koko
Although he faked and admitted himself that he had nothing to do with singing, French was accepted for what would later be the swan song of his acting career.
"I got to the auditions and I sang. Of course I sang awkwardly," he says, "I don't have a particularly clear voice. But I'm not faking and I'm very musical, I knew that. I probably had energy, because the director bought me right away. He wasn't looking for professionals. I was one of the only people there with acting experience, except for Margalit Ankuri. She and I were the only ones with a professional background. But the director was looking for people who were able to treat it as if it were life itself. To live on stage, not play characters. He knew me from conversations, saw me a little wild behind the bar , and thought that it wouldn't be so terrible and that I would still bring something authentic to the stage. So I was accepted. Not for a leading role. I played a lot of small characters there: mothers, fathers."
"As far as I'm concerned, I took my side first and foremost as one of the only ones who knew what a stage was," Vardimon explains.
"If I cast all of them because of a lack of professionalism, I chose Tsedi precisely for the professionalism, so that I would have someone who, like in football, is a kind of coach on the field. The coach does not need to send orders, there is the coordinator. And Tsedi was a kind of director on stage, even before who was really a director. Except for a few, they were all inexperienced actors. Even for advertising the musical, I chose a new advertising company. I also hired Ehud as a new one, because I wanted someone who had not done musicals before. Each of them felt that this was an opportunity."
Interestingly, it was the same manor who tried to recruit a young musician and a member of the trio for the main role in the musical at the same time - even if not very successfully at first.
The young Zvika Pick was part of the "Chocolate" trio, which was cast in the show in its entirety by virtue and not by grace, depending on who you ask.
"I was riding the bus at the time and I heard that the auditions for this play are being held now," ensemble member Gabi Shoshan, the late, told IDF Radio.
"I ran there with my friends, we stood in the line of hundreds of people, and in the end we won the main roles."
Zvika Pick with his uncle Topaz, 1985, photo: Moshe Shay
Orgad is a slightly different story.
"Zvika came as part of 'The Chocolat'," he says, "They were represented by a promoter named Marko Turgeman, who informed us that it was either all three or none of them. Zvika was very impressive and we wanted him, but we didn't know what role yet. In the first stages we thought about Danny Litany, for the position Gabi later received."
In the annals of music in Israel, the leading character of Claude, the long-haired rebel, will be considered the breakthrough moment of Zvika Pick, a big bang that began a long career, which at some point will be defined more by phenomenal composing abilities.
"One of the most memorable moments for me was the first meeting with the 'Chocolate' trio who got the central roles - Zvika Pick, Gabi Shoshan and Shuki Levy," says Tsadi.
"I raised an eyebrow, because they were three people who actually only performed in clubs, a rock band like that. Of course I was fooled. At first we had musical rehearsals, and suddenly some guy stood up, 1.90 m tall, with a very strong presence, a lot of confidence. A boy aged 19-20 , something like that, with a strong metallic voice, and singing. I immediately understood that there was a star and there was nothing to fear. And so it was."
"We're all old now"
Despite French's praise, the history and hysteria surrounding Peake could have been very different.
"He just didn't want to," says Ofra Fox, Ehud Manor's wife.
"At that time, Ehud was already working with Zvika, who was in 'Chocolate'. He wrote a song for him and about Shushan, and they asked the whole band to audition for roles and the boy didn't want to. I remember he used to come to our house, we had just given birth to our daughter Gali and he brought She has a big teddy bear. But he didn't want to participate in the musical and didn't say why, so we didn't really understand him. It took me a while to understand why. He said, 'No, it doesn't suit me'. His ideology didn't fit."
When Fox talks about the "ideology", she is referring to an interview Zvika gave years later, in which he admitted that his political views did not coincide with those of the hippie musical, which preaches peace and brotherhood and protests war.
Pick told Ruth Koren about his casting for the role on April 4, 1973 in the "Davar" newspaper: "Well, we went to the auditions. After we sang one song, the director offered me to play Claude. Only in rehearsals did I realize that I got the lead role... In rehearsals I was very bad. We'll see It's very strange for me to play in front of an empty hall and I was ashamed. A week before the premiere I was almost kicked out... The truth is that I don't sympathize with Claude and the ideas of the show at all. Apart from the long hair, I'm a normal guy, right-wing in my opinion, opposed to the return of the territories even if holding them would require going to war." (Here, by the way, the reporter comments: "This is the place to comment that our 'man of war' did not serve in the IDF and embarrassedly avoided my question as to the reason for this. 'This is a delicate personal problem and we will not get into it,' he said. But anyway
Rehearsals for the "hair" that will go up in Camry, photo: Koko
"I remember conversations in which Ehud really tried to convince him. In the end it was successful, and look how such a wonderful thing happened to him as a result," Fox says, also revealing a secret: "I came to the auditions because I was a singer at the time. I had a song in the chorus parade, and they didn't accept it me. They said it wasn't suitable because they were looking for more authentic actors and I was already a licked American. So they offered me a role, not the lead, which has a solo and I didn't want it, because I thought of myself. The one who got the role of Sheila was Margalit Ankouri, who happened to be a good friend of mine from New York."
"I felt that it was inappropriate for me to come and do an audition, but I came anyway," recalls Ankuri.
"Almost the entire cast of the production was not Israeli, they were from the USA and England, so I said, 'Okay, there is a part here,' because I relate more to foreigners than to Israelis.
In the audition, I was not directly selected for the role.
There was someone there who simply smeared the English director and I felt that it was not fair, I felt that I was much better.
But the choreographer Olive Tobias, who is also an actor, came and said that if I don't do Shiloh, he won't be able to continue working, because the one chosen at the beginning was much worse than me, a kind of small rebellion.
And then I actually played Sheila.
Today I would do it differently, tougher.
I saw the productions in the USA and I understood the difference. But that's just for my own taste, because to whoever decided to give me the David Violin Prize it was fantastic. In my eyes, I could have done it differently, but today we're all old now, what can I tell you."
The censorship - and the compromise
In the first months of rehearsals, the cast gradually takes shape into what Vardimon would call a "tribe", which is removed from media and manages social relations that will give what is happening on stage in the show sub-authenticity.
The cast of "Hair", which was made up of vivacious young people, was not at all different from the group of big-haired hippies seen on stage.
It included about ten Israelis (one of them is the young Margalit Tsenani), and all the other actors were British (one of them was Chris Jagger, the younger brother of the Rolling Stones singer and legend in the making, Mick Jagger) and two Americans, just so that the cast would include " The hippies are real."
One of them, a 16.5-year-old red-haired boy named Ruby, was chosen to star on the poster of the musical because of his bright hair.
We will come back to it.
"We also tried to make the salary the same for everyone, which in the end didn't work out because the 'chocolate' and the main actors demanded more and they deserved it, because they worked harder," Vardimon says. "He had no money, he barely paid," claims Ankuri.
"They thought we were really making money as main actors, but it wasn't like that. It doesn't matter to me if I have 100 shekels or 1,000 shekels, I behave the same and spend the same. My most beautiful time in 'Hair' was not the show itself Like the introduction to the show: the meditations, the connection, the silence and the learning of the songs."
On June 30, the first performance was presented, not before a significant hurdle was placed in front of her, which if she hadn't managed to jump over it, she probably wouldn't have become a phenomenon.
"It was the first play in Israel that included nudity, it may have been here or there in a small play," says Vardimon.
"In the last scene before the break, Zvika stands in the center of the stage, fully clothed and singing, while the band strips, and then everyone gets off the stage naked for the break. I didn't bind them to that in the contract, those who don't want to strip don't strip, those who do - yes. Usually there were more than 50 percent who undressed. Then suddenly at the last minute, the very day before the show came on, I received a message that the nudity scene was not approved for me at all and the musical would be limited to those 18 and older. This is a death sentence for a show about youth in which there are young people before conscription.
"The Ramat Gan municipality had some issue with the religious, and even though it gave us permits, they started causing problems and tried to get out of the commitment through the censorship. I summoned representatives of the censorship to the show, to see how it was done, and I managed to convince them to return the original restriction to the age of 16. One of the clauses that I was able to insert That included approval of the nude scene, provided that one red-haired actor named Robbie would stand behind. It turns out that when Robbie stood naked, his fresh white skin shone and made a noise in their eyes. Unfortunately, he was the character I put on the poster and in the show!"
Ramat Gan Municipality, Photo: Gideon Markovich
"Pure Presence"
The play received rave reviews, and the cast fell naturally into the role.
In a way, in one of the rare cases where reality imitates art, Vardimon's tribal vision turned out to be extremely successful and created a bunch of new stars in the Israeli entertainment market.
These, like the hippies who played and some of them actually were, went out together to party almost every night.
Many, falling in love, dancing and drinking.
"I remember that the first show took place on Saturday night, two premiere shows, and it was hysteria. Like wildfire," says Sfarfati.
"It was a show that ran for a whole year, eight shows a week, and every night you would meet us in the clubs."
Later Vardimon would say that he had an additional role in those days - a social worker.
"If someone spilled at night, then you had to catch them back. With this group, because they had to constantly be on edge and pretend to be what they were or weren't, sometimes you had to come at night and release them from detention. It was work around the clock."
In the cast of the celebrants, one significant figure stood out who did not take part in the festivities.
"Zvika was a very conservative guy, he didn't go to clubs after the show," says Tsadi, "I was more wild, but Zvika was very gentle. He didn't drink, he didn't smoke. A Polish boy from a good family."
"Zvika was not a hippie at heart," Vardimon adds.
"I had employees from every field: theater productions, cinema, electronics and high-tech, and Zvika was the most loyal and devoted of them all. He was always thoughtful, his mother was always important to him."
Yeshuron also couldn't help but be impressed by the star that was born.
"Zvika Peak was simply brilliant and a great surprise. He had a beautiful stature and he was beautiful. You can say that he had some kind of untainted, pure presence on stage. There was something pure and pure in the expression in his eyes, that's how it seemed to me at the time."
"Hair" ran on stage for about a year and came up about 300 times, an especially long time in those times, certainly for a static musical that attracted people to the same location every night.
At one point he went out of Ramat Gan to places where there were audiences who had not yet been exposed to him.
This is how the team reached places like Jerusalem, Haifa and Eilat Hashar.
But here, just before the end, Vardimon makes what he will define as one of the three biggest mistakes he made in his business life.
Shortly after he decided to move the show from "Oasis" to the "Alhambra" cinema (an important cinema from the 1930s and 1940s on Jerusalem Boulevard in Jaffa, which is now used as a center for Scientology - AP), he went on a month and a half vacation during which he visited Japan. This, he says, he received updates from his brother regarding the advance sale of the tickets, who reported good data. "But it turns out that he only asked the people at the box office and did not check for himself," he says. Three were pre-addicted.
In addition, 200-300 tickets were sold out of nearly 1,000 seats, which is bankruptcy.
I couldn't throw all the actors on the street, so I kept all my commitments, and in the end the show put me into losses.
It was really a mistake to do such a thing."
Quite a few life forms in nature, before they die, experience a temporary burst of life.
That's how Verdimon thinks of another "crazy" idea, as he says, that didn't come to fruition.
"I said I was taking a new cast, firing the entire lead trio and the singer and putting Eric Einstein, Shmulik Krauss and Josie Katz in the lead roles. I thought it was an amazing idea. Shmulik Krauss in the role of Berger could have been better than anyone else, and Eric would have played Claude is no less good than Zimbeka, although completely different. There was only one problem in those days - it was impossible to reach him. I offered them an unusual deal - one month, with an option for two weeks, and something like 30% of the revenue, but the money did not interest Schiesel or you Eric. And that's it, it's gone."
Vankouri adds: "I knew Shmulik and Eric, they wouldn't agree anyway."
The High Windows,
From "Oasis" to "Kohav Nold"
Even before a film version of the play was released (it was produced almost a decade later and was released only in 1979), adaptations of "Hair" were produced around the world in places such as Italy, Holland and Japan.
The musical was performed once more in Israel in 1991, starring Eyal Bohbot, Hagit Goldberg and Ilan Leibovitch.
On the director's chair this time sat one, a Frenchman.
Since then it has also appeared in 2002 (then Gadi Inbar directed Itai Tiran and Gil Nathanzon), as well as in 2015, when Moshe Kaptan directed Oz Zahavi, Dan Shapira, Merav Feldman, May Feingold, Chen Amsalem, Ido Rosenberg and others.
In a strange twist of history, in the early 1980s Tzvika Pick himself also proposed to stage the musical during a less glamorous period in his career.
"I told him that I really didn't feel like competing with my achievement," Vardimon recalls.
"That I see 'Hair' as a record achievement in my life, and that if I want to break this record I will do it in a different way, because the industry was no longer in the same place then. The second time was in 1990-1991. He put a jock in my head and I came to him With a new idea: not to make the musical 'Hair' as it is, because in the 90's the beauties were nothing new, and there was already a lot of nudity in the theaters. The topic of peace and the Vietnam War seemed distant and irrelevant to our struggles in Israel, but the music was great. So I said: Let's do another concept of a rock night made up of 'hair' songs, with a huge cast. In that case we would also have to pay smaller royalties, of 4% and not 12%. Then the Gulf War started and I had to shelve this idea."
Much has already been written about what will happen to many of the cast members.
Zvika Peak will become one of the leading names in Israeli music, even if his path to eternal glory was winding and full of professional crises.
Margalit Tsanani will become a spy and one of the pioneers of the female Mizrahi singer.
Margalit Ankouri will continue to act and sing and will also be remembered for the role she played in the cult movie "Peeps".
Tsadi Sarfati will discover his strength as a director - thanks to that musical in which he almost chose not to take part.
"It was a different kind of experience that definitely opened my mind to other worlds," says Tsadi.
"Then, during the show, I started directing, in a completely different world. I turned to the world of entertainment, which I had no experience in, but 'Hair' taught me a lot of things: what it is to perform when you don't have a fourth screen, when you address the audience directly."
More than 30 years later, he, Tsanani and Pick will meet behind the judges' table of "Kohav Nold", the reality sensation of the second channel.
The dynamic between them was evident on the screen, when they examined, selected and trained Israel's new generation of musicians and performers.
"We spent a time together that is unlike anything else", concludes French, "a year that is unlike anything else we have experienced since then".
Participated in the preparation of the news: Yoav Ginai
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