Whoopi Goldberg decided to make a documentary about the Clown Princess of Comedy to rescue Mabley from being a mere footnote in entertainment history, despite the fact that she had paved the way for minority and women performers. The result was HBO’s Whoopi Goldberg Presents Moms Mabley. Ms. Goldberg depicted her heroine’s story through rare live footage of some of her performances, photographs, and interviews with actors, including Harry Belafonte, Bill Cosby, Kathy Griffin, Arsenio Hall, Sidney Poitier, and Jerry Stiller. Eddie Murphy based the grandmotherly character in The Nutty Professor on Moms. Joan Rivers, a graduate of Mabley’s school of satire, was another to sing the late great’s praises with the tribute, “She’s been lost somewhere in comedic history.” Always one to give credit where credit was due, Moms said, “Every comedian has stolen from me but Redd Foxx. He’s a born comedian.”
The angels were in need of laughter, and in 1975, Mabley joined their celestial number when she passed away in White Plains, New York. Clarice Taylor, who played Anna Huxtable, actor Bill Cosby’s mother on The Cosby Show, said of the comedienne’s life, “Know it was not easy.”
The Female of the Species (1898)
In some instances, a single name is closely associated with a country: Cleopatra with ancient Egypt, Marie Antoinette with France, Victoria with England. The same situation holds true for a nation born in the twentieth century that will forever be associated with a force of nature who refused to be defined by her sex or by her age.
A stranger-than-fiction life began with Golda Mabovitch, born in Kiev, in the Russian Empire. Her first memory was of her father, Moshe, nailing boards over the front door during rumors of an imminent pogrom. In addition to the anti-Semitism, the family suffered from poverty: Her parents sometimes gave her food to her younger sister Zipke; her older sister Sheyna often fainted from hunger. Golda remembered, “I was always a little too cold outside and a little too empty inside.”
In 1906, the family immigrated to the United States, where Mr. Mabovitch spent three years saving for shifskarte (the steamship fare.) When he could find employment, he worked as a carpenter; his wife started a dairy store, the bane of Golda’s life. At age eight, Golda had to work there while her mother bought supplies at the market. Humiliated, she arrived late to school every morning.
At age eleven, to raise money for classroom textbooks, Golda organized her first public meeting and delivered her first public speech. A few years later, mother Bluma and daughter Golda got into a terrible fight when Golda announced she wanted to become a teacher. This decision did not sit well with her parents, as a Wisconsin law did not allow teachers to be married, and they feared their daughter’s destiny would be that of an old maid. Desperate not to become the wife of Mr. Goodman, who was twice her age, the fourteen-year-old fled to Denver, where Sheyna—a fiery revolutionary—lived. Listening to the young socialists who congregated at her sister’s home solidified her belief in Zionism. After a sibling argument, the sixteen-year-old Golda moved in with friends and started at a job measuring skirt linings. In later years, she found herself habitually glancing at hems. Her father poured on the guilt when he wrote that, if she valued her mother’s life, she would return to Milwaukee. The prodigal daughter returned home, where she worked in her choice of profession. After she heard of attacks on Jews in the Ukraine and Poland, Golda organized a protest march. She turned the Mabovitch home into a mecca for visitors from Palestine. She recalled, “I knew that I was not going to be a parlor Zionist.”
In 1917, Miss Mabovitch met Morris Myerson, a poetry-loving sign painter and fellow émigré from Russia. They started dating, although they had little in common other than a mutual love of classical music. At age nineteen, when Morris agreed to be part of the third aliyah (wave of immigration to Palestine), Golda became Mrs. Myerson. In 1921, the couple sailed on the Pocahontas to their second adopted country.
The newlyweds settled in Tel Aviv and joined the Kibbutz Merhavia, whose name translates to “God’s wide spaces,” situated a few miles south of Nazareth. The members of the commune grudgingly accepted them, and Golda felt they only agreed because of her phonograph and records. Following disagreements with the other members, she realized Merhavia would gladly have “accepted the dowry without the bride.” Golda raised chickens, worked the land, and studied Hebrew, a language she had never felt comfortable conversing. Regarding her new homeland, she echoed her compatriots’ complaint against Moses, saying, “He dragged us forty years through the desert to bring us to the one place in the Middle East where there was no oil.” Although the kibbutz was in a malaria-ridden area and the work difficult, she embraced her new country. The frail Morris did not share her enthusiasm, and they moved to Jerusalem, where she gave birth to son, Menachem, and daughter, Sarah. Golda admitted that the four years they stayed in the capital were grueling, as the family could barely subsist on Morris’s income as a bookkeeper. Mrs. Myerson did laundry in exchange for Menachem’s tuition. In 1928, Golda, driven to work outside the confines of home, became the secretary of the women’s labor council of Histadrut, supervising the vocational training of immigrant girls. She put in such long hours that Menachem and Sarah were happy when their mother had one of her regular migraine headaches, as it meant she would be home. Golda’s less-than-maternal nature manifested itself when she later insisted that one of her grandchildren, born with mild Down syndrome, be sent to an institution.
Golda had accepted her position knowing that it meant frequent travel, and that her absences would put a strain on her marriage that was already on the rocks. Not willing to live a lie, with son and daughter in tow, she moved to a tiny apartment and slept on the living-room couch. When not making speeches, working as a laundress, or looking after her family, Golda embarked on affairs, sometimes juggling two lovers at once. The Myersons were still officially married when Morris died six years later. Until the day she passed away, Golda kept a photograph of herself and her husband on her night table.
Despite Golda’s lasting affection for her husband and her passion for her romantic liaisons, her greatest love affair was for her spiritual homeland. After the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine approved the establishment of a Jewish state, the Arab states refused to accept the decision. The Jews realized war was imminent and that they would need arms and money. Golda—few now bothered to use Meir—left for America and returned with $50 million. David Ben-Gurion, the Prime Minister of Israel, remarked, “She was the Jewish woman who got the money which made the state possible.” Part of her success stemmed from her powerful oratory. As Golda spoke, her diminutive stature receded, and her audience was left with the image of an imposing woman who radiated strength. When she became Prime Minister of the country she had helped birth and spoke in front of thousands, it seemed she was talking in her living room to a gathering of intimates.
On her return, she undertook the diplomatic, political negotiations with King Abdullah of Transjordan. Disguising herself as an Arab woman, she travelled to Amman to urge him to keep his promise to her not to join other Arab leaders in an attack. He asked her not to hurry the proclamation of a state. “We have been waiting for two thousand years,” she replied. “Is that hurrying?” On May 14, 1948, she was one of twenty-five signers of Israel’s independence, a woman among Israel’s