Cast
* Maurice Schwartz as Tevya * Miriam Riselle as Chava * Rebecca Weintraub as Golde * Paula Lubelski as Tzeitel * Leon Liebgold as Fedya * Vicki Marcus as Shloimele * Betty Marcus as Perele * Julius Adler (actor), Julius Adler as Aleksei the PriestProduction
The script was adapted by Marcy Klauber and Schwartz from Sholem Aleichem's play based on his own book. Schwartz directed the film, which was based on two works by Schwartz from 1919: the silent film ''Broken Barriers (1919 film), Broken Barriers'' (''Khavah'') and the stage production of ''Tevye''.''Laughter Through Tears: The Yiddish Cinema'' by Judith N Goldberg. 1983. . p.97-98. The production was filmed at Biograph Studios in New York City and on a farm in Jericho, New York. Midway through the shooting of the film, Hitler seized Danzig on August 23, 1939, and a Nazi invasion of Poland was imminent. These and other events in Europe affected the actors, many of whom had family in Poland. The filming, however, was completed.Frieden, Ken, "A Century in the Life of Sholem Aleichem's ''Tevye''" (1993). Syracuse University. Paper 46. The story focuses primarily on Sholem Aleichem's stories "Chava" and "Lekh-Lekho (Get Thee Out)" but provides a definite ending rather than Sholom Aleichem's ambiguous ending. In this version of ''Tevya'', as the Jews are expelled from their shtetl, Chava who previously converted to Christianity to marry, leaves her husband, returns to her family and to Judaism. It is felt that the antisemitism of the time influenced Schwartz to provide this ending.Rediscovery
Long thought to be a lost film, a print was discovered in 1978. The same story was the basis of the 1964 stage musical ''Fiddler on the Roof'' and Fiddler on the Roof (film), its 1971 film version, but the fate of Chava in the ending was changed for the change in attitudes by that time. In 1991, ''Tevya'' was the first non-English language film to be named "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the U.S. Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.See also
*List of rediscovered films *1939 in filmReferences
External links
*''Tevye'' essa