Trivia / Fiddler on the Roof

• California Doubling: In the film adaptation, Croatia stood in for Anatevka while the interiors were shot at Shepperton Studios in England.
• Cut Song: Quite a few. But the remnants of the original opening song, "We've Never Missed a Sabbath Yet", supplied the melody for a section of "Tradition" and can be heard in the scene change between "Tradition" and "Matchmaker, Matchmaker". And the music and lyrics of "Anatevka" are based on a section of the original Act 2 opening, "Letters From America," where the villagers explained why they prefer staying in Anatevka rather than emigrating.
  • One of the better cut songs is "When Messiah Comes." Some sources say it was meant to be sung by Tevye, others by the town rabbi. In any case, it was to take place after the villagers were ordered out of Anatevka, shortly after the line "We've been waiting for the Messiah all our lives...wouldn't now be a good time for Him to come?" The creators eventually decided that a comic song just wasn't going to fit the moment, but it isn't really a fall-down-laughing type of comedy so much as it is a laugh-so-you-don't-cry type...musing how difficult it might be for the Messiah to find His chosen people when they keep getting shunted around from place to place. Herschel Bernardi, one of the touring Tevyes who played the role in a later 1981 Broadway revival, included the song on a 1966 studio album that featured linking narration by the show's scriptwriter Joseph Stein.
• Dawson Casting: Tzeitel, Hodel, Chava, and Motel in the film and most stage productions, though justified by the demands of their roles.
• Defictionalization: So Anatevka is a fictional shtetl in Ukraine, close to Kyiv. But come Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, and it became a real settlement for Jewish and Gentile internally displaced people organized by Jewish diaspora - near Kyiv, of course.
• Fake Nationality: In the film, most of the Anatevka villagers are played by American actors (namely Norma Crane, Rosalind Harris, Paul Michael Glaser, Neva Small and Molly Picon) while Michele Marsh is French-American of Swiss descent, Ray Lovelock is Italian of British descent, Paul Mann is Canadian, Alfie Scopp is British-Canadian, Patience Collier and Roger Lloyd-Pack are British, Marika Rivera is French, Tutte Lemkow is Norwegian, and Chaim Topol and Aharon Ipalé are Israeli. Russian-American Zvee Scooler is the only cast member to be actually from the region.
  • And then there's an issue of all the Slavic inhabitants of Anatevka often labeled as "Russians". While subjects of Russian Empire (just as Jews were), their background would actually be Ukrainian, not Russian. Sholom Aleichem was of course perfectly aware of it (the original stories contain lots of traces of Ukrainian speech); people working on adaptations of his stories in the West, not so much.
• Playing Against Type: One production of the show from 2006 starred the very openly gay and flamboyant Harvey Fierstein as the traditionally masculine and stern Tevye.
• Role Reprise:
  • Zero Mostel played Tevye in the original 1964 production as well as the 1976 Broadway revival.
  • Chaim Topol originated the role of Tevye in the 1966 Tel Aviv production and went on to reprise that role for the 1967 West End production, the 1971 film as well as later international revivals until his farewell performance in 2009.
  • The 2018 cast album of the Yiddish off-Broadway production includes several newly recorded Cut Songs (in English). "Dear Sweet Sewing Machine", previously recorded for the 2016 revival cast album with minimal orchestration, appears fully orchestrated sung by Austin Pendleton and Joanna Merlin, the original Motel and Tzeitel, respectively.
• Throw It In!: As the original Broadway production went on, Zero Mostel began ad-libbing more often and changing scenes to make them more comedic, to the distress of some of the creators. In his book The Season, William Goldman quoted a theatre insider who said that after about two months, Mostel "would extend pieces of business, and somehow - no one could ever tell quite how he managed it - he would reshape the relative weights of scenes so that they became about him, whether they were supposed to be about him or not." This was a major reason that Norman Jewison didn't want to hire Mostel for the movie (along with his fearsome reputation and temper), fearing that he would change the script to suit himself. Mostel did not react well to being spurned.
• Troubled Production: The original Broadway show suffered from numerous cast members, especially Zero Mostel, clashing with choreographer Jerome Robbins due to his estrangement from his Jewish heritage (he had been disowned by his family for marrying a non-Jewish woman), and having named names to HUAC.
• Uncredited Role: Kenneth Waller as an extra in a dream sequence in the 1971 film.
• What Could Have Been:
  • When the musical was being produced, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick originally approached Danny Kaye to play Tevye, but his wife Sylvia Fine turned them down. Later, the duo considered Danny Thomas, Tom Bosley and Howard da Silva for the role, but at Jerome Robbins' suggestion, they eventually selected Zero Mostel.
  • For the 1971 film:
    • Originally, Jerome Robbins, the director-choreographer of the original musical, had shown an interest in directing the film as well, but Mirisch Pictures refused to even consider the idea, due to the difficulties they had when Robbins was assigned to co-direct and choreograph West Side Story. Norman Jewison was eventually selected to direct and produce the film.
    • Robert De Niro once read for the role of Perchik.
    • Richard Dreyfuss, Rob Reiner and John Ritter were considered to play Motel.
    • Talia Shire auditioned for Hodel and Tzeitel.

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