The Jewish Roots of ‘Back to the Future’

The recent run of the Broadway musical, “Back to the Future” at the Fox Theater, had its earliest origins in the basement of writer Bob Gale’s childhood home.

Gale, whose parents were Jewish, grew up in University City, Mo., a prominent suburb of St. Louis. The inspiration for the film, upon which the musical is closely based, reportedly came when Gale made a trip home soon after graduating from the film writing program at the University of Southern California in the early 1980s.

While rummaging through his father’s papers in the basement, he came upon some old family photographs and found his father’s image as a teenager staring back at him across the decades. Most young people would shuffle through photographs like these without thinking much about them, but for Gale it planted the seed of an idea that would later be developed into one of the most beloved film franchises of the late 20th century.

As he looked more carefully at the photograph, he thought to himself, what if he could travel back in time to those years his father was in high school. How would that encounter develop, and what kind of relationship would they have? Perhaps, he might even meet the young woman who would later become his mother and how would he relate to her.

The intriguing question of time travel was something Gale had encountered before, as a fan of the superhero comic book tales of the early 1960s, The encounter with those fading photographs led to a conversation Gale had with director Robert Zemeckis, who had become a friend during their film study days at USC.

Together they crafted a story of a young man who travels back in time to the mid-1950s and the complications that can develop when you set yourself down in the middle of your parent’s adolescence. It wasn’t easy selling the initial idea to producers in Hollywood. They struck out in at least 35 story pitches to producers, until they caught the interest of Steven Spielberg, then basking in the astonishing success of “Jaws” a few years before. The rest, as they say, is history. The film they produced, which established Michael J. Fox as a major film star was the top grossing film of the year, and has become an enduring cult favorite.

Not only did the photographs in the basement spark his imagination, but in the film and the music that played here recently, the family drama Gale created was built largely around a man he might have imagined his father to be. In the film and the play, he’s a fearful and insecure teen, who must overcome his fear to win the love of the woman who would later become the mother of Marty McFly, the character Fox portrays.

The success of his travel back in time depends on how he can help his father stand up to a high school bully and cement the relationship that would lead to McFly’s later birth. Success for the time traveler has a very personal challenge attached to it.

In reality, Gale’s father, Mark, was not likely to have been the insecure wimp he is portrayed to be in the comedy. His father was a veteran of World War II, who used his benefits under the GI Bill to go to law school and become a successful attorney in University City. He also served on the city council.

Nor was his father likely to be the presumably young man of an anonymous religious background that he is portrayed to be. The University City community Gale grew up in in the 1950s and 1960s was one of the most Jewish communities in America.

During this time, it was estimated that as many as 80 percent of the residents of University City were Jews. And although the three “Back to The Future” films are religiously neutral, Gale must have encountered a few of his father’s bar mitzvah photos among those gathering dust in the basement.

One of the most important stars of the film and the stage play is the time travel machine, a converted DeLorean DMC12 automobile with its stainless steel body panels and gull wing doors that, by the mid-80s, had begun to achieve the kind of cult status that has endeared it to today’s classic car buffs.

As it is presented in the stage production that was created on the Fox Theater stage, it is a mighty impressive machine indeed. Fully capable of convincing us that it could have transported Bob Gale from his quasi-Jewish ghetto in University City, Mo., to film immortality in Hollywood.