Friday, March 7, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
How does a black newlywed win over her Jewish mother-in-law's heart? She sings her a Yiddish tune.
That's what Dharvi Darrelle Morgenstern had to do. "We went up to see her in Schenectady, N.Y.," recalls the Las Vegas actress and playwright. "I sang her 'Mamale' -- a Yiddish song. Then she really liked me."
Morgenstern's original play, "Some of My Best Friends Are Jewish Husbands," opening here this weekend, touches upon this and other moments in her 11-year marriage to a Jewish man.
But who needs to write a play? A name like Dharvi Darrelle Morgenstern pretty much says it all.
"I thought if Neil Simon could write about himself..." she says with a shrug, a smile and a shake of her dangling gold earrings. "I'm tired of seeing the 99th version of 'Hello Dolly.'"
Of course, there's nothing really 'new' under the sun, points out director Lee Murray, who describes the play as a cross between "Abbie's Irish Rose" and "Look Who's Coming to Dinner," two classic takes on interracial romances.
"I don't see there's anything offensive, but someone's always going to be offended," he says.
Morgenstern says despite the failure of her first marriage, the message of the play is still one of support for interracial marriages. "I believe people should see who they want," says Morgenstern.
"However," she adds, "I am prejudiced -- I'm prejudiced toward people that are smart and intellectual and read books and love theater."
Dharvi, a self-described "gypsy," hovering somewhere in her sixth decade ("but we don't discuss years") started off as a dancer in New York City.
She met fellow actor Marvin Morgenstern one night at a party on 87th Street. "He helped me take my cat to the vet," she recalls. "Eventually, we got married, and I had a dream to move to California."
To Hollywood it was, where Morganstern took on bit parts throughout the decades, appearing on "Archie Bunker's Place," "Hill Street Blues," right on up until "Saved By the Bell."
"You can see me as a dancer in the opening scene of 'All That Jazz,'" she says proudly. "There are about 200 of us in the shot..."
Now living in Vegas, the former dancer, singer and actress decided to add playwright and producer to her resume, and recruited her old friend Murray to direct.
The two met years ago when they were dance and theater camp counselors in New York's Catskill Mountains, where Morgenstern first learned to croon Jewish melodies and toss around cross-cultural bon mots, such as 'chutzpah," "oy veh" and 'mazel tov."
And her marriage provided plenty of material for the play's requisite ethnic humour:
"We'll eat Jewish," grandly announces the mother-in-law, Sophie, who arrives toting dinner in a shopping bag. "I brought Chinese."
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