When Shmuel (Shmil) opens his mouth, it’s hard not to get excited by his familiar voice, which has accompanied millions of listeners over the years – from the mythical entertainment and singing program “Smiles and Smiles” in the Sixties, through the first public interview program on Kol Yisrael “Who’s Coming” “And” a couple or an individual “, until his latest program” Shai LaShabbat “, which was broadcast for 27 years, until the closure of the Broadcasting Authority.
Apart from the variety of television and radio programs he has edited and presented for over 60 years on “Kol Yisrael” and in Gali Tzahal, Shai’s career, which is currently marking his 90th birthday, also included service in the Nahal band at the beginning of his career with Yossi Banai. , Yona Atari, Dovi Zeltzer and Geula Gil; Establishment of interview evenings in the 1960s; And working with Frank Sinatra and Cliff Richard during their visit to Israel.
“I was born in Lodz, Poland in 1932 and at the age of 3 I immigrated to Israel with my parents, uncles and grandparents,” he says. “My grandmother sold all her fortune in Poland and bought an apartment in Tel Aviv. Due to lack of work, my parents quarreled all the time and there was no good atmosphere in the house, only quarrels and shouting.
Luckily I was an idiot enough not to understand the seriousness of the situation at home. I was not a popular kid. In those days the kids who do sports or the ones who get beaten up were appreciated, and I was neither this nor that. That’s what made me funny and tell stories. It helped me get accepted. “
He later joined the Nahal training and was destined to go to Kibbutz Maayan Baruch. “I loved the life of the kibbutz very much,” he says. “Most of the time I served as a shepherd, together with my training partner, Menashe Kadishman, where he received his love for sheep. At the end of the internship, a graduation party was held, in which I gave imitations of David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Sharet, Menachem Begin and more. At the end of the party, a sergeant named Giora Manor approached me and said that he wanted to join me in the Nahal band.
He said he recruited talents like Yossi Banai, Yona Atari, Esther Greenberg and Geula Gil. I arrived at the Nahal camp, and the band was working on their first show, ‘Mirik gets along.’ “And we performed all over the country with only an accordion, without microphones.”
Shai participated in the band’s first two programs and was released in 1952. Yossi Banai became one of his closest soulmates. “Because Yossi and I, unlike the other members of the band, lived far away from our families and were quite lonely, we made immediate contact and were constantly together,” he says. The Shabbat meals at the Banai family home as something particularly joyful.
Shmuel Shai and Haim Topol (Photo: courtesy of the family)I first learned from Yossi what a family is. During my every visit to him, his father used to declare me an important guest and asked that each member of the family give a piece in my honor around the table: Yaakov Banai read an excerpt from this week’s Torah portion, Haim Banai told a joke, Yossi laughed . I was jealous of this wonderful family. “
Another friend of his was Haim Topol. “Topol was a former member of the David Guard and was asked to perform there,” he recalled. “Then he and I came up with an idea for a prank. All the members of the kibbutz danced and sang with the sheep until they discovered that it was a prank and were angry at Topol and me who stretched them.
In Golda’s kitchen
We in the kibbutz and lived next to us in Tel Aviv was Yitzhak Livni, who suggested that I edit the newspaper ‘BaMa’aleh’ of the youth movement that works as a Mapai representative, “he says. “Following political changes in the united movement, I was fired. I was walking around the streets of Tel Aviv unemployed and suddenly a friend of mine, Shloimela Bar Shavit, met me. He offered me to be Habima’s spokesman.
The first play was ‘Spark of a Poet’ by Eugene O’Neill, and what was important to Habima’s CEO was that they write about us in the newspaper. Since O’Neill’s daughter was married to Charlie Chaplin, I called the newspapers and said that Charlie would be coming to the Habima premiere. Suddenly all the front pages of the newspapers announced Chaplin’s arrival in Israel, even though I had invented it. It did the job.
The last production I worked on was the play ‘Irma La Dos’ (1962) which starred Arik Einstein and Geula Noni. Eric and I were good friends and he visited me a lot at home. At the end of one of the plays Eric saw me behind the scenes, took me on stage to bow and introduced me. People did not know who I was at all, and Eric was amused. He gave respect. It was Eric. “
Arik Einstein (Photo: Coco)
Shimon Peres (Photo: Flash 90)Shai later opened a private public relations firm and was also a public relations man for the Haifa Theater, the Giora Godik Theater and the Israel Festival, as well as the public relations manager for performances in Israel by foreign artists such as Frank Sinatra, Amalia Rodriguez and Cliff Richard. Radio on Kol Yisrael and in IDF waves. “When I arrived in Tel Aviv, I sat a lot in the ‘Kassit’ cafe, and one of the friends I made there was Shaike Ofir,” he says. “Shaike told me about a military station called Gali Tzahal.
He said: ‘If you come there and say you are a announcer, they will accept you and make money.’ Shaike recommended me and gave me a first job, to submit foreign records in imitation voices of the greats of the nation, David Ben-Gurion, Begin and more. That was in 1956. There I also met Rebecca Michaeli, who was broadcasting on IDF waves as a soldier, and at that time there was a short period when she had nowhere to live, so she lived with us at home. Then I was asked to edit and submit more programs. Pretty”.
That’s how I bought an apartment
“In 1965, I edited and presented a program called ‘Who’s Coming,’ the first public interview program for audiences,” he says. “The program was recorded at the Tzavta Club in Tel Aviv, where I interviewed politicians such as David Ben-Gurion and Shimon Peres, and cultural figures such as Uri Zohar, Dan Ben-Amotz, Hanna Maron and Gadi Yagil. It was Schuss, and after the Six Day War broke out, the promoter and producer Yoske Singer approached me and asked me to sigh on interview nights called ‘Zebang and we’re done!’ At the Sheraton Hotel. I bought my apartment with the money from the evenings of these interviews. “
With Ben-Gurion (Photo: Courtesy of the family)Shulamit Aloni was among the guests who came to be guests on the eve of his interviews: “I remember she suddenly said she did not like that there are no primaries and that all political decisions amount to Golda (Meir)’s kitchen. It was the first time anyone had mentioned the term ‘Golda’s Kitchen’, and since then it has become a common expression. It was born on the eve of my interviews. Finance Minister Pinchas Sapir was also a guest with me, and throughout the interview I saw him mumbling to himself.
Shulamit Aloni (Photo: Reuven Castro)At the end of the interview, when I accompanied him off stage, I asked him ‘What are you muttering?’, And he said to me: ‘I counted how many people there are in the hall to know how much you earn’. Do you understand what the Minister of Finance did during an interview? The two regular friends who always helped me fill in when interviewees knocked on my door were Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Navon. Peres would come with his son and ask how much I should be paid for the interview. It was puzzling that he was the center of the program. We had to pay him and not the other way around. That was the character of the man. “
How was your relationship with Ben-Gurion formed?
“In 1968 Prof. Haim Sheba asked me to host a fundraising event for the maternity ward at the hospital. Ben-Gurion agreed to come, but on the condition that we speak only of encouraging childbirth. In a preliminary meeting at Ben-Gurion’s house, he said he wanted to say that every family needs four children: one for a father, one for a mother, one for Judaism and one for the Holocaust.
But he can not preach to something he did not do himself. He said he could not force Paula into another child, but could not stop his laughter when he saw in his imagination how he was forcing her to do so. The fundraising evening was a great success and helped purchase ultrasound machines for the department. “
When did the evenings of the interviews go down?
“As soon as television began broadcasting on Saturdays as well, then they had no justification.” “It was something that had not been done in the country until then, like the ‘Race for a Million’ today,” he says.
Yossi Banai (Photo: Flash 90)In 1977, following a program he presented and presented on the radio called “I am new in Israel,” which dealt with the absorption of new immigrants in Israel, the director of the Aliyah Department offered him to be an emissary of the Jewish Agency in Washington, a position he filled until 1980. He returned to Israel to broadcast on “Kol Yisrael.” Between 1990 and 2017, he presented his program “Shai LaShabbat” – two hours of stories and anecdotes on Saturday mornings. At the same time there are lectures at universities and interview evenings.
How was your corona period?
“It went well. The separation from the grandchildren and great-grandchildren was difficult, but it passed in peace. “
Looking back, are you proud of your career?
“I am very proud of the evenings of the interviews, my career in radio and especially my family: I have three children, ten grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. Happy with my part. ”