It was the kind of moment that does not happen every day. An Israeli judge sat in his courtroom as he was presented with an extraordinary proposal: Watch two women perform fully nude, then decide which of them was more beautiful. Not as a footnote, but as a central piece of evidence in a damages lawsuit.
The incident did not come out of nowhere. It was the climax of an especially strange legal battle that had begun several months earlier on the stage of an Israeli theater.
In 1973, Lilach Theater staged a new play called “The Doctor’s Sons,” written by Eli Sagi. Sagi was already a well-known name at the time. Four years earlier, he had written “My Mother the General,” one of the biggest entertainment hits Israeli theater had ever seen, which ran more than 1,000 times and was later adapted into a film.
“The Doctor’s Sons” was not a direct sequel, but it clearly shared the same DNA: wild comedy, colorful characters and a touch of provocation. Add the same screenwriter, Sagi, and Gabi Amrani in the lead role in both productions, and what you get is a kind of theatrical spinoff.
The plot was fairly simple. A mechanic sends his son to study abroad, expecting him to come back as a “doctor” and help run the garage. The play opens with the beloved son, played by Menachem Eini, returning home, but without a doctorate. It turns out that instead of studying abroad, he used the time to reinvent himself. He is now a hippie, meaning he wears shabby clothes, is preoccupied with drugs and throws around slogans about free love instead of looking for work.
As if that were not enough, he also brings back from abroad his beautiful girlfriend, who is also, of course, a hippie, meaning she likes walking around naked.
Lily Avidan, the wife of poet David Avidan and someone newspapers at the time routinely described as a familiar figure in Tel Aviv society and bohemia, was cast as the girlfriend. In today’s terms, she would probably have been called an influencer. Avidan, who had played several small film roles, had no real stage experience, but she had no problem undressing. She had previously worked as a nude model. Her public profile, liberal image, appearance and charisma made her a perfect fit for the spirit of the period and the play.
In theater, as in theater, there are codes and rules. Nudity is a powerful marketing card, but it is usually played delicately. You hint, build anticipation and let the audience understand for itself. You do not shout it in the headlines, so people do not say that is all the show has to offer.
That was not the case here.
Looking back at the newspapers of the time, Lily Avidan became the face of the play, or more precisely, its body. The campaign left nothing to the imagination. The exposure was full, direct and blunt, even by the standards of the period. No hints, no winks, just an explicit promise. The audience knew exactly what it was coming to see, and it had a nude photo on the back cover of “HaOlam HaZeh” (This World) as proof.
The premiere took place in Eilat in August 1973. Critics were unimpressed, as expected. The audience, on the other hand, loved it, also as expected. What was not expected was that the day after the premiere, the theater fired Lily Avidan and brought in another actress, Jane Fennell, to replace her. That was the moment the story moved from the theater hall to the courtroom.
Avidan sued the theater and demanded compensation. She claimed it had used her for the play’s publicity campaign. She had posed nude for it, the photos were published across the media, and then, “in an act of fraud,” she was removed from the role and discovered that another actress had been cast in her place. The theater’s attorney asked that the lawsuit be dismissed, arguing that Avidan had been replaced because of repeated disciplinary problems.
But Avidan was not satisfied with a breach of contract claim. In court, she argued that her replacement was defaming her, or more precisely, defaming her body. The play’s advertisements had promised the audience that it was coming to see Lily Avidan nude, she claimed, but onstage it saw “a novice actress with worse physical attributes than hers.” The audience’s conclusion, Avidan argued, was not that the actress had been replaced, but that she herself simply did not look as good as people had thought.
The theater’s attorney rejected that claim as well. He argued that the replacement actress was in no way inferior to Avidan. More than that, he turned to the judge and proposed a way to prove it.
According to the proposal submitted to the court, the judge would be invited to watch nude performances by both Avidan and the actress who replaced her. He would then be able to decide for himself and see that the replacement actress was not inferior to Avidan in any parameter.
The judge, it is important to note, was not enthusiastic about the idea. According to Yedioth Ahronoth reporter Yehezkel Adiram, who covered the trial, the judge “firmly rejected the request to serve as an expert” and refused to enter into the issue at all, certainly not personally. He said that even if such a comparison were required, it would make more sense to bring in “an expert witness,” offering as an example theater critic Haim Gamzu, who was considered especially sharp and unsparing. The Hebrew verb “legamzez,” meaning to savagely pan something, was coined from his name.
The legal proceedings ended with the dismissal of the statement of claim. The judge ruled that Avidan had indeed committed disciplinary violations that justified her replacement and found no reason to address her additional claims.
“The Doctor’s Sons” went on to become a major commercial success and was staged more than 300 times. Following that success, and the enormous success of the film version of “My Mother the General,” a film adaptation was produced in 1981, written and directed by Eli Sagi. The movie, titled “Dad’s Craze,” also starred Gabi Amrani, this time with Sassi Keshet as the son and Caroline Langford as his girlfriend.