Introduction: From the Bowery to Broadway
1 “The Jewish King Lear,” The New York Dramatic Mirror, February 16, 1901, 15.
2 Harold Clurman, “Ida Kaminska and the Yiddish Theatre,” Midstream 14, no. 1 (January 1968): 36.
3 Melech Epstein, Profiles of Eleven: Profiles of Eleven Men Who Guided the Destiny of an Immigrant Society and Stimulated Social Consciousness among the American People (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1965), 146.
4 Tickets cost from a quarter to a dollar. See Moses Rischin, The Promised City: New York’s Jews, 1870–1914 (1962; reprint, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 133.
5 “The East Side World: Notes and Comments,” The Jewish Messenger, December 12, 1902, 6.
6 When Abraham Goldfaden died in 1908, 75,000 people participated in the procession, the largest such event to date on the Lower East Side. For Adler’s funeral, see “Jacob Adler Buried; East Side Mourns,” The New York Times, April 1, 1926, 17. For Thomashefsky’s, see “Thomashefsky is Mourned by 30,000 at Rites,” New York Herald Tribune, July 12, 1929, 16A. The Lower East Side was keen on mass funerals. See chapter 3, “The Rites of Community,” in Arthur Goren, The Politics and Public Culture of American Jews (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 48–82.
7 John Corbin, “Topics of the Drama,” The New York Times, April 26, 1903, 25.
8 “Acting on the East Side,” The New York Dramatic Mirror, February 5, 1910, 5.
9 “Chinese Help for Jews,” The New York Times, May 12, 1903, H3.
10 In 1905, Morrison also appeared on the Yiddish stage in such German dramas as Gutskow’s Uriel Acosta, Schiller’s The Robbers, and Brachvogel’s Narciss and Madam de Pompadour. In his later years, Yiddish audiences lost interest in such linguistically hybrid performances, and Yiddish actors were disinclined to perform with Morrison in his German repertoire.
11 Molly Picon, with Jean Bergantini Grillo, Molly! An Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980), 35.
12 Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle, Tender Comrades (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 203.
13 Annie Pollard and Daniel Soyer, Emerging Metropolis (New York: New York University Press), 117.
14 “Russian Refugees,” The American Hebrew, August 18, 1882, 4. The HEAS was founded in New York on November 27, 1881, by German Jews and operated until 1884. It ran shelters for recent Jewish immigrants at Castle Garden and was criticized for its imperious attitude toward Eastern European Jewish immigrants.
15 Quoted in Jacob Adler, A Life on the Stage — A Memoir, Translated with commentary by Lulla Rosenfeld (New York: Applause Theatre Books, 2001), 318.
17 In 1927, there were still 24 theaters that offered Yiddish productions across America: 11 in New York, 4 in Chicago, 3 in Philadelphia, and 1 each in Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Newark, and St. Louis.
18 “Five Yiddish Theaters Close,” New York Herald Tribune, March 2, 1932, 10.
19 These included the Prospect Theater in the Bronx, the Hopkinson in Brownsville, the National, and the Folks on the East Side.
20 Alfred Kazin, Starting Out in the Thirties (Boston: Vintage Books, 1965), 80, 82. Quoted in Jonathan B. Krasner, “The Interwar Family and American Jewish Identity in Clifford Odets’s Awake and Sing!” Jewish Social Studies 13, no. 1 (Fall 2006): 6.
21 George Ross, “On the Horizon: Where Yiddish Theater Lives On,” Commentary 15 (November 1953): 472.
22 Skulnik had a successful career on Broadway. After The Fifth Season (1953), he starred in Odets’s The Flowering Peach (1955), Julie Berns and Irving Elman’s Uncle Willie (1956), Florence Lowe and Caroline Francke’s The 49th Cousin (1960), and Howard Da Silva and Felix Leon’s The Zulu and the Zaida (1965).
23 Robert Brustein, “Riding the Second–Avenue–to–Broadway Express: American Theater’s Debt to Yiddish Stage,” Forward, March 23, 2001, 1.
Chapter 1: Yiddish New York
1 Originally written in English for McClure’s Magazine (1913), the novel is considered by many as America’s premier immigrant novel. Abraham Cahan, the author, was editor of the Jewish daily Forward from 1903 to 1946.
2 In 1919, the Warheit was absorbed by the Tog, a daily established at the end of 1914, which peaked at a circulation of 81,000 in 1916. The Tog merged with the Der Morgn Journal in 1953.
Chapter 2: Popular Yiddish Theater: Music, Melodrama, and Operetta
1 Abraham Z. Idelsohn, Jewish Music: Its Historical Development (1929; reprint Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1992), 453.
2 Joseph Rumshinsky, “Di music in idishn teater,” Di Idishe Muzikalishe Velt, March 1923, 22–23.
Chapter 3: Jacob Gordin: The Great Reformer
1 Yakov Mikhailovich [Jacob Gordin], “Fel’eton. Po nashim yuzhnym palestinam,” Odesskie novosti, March 11, 1887; Ivan Kolyuchii [Jacob Gordin], “Progulka po Elisavetgradu,” Elisavetgradskii vestnik, January 29, 1889.
2 Jacob Gordin, “Erinerungen fun Yankev Gordin: Vi azoy ikh bin gevorn a dramaturg?” in Di idishe bine, ed. Khonen Minikes (New York; J. Katzenelenbogen, 1897), vol. 1, unpaginated.
4 Leon Kobrin, Erinerungen fun a yidishn dramaturg: A fertl yorhundert yidish teater in amerika (New York: Komitet far kobrins shriftn, 1925), vol. 1, 123.
5 N. [Jacob Gordin], “Evreiskie siluety: Syupriz,” Knizhki nedeli no. 10 (October, 1885): 35–65.
Chapter 4: Path–Breakers and Superstars
Jacob P. Adler and the Formation of a Theatrical Dynasty
1 Louis Lipsky, “Acting and Jacob P. Adler,” The Jewish Exponent, May 8, 1903, 7.
2 Louis Lipsky, “Three ‘Helden’ of Yiddish Stage,” The American Hebrew & Jewish Messenger, September 14, 1917, 502.
4 Lipsky, “Acting and Jacob P. Adler.”
5 Lipsky, “Three ‘Helden’ of Yiddish Stage.”
6 “The Yiddish ‘Broken Hearts,’” The New York Times, September 23, 1903, 5.
7 “Mailbag: Luther Adler,” The New York Times, March 10, 1985, H8.
Boris Thomashefsky: Matinee Idol of the Yiddish Stage
1 Abraham Cahan, The Education of Abraham Cahan (New York: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1969).
2 “Thomashefsky and Regina Zuckerberg Are at Republic,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 26, 1921, 4.
3 “At the Play: Attractions of the Week,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 25, 1899, 34.
4 “Thomashefskys Still Apart, Though Yiddish Tetrazinni’s Husband Settles His Suit,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 25, 1923.
5 “Yiddish Musical Comedy Is Broadway’s Latest,” New–York Tribune, September 5, 1923, 8.
6 “Thomashefsky, Yiddish Actor, Dies,” Brooklyn Eagle, July 10, 1939, 11.
7 “Schwartz and Thomashefsky to Play on English Stage in Fall,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, July 16, 1931.
Molly Picon: Darling of Second Avenue
1 Molly Picon, with Eth Clifford Rosenberg, So Laugh a Little (New York: Julian Messner, 1962), 15.
3 Molly Picon, with Jean Bergantini Grillo, Molly! An Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980), 25, 35.
7 Warren Hoffman, The Passing Game: Queering Jewish American Culture (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2009), 69.
8 Joshua S. Walden, “Leaving Kazimierz: Comedy and Realism in the Yiddish Film Musical Yidl mitn Fidl,” Journal of Music, Sounding and the Moving Image, 3, no. 2 (Autumn 2009): 159–93.
9 Hoffman, Passing Game, 70.
Chapter 5: Maurice Schwartz and the Yiddish Art Theater Movement
1 Cited in David S. Lifson, The Yiddish Theatre in America (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1965), 313.
2 The first production was followed by Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession (September 25), Botvinik’s Baylke Marionetke (September 24), Gordin’s Sappho (October 4), Gutskow’s Uriel Acosta (October 7), and Schiller’s The Robbers (October 14).
3 The Yiddish name of the new company was Nayer Idisher Teater (New Yiddish Theater); its English name was Jewish Art Theatre. According to Lifson, Ben–Ami refused to use the term “art” in the Yiddish title, arguing that it was a designation that had to be earned.
4 At the Guild, he directed Youth by Max Halbe and The Treasure by David Pinski, with Celia Adler as Tillie.
5 Arthur Miller, “Concerning Jews Who Write,” Jewish Life 2, no. 5 (1947): 7–10.
6 Rebecca Drucker, “The Jewish Art Theatre,” Theatre Arts Magazine 4, no. 3 (July 1920): 223.
7 Other notable productions of the theater were Hirschbein’s Green Fields, Hauptmann’s Lonely Lives, Pinski’s The Dumb Messiah, Sven Lange’s Samson and Delilah, Przybyweski’s Joy, Asch’s Servitors and With the Current, and Dymov’s Bronx Express, the theater’s greatest success.
8 Brooks Atkinson, “Theatrical Drama: Maurice Schwartz Is Playing an Imaginative Story,” New York Times, December 18, 1932, X3.
Chapter 6: Yiddish Political Theater: The Artef
1 Lines are from 15 Minute Red Revue, cited in Morgan Y. Himelstein, Drama Was a Weapon (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1963), 12.
2 The Forward, the community’s major newspaper, which in 1930 had a circulation of 175,000, spoke for socialists and centrists; the Freiheit had a circulation of 64,000.
3 Alexander Mukdoyni, “Baym Toyer,” Morgn Journal, December 12, 1928.
4 Kulbak was a Soviet Yiddish writer who in 1937 was arrested and murdered in Stalin’s purges. The Artef was not aware of this when his play was staged.
5 Cobb’s first wife was Yiddish theater and film actress Helen Beverley.
Chapter 7: Yiddish Theater and the Transformation of American Design
1 No relation to the author.
2 Frank Rich with Lisa Aronson, The Theatre Art of Boris Aronson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 32.
3 David S. Lifson, The Yiddish Theatre in America (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1965), 522.
4 Harry Salpeter, “The Jewish Art Theatre,” The Jewish Forum 2, no. 11 (December 1919): 1318.
5 Ludwig Lewisohn, “The Jewish Art Theatre,” The Nation, December 13, 1919, p. 747.
6 He was credited as Alexander Chertoff.
7 The company was founded in 1911 by Yakov Meth and Avraham Groper (sometimes spelled Gropper).
9 Aleksandr Tairov, Notes of a Director, trans. William Kuhlke (Miami: University of Miami Press, 1969), 109.
10 John Mason Brown, “The Gamut of Style.” Theatre Arts Monthly, February 1927, 91.
12 The New York Times, February 14, 1926. Unser Teater failed after one and a half seasons, and the space was taken over by actor Rudolph Schildkraut.
13 Rich and Aronson cite this as the first production at the new theater (p. 38). However, the website Museum of Family History, which lists credits for most of the Yiddish Art Theatre productions, cites Tevye the Milkman (August 29, 1926) as the first production. Boruch Aranson is listed as part of the “Art Department.” The Tenth Commandment opened November 11.
16 David Burliuk, “Borukh Aronson’s teater–oysshtelung.” Der Hammer 3, no. 1 (January 1928): 62. Quoted in Boris Aronson, Der Yiddish Teater (Paris and Tel Aviv: Galerie Le Minotaure, 2010).
17 Lee Simonson, “Russian Theory in the American Theater” [Review of Boris Aronson et l’Art du Théâtre], The Nation, June 12, 1929, 718.
18 Mordecai Gorelik, New Theatres for Old (New York: Samuel French, 1940), 307. Gorelik applied this term to much of the work of the Yiddish Art Theatre as a whole.
19 The New York Times, October 13, 1934.
20 A colleague in the design department there was Hans Sondheimer, who would go on to become technical director and lighting designer for the New York City Opera.
Chapter 9: Yiddish Vaudeville: Entertaining the Crowd and Early Yiddish Vaudeville
1 Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak, eds., The Oxford Companion to American Theatre, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford, 2004), 637. The French word vaudeville is traced to either pastoral ballads from the valley of the River Vire or urban folksongs, voix de ville (voices of the city).
2 “Yiddish Actors at Odds,” The Washington Post, September 3, 1905, A8.
3 “Where Vaudeville Bills Are Given in Yiddish,” The New York Times, December 28, 1902, 23.
4 “‘Coon’ Songs in Yiddish at East Side Music Halls,” The New York Times, April 12, 1903, 28.
5 “Di yidishe kontsert hols,” Warheit, December 8, 1905. For comparison, legitimate Yiddish playhouses charged 50 cents to a dollar for balcony and orchestra seats, while patrons who were willing to climb to the top gallery paid 25 cents.
6 Bernard Gorin, Di geshikhte fun yidshen teater, vol. 2 (New York: Literarisher Ferlag, 1918), 179–180.
7 Paul Klapper, “The Yiddish Music Halls,” University Settlement Studies 2, no. 4 (1906): 19–23. Reprinted in Barbara Henry and Joel Berkowitz, eds., Inventing the Modern Yiddish Stage: Essays in Drama, Performance, and Show Business (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2012), 195–198.
8 See, for instance, the biographies of Maurice Tuchband, Isidore Lillian, Jenny Atlas, Charlie Cohen, and Ella Wallerstein in Zalmen Zylbercweig, ed., Leksikon fun yidishn teater, 6 vols. (New York: Hebrew Actors’ Union of America, 1931–1967).
9 Detroit Journal, Bella Baker clipping file, Billy Rose Theater Collection, New York Public Library at Lincoln Center, n.d.
10 Idid., p. 20. This chapter is partly based on previous publications, particularly Judith Thissen, “Liquor and Leisure: The Business of Yiddish Vaudeville,” in Henry and Berkowitz, Inventing the Modern Yiddish Stage; and Thissen, “Film and Vaudeville on New York’s Lower East Side,” in The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times, eds. Barbara Kirshenblatt–Gimblett and Jonathan Karp (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). References to the Yiddish–language sources and archival materials cited herein can be found in these articles.
11 For a detailed analysis, see Nina Warnke, “Immigrant Popular Culture as a Contested Sphere: Yiddish Music Halls, the Yiddish Press, and the Processes of Americanization,” Theatre Journal 48, no. 3 (1996): 321–335.
12 Mark Slobin, Tenement Songs: The Popular Music of the Jewish Immigrants (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996), chap. 5.
13 “The Yiddish Theatre,” The New York Clipper, February 15, 1912, 7.
Chapter 10: Borscht Belt Entertainment
1 Leo Rosten, The New Joys of Yiddish (New York: Crown Publishers, 2001), 45–46. Originally published by McGraw–Hill (1968).
2 David Rogoff, “Don’t Call It ‘The Borscht Belt,’” The New York Times, May 9, 1965, SM48.
3 Eileen Swift, “The Catskills: 100 Years of Mothering,” Newsday, May 13, 1973, D15.
5 Sander Vanocur, “Mel Brooks, the Eternal Tummler,” The Washington Post, July 29, 1975, B1.
7 Phil Brown, Catskill Culture: A Mountain Rat’s Memories of the Great Jewish Resort Area (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003), 112–113.
8 Jared Brown, Moss Hart: A Prince of the Theater (New York: Back Stage Books, 2006), 31.
9 “Borscht Belt Now, a Big Talent Outlet, AFA and AFM Take Notice,” Variety, May 4, 1938, 1.
10 Quoted in Myrna Katz Frommer and Harvey Frommer, It Happened in the Catskills (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991), 188.
11 “New York’s ‘Borscht Belt’ Vies for Bigger Share of Tourist $,” The Hartford Courant, June 7, 1964, 8F.
12 “Borscht Belt Hullabaloo,” The New York Times, July 1, 1965, 36.
Chapter 11: Tevye’s Travels: From Yiddish Everyman to American Icon
1 “The Colbert Report,” Comedy Central, Broadcast September 22, 2009.
2 Sholem Aleichem, letter to Jacob Adler, 1914, quoted in Y.D. Berkowitz, Undzere rishoynim: zokhroynes–dertzeylungen vegn sholem aleichem un zayn dor, 5 vols. (Tel Aviv: Farlag Hamnorah, 1966), vol. 3, 91.
3 Yehoash (Solomon Blumgarten), eulogy for Sholem Aleichem, delivered at the Educational Alliance on May 15, 1916, and excerpted in Der Groyser Kundes, May 19, 1916, quoted in YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, “Sholem Aleichem in America: The Story of a Culture Hero,” catalog for YIVO exhibition, May 17, 1990 to March 15, 1991.
4 Edna Nahshon, Yiddish Proletarian Theatre: The Art and Politics of the Artef, 1925–1940 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988), 47.
5 Matthew Frye Jacobson, Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post–Civil Rights America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006).
6 Interview with Joseph Stein, June 27, 2007. Repeated in almost every interview about Fiddler Stein ever gave.