Jacob Ben–Ami (1890–1977)
Born in Minsk, Belarus, then part of the czarist empire, Ben–Ami participated in minor roles in the Russian theater. In 1908, he joined a Yiddish company and as a young man collaborated with playwright Peretz Hirschbein to form the Hirschbein Troupe in Odessa—a company with high literary standards that launched the Yiddish art theater movement. In 1912, following a brief acting engagement in London, he came to America at the invitation of Sarah Adler and joined her Yiddish theater company. A year later, he was engaged by Boris Thomashefsky to take part in Osip Dymow’s The Eternal Wanderer, directed by the playwright, and in 1914, following a tour with actress Keni Liptzin, he organized a modest production of three I.L. Peretz plays (in Yiddish) at the Neighborhood Playhouse, this being his first foray onto the American stage. Always committed to the ideal of quality drama, Ben–Ami joined Maurice Schwartz’s Yiddish Art Theatre in 1918; his production of Hirschbein’s A Forsaken Nook won over critics and audiences and was instrumental in establishing the theater’s artistic orientation. However, Ben–Ami became disillusioned with Schwartz and soon quit to form his own company, the Jewish Art Theatre (called in Yiddish the Naye Teater, i.e., the New Theatre) where he offered a literary repertoire of works by major modern dramatists. Ben–Ami was considered by many to be the finest dramatic actor on the American Yiddish stage, and his work soon drew the attention of Broadway. Following his success in the Yiddish translation of Sven Lange’s Samson and Delilah in 1919, he was invited by Arthur Hopkins to repeat the role on the English–language stage. Ben–Ami went on to join the Theatre Guild, and subsequently, Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre, performing leading roles in plays by Anton Chekhov, Leo Tolstoy, Gerhardt Hauptmann, Jean Girodoux, and others. From 1920 on, he divided his career between the English and Yiddish–language stages, and in 1926, and again in 1944, he started his own Yiddish companies, each lasting only a season or two. Some of Ben–Ami’s most notable Broadway performances were given in Hirschbein’s The Idle Inn (1921), Ernst Toller’s Man and Masses (1924), and Chekhov’s The Seagull (1929) and The Cherry Orchard (1929). His final Broadway appearance was in Paddy Chayefsky’s highly successful The Tenth Man (1961), a play inspired by S. Ansky’s Yiddish play The Dybbuk.
Mina Bern (1911–2010)
Bern first forayed into theater in her native Poland. She performed in Russia, fleeing there with her young daughter after the 1939 invasion of Poland by the Nazis, and even entertained Polish refugees in Uganda for a time, before immigrating to Israel, where she performed in Hebrew in Li–La–Lo, the country’s satirical theater. She came to America in 1949, when Yiddish theater in New York was already on the decline. But Bern, known primarily for her cabaret singing and comedic flair, was one of the popular stars who managed to keep Yiddish theater afloat into the 1960s and ‘70s. Along with her second husband, the actor and producer Ben Bonus, Bern toured with Yiddish revues through the United States, Canada, and Latin America. Not only did the couple perform together, they often created the costumes and scenery, even serving as ticket–takers for their own shows. Together they worked to bring Yiddish theater to places where the language wasn’t often heard, in an attempt to keep the culture alive. Bern performed into her 90s, starring in a one–woman show about her life as late as 2005. She also appeared in several American films including Crossing Delancey (1988), Avalon (1990), and I’m Not Rappaport (1996). Bern was awarded an Obie (Off–Broadway Theater Award) for her life’s work in 1999.
Joseph Buloff (1899–1995)
Born in Vilna (Vilnius, today the capital of Lithuania), Buloff was a mainstay of the Yiddish theater for over 60 years. He was a seminal figure in the prominent Vilna Troupe, where he met and married actress Luba Kadison, daughter of the group’s founder and director. The company fractured in the mid–1920s, and Buloff came to New York at the behest of Maurice Schwartz, director of the Yiddish Art Theatre. Buloff appeared in several Yiddish Art Theatre productions, including The Tenth Commandment (1926), The Witch of Castille (1930), and Uncle Moses (1930), but he ultimately became disenchanted with Schwartz. After brief attempts at establishing his own art theaters, in the Bronx for one season and in Manhattan for another, Buloff reluctantly made the transition to American theater in 1936, debuting on Broadway in John Crump’s Don’t Look Now. His English–language mainstream performances garnered as much praise as his Yiddish–theater work, and he went on to appear in Morningstar (1940), My Sister Eileen (1942), and Oklahoma! (1943), where he originated the role of Ali Hakeem. Buloff continued to work in both English and Yiddish theater throughout the 1960s and ‘70s; his last Broadway role was in a revival of Arthur Miller’s The Price in 1979. He also translated and performed in Yiddish versions of American plays, most notably The Diary of Anne Frank and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. It is estimated that he performed in some 277 plays over the course of his career. Buloff offered an account of his early life in his autobiography From the Old Marketplace (1991), and his wife wrote on their joint careers in her book, On stage, Off Stage: Memories of a Lifetime in the Yiddish Theatre (1992).
Pesach Burstein (1897–1986)
Lillian Lux (1918–2005)
Burstein, a native of Warsaw, Poland, left home at a young age for a career on the stage and soon established himself as a star of the city’s popular Yiddish theater. He came to New York at the behest of Boris Thomashefsky in 1923, to appear in the Broadway Yiddish production of The Jolly Tailors. In New York, Burstein met and married Lillian Lux, a native of Brooklyn, who began as a Yiddish child actress and later worked in the Catskills, where she was teamed with a young Danny Kaye. Burstein and Lux performed together in the city and abroad, and later added their twins, Michael and Susan, to the family business. Advertising themselves as the Four Bursteins, the family’s most notable productions were the musical comedies A Shtetl Wedding and the partially English–language The Megilla of Itsik Manger, performed on Broadway in 1969. Burstein was also an immensely successful singer; he cut 300 records during his 20–year contract with Columbia Records. He and his wife coauthored the book What a Life!, about their careers, in 1980. Following the passing of Burstein, Lux appeared in a documentary film about her husband, The Komediant, in 1996.
Belle Didjah
Married to Yiddish writer and theater critic Chaim Ehrenreich, Belle Didja adhered to her professional stage name. Born in New York, Didjah was an eminent dancer and choreographer who studied with the influential choreographer Michel Fokine and attended the Metropolitan House Ballet School. As a young woman, Didjah traveled to Germany to continue her dance training with Mary Wigman. She made her New York debut in 1929 at the Martin Beck Theater in a performance that consisted of mime and character portraits. That same year, she appeared in drag in the production Bar Mitzvah (Chassidic), in which she portrayed a young Orthodox man. Didjah also traveled widely to study the dances of many regions and cultures; she toured Palestine and Syria in the early 1930s to observe their dance traditions, and presented dances based on Middle–Eastern and Yemenite themes in New York in 1934. She was an important choreographer of Jewish–themed materials in both Yiddish and English stage and screen productions into the 1960s. In 1959, Didja supervised the dances in the highly successful Broadway production of Paddy Chayefsky’s The Tenth Man, directed by Tyrone Guthrie.
Berta Gersten (1894/6–1978?)
Berta Gersten was a prominent dramatic actress who enjoyed a 50–year career on the Yiddish stage. Born in Krakow, Poland, she came to the United States with her family in 1899. In 1908, an actor–client of her mother, who was a seamstress, mentioned the need for a child actor for an upcoming theatrical production; the play was Jacob Gordin’s Mirele Efros, and young Gersten was selected for the juvenile role. Having caught the acting bug, Gersten thereafter pursued a career in the Yiddish theater. She was one of the first members of Maurice Schwartz’s Yiddish Art Theatre, where, with the exception of short hiatuses, she played leading roles for several decades, until the theater’s demise in the 1950s. She also played the lead female roles in two Yiddish films based on Jacob Gordin’s plays Mirele Efros (1939) and God, Man, and Devil (1949). Gersten crossed over into English–language theater in 1954, with a role in Arnold Perl’s The World of Sholem Aleichem, and in the same year made her Broadway stage debut starring opposite Menasha Skulnik in Clifford Odets’s A Flowering Peach. Gersten also appeared in the Hollywood film The Benny Goodman Story in 1956.
Jennie Goldstein (1896–1960)
Born in New York, Goldstein made her Yiddish stage debut at age six in Hannah the Seamstress at the Windsor Theatre opposite Bertha Kalich. Next came a role in Jacob Gordin’s Family Purity at the Thalia Theatre, in which she performed two songs written specifically for her by actor–composer Sigmund Mogulesko. At age 13, Goldstein left school and began to perform more adult parts, including a starring role in Joseph Lateiner’s wildly successful The Jewish Heart. Around 1912, the 16–year–old Goldstein met and married Yiddish playwright and actor Max Gabel, who began writing melodramas exclusively for her. The shows, in which the couple frequently performed together, were immensely popular. The two divorced in 1930, and Goldstein went on to manage her own company at the Prospect Theatre in the Bronx during the 1932–33 season, and in 1939 starred in the Yiddish film Two Sisters. In her later life, she became known for her tear–jerking “melomama” roles. Goldstein performed on Broadway in Arthur Carter’s The Number (1952) and Tennessee Williams’s Camino Royale (1953).
Bertha Kalich (1874–1939)
Born in Lemberg, Galicia (today Lviv, Ukraine), Kalich was a greatly admired dramatic actress during the golden age of Yiddish theater in the late–19th and early–20th centuries. Kalich began her career at age 13 in the chorus of a Polish theater company. She also performed roles in German and Romanian, having learned the latter language in a matter of months in order to perform at the Romanian Imperial Theater. Kalich enjoyed success everywhere she appeared, despite increasing anti–Semitism in the region. She was so well received that there was rumored to be an assassination plot against her by jealous rivals; in light of this, Kalich eagerly accepted an offer in 1894 to appear at the Thalia Theatre in New York’s Lower East Side. There, she appeared in landmark Yiddish–language translations of Shakespeare (including in the title role of Hamlet). Playwright Jacob Gordin was so impressed with Kalich’s grand, emotional style that he created several roles for her, most notably in Sappho (1900) and The Kreutzer Sonata (1902). Promoted as the “Sarah Bernhardt of the American Yiddish stage,” Kalich’s talents attracted the attention of American theatrical managers and producers, particularly Harrison Grey Fiske, and in 1905, she became the first Yiddish actress to debut on Broadway, in Fiske’s production of Victorien Sardou’s Fedora. For the next decade, Kalich, who achieved diva status, continued to appear on Broadway, successfully mastering English and working to eliminate her foreign accent. She played title roles in Monna Vanna (1905), Martha of the Lowlands (1908), and Rachel (1913), and reprised her earlier Yiddish roles for English adaptations. As her Broadway career waned after 1915, she returned often to the Yiddish stage; her success in American theater only enhanced her appeal to Yiddish audiences. By the end of her career, Kalich estimated that she had performed in some 125 roles in seven languages.
David Kessler (1860–1920)
David Kessler belongs to the first generation of leading Yiddish dramatic actors. He was born in Kishinev, in what is now Moldova, then part of the czarist empire, and began his theatrical career in the newborn Yiddish theater of Russia and Romania. Like many of his colleagues in the early Yiddish theater, Kessler soon immigrated to the United States, arriving in 1890 and quickly establishing himself as one of the great dramatic actors of the Yiddish stage. His first important performance in New York was in 1891 in Jacob Gordin’s first play, Siberia, where Kessler co–starred with Jacob P. Adler. Other major roles included leads in Gordin’s God, Man, and Devil (1902), which Kessler also directed; in Sholem Asch’s controversial God of Vengeance (1907); and in Leon Kobrin’s Yankl Boyle (1916). Kessler performed in all the major Yiddish playhouses in Manhattan—including the Windsor, the People’s, and, especially, the Thalia Theatre, where he was the lead actor for many years (and would later serve as actor–manager). The Second Avenue Theatre, the first Yiddish theater on Second Avenue, was built in 1911 for him and retained his name long after his death. Maurice Schwartz began his New York career in Kessler’s company. Like many, he regarded him as a difficult and hard–to–please director, but always said it was Kessler who taught him about acting. Kessler loved quality drama that offered him meaty roles that suited his great talent, but running a commercial theater also meant staging and performing in lesser, popular works. His last years were plagued by bitter disputes with his stepson, who ran the financial side of Kessler’s theater. Kessler died in 1920 when, against doctor’s orders, he insisted on performing just hours after undergoing an intestinal operation. His name is mentioned in the annals of the Yiddish theater in the same breath as those of Jacob P. Adler and Boris Thomashefsky as one of the three great actor–managers of the Yiddish stage.
Miriam Kressyn (1911–1986)
Miriam Kressyn grew up in Bialystok, Poland, poor but well educated. She came to the United States with her family in 1923 and settled in Boston, where she studied singing at the New England Conservatory of Music. A visiting Yiddish theater troupe heard her sing and invited her to perform in their chorus. She enjoyed her small roles but had no intention of pursuing theater as a profession and she was preparing to study law at Northeastern University. However, her 1933 marriage to Yiddish actor Hymie Jacobson led Kressyn to embrace the life of an actress and singer. She traveled with her husband’s troupe throughout Europe and Latin America, playing primarily in Yiddish comedies, and she starred opposite Jacobson in several Yiddish films, including Der purimshpieler (1937). Kressyn’s second marriage, to Yiddish matinee idol Seymour Rexite, brought her permanently to New York City, where she continued to perform onstage and recorded a number of Yiddish songs. Like Rexite, Kressyn was also a popular Yiddish radio personality, appearing on “The Forward’s Hour” and hosting her own programs on WEVD for nearly four decades—doing everything from singing to book reviews to commentating on social issues and world events. Kressyn is also notable for her Yiddish–language adaptations of plays, such as her successful versions of Philip Vordan’s Anna Lucasta and Clifford Odets’s The Flowering Peach. In the 1960s, Kressyn became a professor of Yiddish at Queens College, and also directed the school’s Yiddish theater productions. Unlike many others in the Yiddish theater, Kressyn chose not to perform in English, neither in film nor on Broadway. Of her career she said, “Yiddish is my world.”
Aaron Lebedev (1873–1960)
A native of Homel, Belarus, then part of the czarist empire, Aaron Lebedev was determined to make a life for himself on the stage. As a youth, Lebedev (sometimes spelled Lebedeff) was a choirboy in his small town’s synagogue, and—to the dismay of his parents, who wanted him to learn a trade—he frequently ran away to nearby cities to perform with Russian theater troupes. He eventually did have some success, opening a dance school in Minsk and performing in operettas. After touring with itinerant Yiddish troupes, he went to Warsaw in 1912, where he gained popularity on the Yiddish stage as “the Lithuanian Comic.” He was mobilized to the Russian army in 1916 and was sent to Harbin, where he entertained army officers. Demobilized after the Russian Revolution, he wandered to Japan, where he and his wife Vera offered “international” concerts. In 1920, while touring in Asia, he received an offer from Boris Thomashefsky to join his National Theatre in New York City. On October 12, 1920, he debuted in New York in Thomashefsky’s production of Lyavke Molodeytz and became an overnight sensation. Over the next several years he starred in several operettas at Thomashefsky’s National Theatre, including A Thousand and One Nights (1922). Operetta and light fair was his métier, always enlivened by his exuberant personality, special flair for comedy, and a knack for improvisation. By the end of the 1920s, he was the most popular Yiddish vaudevillian, composing much of his own material and recording more than 80 records in both English and Yiddish, the most famous being “Romania, Romania.” In addition to playing in New York theaters, Lebedev also sang in cafés and nightclubs, and toured throughout the country, helping him gain a national reputation. He was also a star attraction in the Catskills into the 1940s, where he directed a troupe of Yiddish actors in revues and musical comedies.
Keni Liptzin (1863–1916)
Born in the Ukraine, then part of the czarist empire, Liptzin was a grand dame of the early Yiddish theater. She seems to have had a somewhat shady past. It is known that after running away from an arranged marriage, she was discovered in 1880 by Israel Rosenberg, who heard her singing and persuaded her to join his Yiddish theater troupe. Liptzin played opposite Jacob P. Adler in several dramatic plays in London in the mid–1880s, before sailing to America in 1889 to join the burgeoning Yiddish theater there. She reunited with Adler in New York and performed opposite him again, as well as at David Kessler’s Thalia Theatre. Temperamental and beautiful, Liptzin was enterprising as well as talented, and eventually established her own Yiddish theater in New York, her career subsidized by her husband, a well–to–do publisher. Bessie Thomashefsky wrote that Liptzin was the wealthiest Yiddish actress in New York, always gorgeously dressed and bedecked with expensive jewelry. Liptzin is best remembered for her leading role in Jacob Gordin’s Mirele Efros (1898), a play composed specially for her. It established her reputation as a serious dramatic actress; she also appeared in strong female roles in plays by Leon Kobrin, Emile Zola, and Henrik Ibsen. After her husband’s suicide in 1912, her health and financial situation deteriorated; her only consolation, she said, was the theater. She now had to take roles of little literary merit and continued to act even when gravely ill, at times collapsing on stage. She died six years after her husband. Liptzin is recognized as one of the greatest stars of the early Yiddish stage and as its great tragedienne.
Sigmund Mogulesko (1864/8?–1914, center)
Born in Bessarabia (now Moldova), Mogulesko was one of the founders of the Yiddish theater and one of its greatest stars. Orphaned at a young age, Mogulesko trained with several cantors, and at the age of 14, entered the conservatory in Bucharest, where his outstanding talent was quickly recognized. He took jobs performing for churches, weddings, and with the company of a local opera house. His career as an actor began when Abraham Goldfaden, in search of singers for his theatrical productions, came to the synagogue where Mogulesko sang in the choir and persuaded the young man to join his theater troupe. His early roles in Goldfaden’s plays were secondary and female characters, until Goldfaden created the title role of Schmendrik for him. Mogulesko had remarkable success as a comedic actor, touring Russia and Europe, where he made quite a name for himself. Mogulesko came to New York in 1886 with the Finkel troupe and performed at the Romanian Opera Company in the Lower East Side. Mogulesko, who was particularly noted for his many comic characters, continued to put his musical training to good use as well; he composed much of the incidental music for the plays he performed in, and wrote many popular songs (for which he was not always given credit). Abraham Cahan, editor of the Yiddish daily Forward and a Mogulesko fan, wrote that in addition to his great talent, the actor’s personal charm captivated audiences. It was generally agreed that he could turn a shund (trash) piece into a work of art, and that no one could imitate him or take over his roles.
Paul Muni (1895–1967)
Muni was born in Lemberg, Galicia (today Lviv, Ukraine) to itinerant Yiddish actors Philip and Sally Weisenfreund. Immigrating to Chicago in 1902, the young Muni, who originally intended to become a violinist, began acting in local Yiddish theaters, developing a masterful hand with stage makeup—at the age of 12, for his first role, he realistically transformed himself into an 80–year–old man. He played in various Yiddish venues, including vaudeville, and caught the eye of Maurice Schwartz who engaged him for his Yiddish Art Theatre in 1918. He quickly rose to play major roles in plays by Sholem Aleichem, Nikolai Gogol, Leonid Andreyev, Romain Rolland, and other important dramatists. Muni made the transition to Broadway in 1926. In his first two Broadway plays, We Americans (1926) by Max Siegel and Four Walls (1927) by Dana Burnet and George Abbott, he appeared in Jewish parts under the name Muni Weisenfreund. After being signed to Fox Films in 1928, he anglicized his name, changing it to Paul Muni. His acting skills were equally appreciated in Hollywood (he received an Oscar nomination for his first film, The Valiant, in 1929) and throughout the 1930s, Muni split his time between making feature films and performing on Broadway. Muni’s stage roles include his successful turn in Elmer Rice’s Counselor–at–Law (1931), the part of Tevye in Ben Hecht’s Zionist propaganda piece, A Flag Is Born (1946), alongside Celia Adler and Marlon Brando, and his last play, Inherit the Wind (1955), for which he won a Tony. Muni is also well known for his role in films such as Scarface (1932), The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936; he won the Oscar for Best Actor.), The Good Earth (1936), and The Life of Emile Zola (1936).
Seymour Rexite (1908–2002)
Seymour Rexite (originally spelled Rechtzeit) was a singing sensation, beloved for his Yiddish interpretations of American popular standards, which he performed in a smooth, sweet tenor. In 1920, Rexite emigrated from Poland to America with his father, who was a cantor, and his brother Jack, but immigration regulations prevented his mother and sisters from joining them. When a congressman arranged for the “singing wunderkind” to perform for President Calvin Coolidge, Rexite used the opportunity to plead for the reunification of his family; he sang a song written by Jack—“Bring Me My Mother from the Other Side”—that persuaded the White House to grant entry visas to his family overseas. Throughout the 1920s and ‘30s, Rexite’s repertoire was entirely Jewish, ranging from liturgical songs to popular Yiddish tunes. He performed in upscale New York nightspots, including the Casino de Paris on 54th Street, and enjoyed great success in such Yiddish operettas as The Rabbi’s Melody and The Jewish Girl. He also appeared in the first Yiddish talkie, Mayn yidishe mame (My Yiddish Mama, 1930) and in the film Motl the Operator (1939). His popularity grew exponentially when he took to the airwaves in the 1940s—at one point starring in 18 half–hour Yiddish radio shows per week. Miriam Kressyn, Rexite’s wife and a successful Yiddish actress in her own right, helped to diversify his material, translating everything from pop hits to show tunes into Yiddish for him to perform on the air. In his later years, Rexite served as president of the Hebrew Actors' Union.
Ludwig Satz (1891–1944)
Born in Lemberg, Galicia (today Lviv, Ukraine), Satz started as a cantor’s backup singer. At the age of 15, he joined an itinerant Yiddish troupe where he made his debut in Jacob Gordin’s God, Man, and Devil. He formed his own theater company in Galicia in 1909, and in 1912–13 performed in London’s Yiddish theater. With the outbreak of World War I, he immigrated to America, where he performed with several prominent Yiddish theaters in New York alongside Jacob P. Adler, Jacob Ben–Ami, and other greats. Satz was predominantly known for his excellence as a comic actor—critic Alexander Woollcott dubbed him the “Charlie Chaplin of the Yiddish stage.” Satz also found success in English–language vaudeville and on Broadway, where he played Abe Potash in the immensely successful Potash and Perlmutter (1926). In addition, he wrote and recorded dozens of Yiddish songs and appeared in a few Yiddish films. In 1942, he appeared in a revival of Goldfaden’s operetta Bar Kokhba, a story about a Jewish revolt against the Romans, at the Civic Opera House in Chicago, where he famously wore a toothbrush mustache and a Hitler–like hairdo. In later years he toured extensively, appearing in Yiddish plays and musicals in South America and Europe.
Menasha Skulnik (1892–1970)
Born in Warsaw, Poland, Skulnik reportedly ran away from his home at the age of 10 to join a traveling circus. Landing in America in 1905, Skulnik began his stage career with small parts in numerous Yiddish musical comedies. His stage persona tended toward the shlemiel, earning him a reputation as “Second Avenue’s favorite nitwit.” (The title of a popular operetta in which he appeared, The Wise Fool, encapsulates his stage career.) Skulnik starred in several Broadway shows, including Sylvia Regan’s The Fifth Season (1953), Clifford Odets’s The Flowering Peach (1954), Neil Simon’s Come Blow Your Horn (1963), and Harold Rome’s The Zulu and the Zayde (1965). In addition to his stage performances, Skulnik was also the voice of Uncle David on The Goldbergs, a popular radio program of the 1930s and ‘40s.
Rudolph Schildkraut (1862–1930)
Rudolph Schildkraut gave his birthplace as Istanbul, though it was claimed by others that he was actually born in Galatz, Romania, where his mother and stepfather ran a small hotel. In his teens, Schildkraut left school and joined a barebones group of itinerant players. He made his way to Vienna and appeared in small parts in the city’s Burgtheater while studying acting with Friedrich Mitterwurzer. When his teacher died in 1900, Schildkraut moved to Hamburg, Germany, and joined the newly established Deutsches Schauspielhauses as a lead actor. His 1903 interpretation of King Lear garnered him enormous praise and an invitation from the great director Max Reinhardt to join his Neues Theater in Berlin. Schildkraut made theater history with his 1905 portrayal of Shylock in Reinhardt’s production of The Merchant of Venice. The impact of his performance, deemed by actor Fritz Kortner a “monument to the art of acting,” was enormous. Shylock became the signature role of Schildkraut’s prolific and multi–lingual theater career. He also originated the role of Yekel Tchaftchovich in the world premiere of Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance, produced in German by Reinhardt. He also left his mark in plays by Ibsen, Shakespeare, Friedrich Schiller, and Knut Hamsun, and appeared in several German silent films.
Schildkraut was a heavy gambler. In 1910, he found himself on the brink of financial ruin, and accepted an offer to appear in German productions in the United States. He began his New York career at the German–language Irving Place Theatre, but was lured away to the Yiddish stage by an extravagant contract offer from Boris Thomashefsky. His first appearance in Yiddish was in Ikele Mazik, soon followed by The Merchant of Venice. The critics and the public were agog, and Schildkraut was heralded as the greatest Yiddish actor. In 1914, at the outset of World War I, he returned to Germany, but came back to New York in 1920 and rejoined the Yiddish theater, reviving his famous vehicles: Leo Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata, Asch’s God of Vengeance, Ikele Mazik, and The Merchant of Venice. In 1923, he made his English–language debut in a production of God of Vengeance, a show that became a cause célèbre following obscenity charges and the arrest of the entire cast and crew. He continued to perform on both the Yiddish and English stages, and in 1925, he invested in a small Yiddish house in the Bronx, which he renamed the Schildkraut Theatre. Its first production was Bronx Express by Osip Dymow. The modernistic parody of Jewish life in New York proved a phenomenal success, but the small theater could not sustain itself after this smash hit, and Schildkraut accepted an offer from Hollywood to film His People(1925). His next film role as the High Priest Caiaphas in Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings (1927), greatly aggravated American Jews, but he retorted that he took the part to cover the losses he incurred at his theater. Schildkraut’s son Joseph (1896–1964) was a well–known stage and movie actor whose signature role was Otto Frank in the Broadway production, and the subsequent film, of The Diary of Anne Frank. Joseph wrote about his father in the memoir My Father and I (1959).
Bessie Thomashefsky (1873–1962)
Born in the Ukraine, young Bessie came with her family to the United States in 1879, eventually settling in Baltimore, Maryland. She was just 14 years old when she first met her future husband, the 19–year–old Boris Thomashefsky, while he was performing in her town. A few years later, Bessie joined the Thomashefsky Players; she quickly found success as an actress, particularly in the greenhorn roles that Boris composed for her and a sensational turn as Salome in a Yiddish translation of Oscar Wilde’s 1891 play. The Thomashefskys became “megastars” says grandson Michael Tilson Thomas, a noted composer, and they “were subject to adulation and relentless scrutiny.” After separating from her husband in 1911 (The couple married in 1891 and never officially divorced), Bessie Thomashefsky continued to pursue an independent career in the theater. She took over management of the People’s Theatre in 1915 and renamed it after herself. Her theater troupe was notable for focusing on important social issues of the day, particularly those affecting women.
