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The Triumph, Tragedy, and Mishugas of the Yiddish Theater in America
Knopf
November 2006
On Sale: October 24, 2006
352 pages
ISBN: 1400042887
EAN: 9781400042883
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction | Historical
From the author of the best-selling and critically acclaimed
biographies Groucho and Ball of Fire comes a definitive look
back at the Yiddish Theater. In this soulful and
entertaining elegy Stefan Kanfer traces its meteoric rise,
its precipitous fall, and its lasting mark on American
theater, film, and culture in general. The Yiddish Theater’s star seems to have burned out. The
venues in New York City have all gone. So have the
performers and their immigrant audiences. But in Stardust
Lost they live again as Kanfer brings the colorful stage
roaring back to life. Meticulously unraveling the history of
Jewish theater, he begins with the drama of the Old
Testament and moves through time and space to the cultural
explosions of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, the
oppressions of nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, and the
pogroms of early twentieth-century czarist Russia. Fleeing
anti-Semitic edicts, the Jews of Eastern Europe push
westward, migrating first to England and then to America.
With them come the extravagant personages who bring drama—in
every sense of the word—to Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Stardust Lost invokes the energy, belief, and pure chutzpah
it took to establish and run the thriving, influential
theaters. En route, Kanfer reveals the nightly drama and
comedy that played out behind the scenes as well as onstage,
and introduces all the players—actors, divas, playwrights,
directors, designers, and producers—who made it possible.
Along with the beating pulse of the Yiddish tradition come
the larger-than-life stars: Boris Thomashefsky, Jacob P.
Adler, Molly Picon, Paul Muni, Bertha Kalisch, David
Kessler, Maurice Schwartz, and many others, most with
libidos to match their oversized egos. The book grants us
views of genuine artistic achievement along with tales of
cutthroat competition, adulterous liaisons, and hilarious
wrangles. As we see in detail, assimilation, world events,
and great shifts in American entertainment—the very
entertainment that the Yiddish Theater encouraged by
providing talent to uptown stages and film studios—lead to a
poignant finale. From the daring Yiddish interpretation of The Merchant of
Venice to Stella Adler’s influence on young actors to John
Garfield’s and Marlon Brando’s impact on the screen, Kanfer
traverses lower Manhattan, Broadway, and Hollywood to give
us the tumultuous birth, flourishing, and decline of a great
art form. It is a richly evocative chronicle that resurrects
the forgotten landmarks and the vital personalities of the
Yiddish Theater, whose work has gone but whose achievements
can never be lost.
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