Jacob Pavlovich Adler
Encyclopedia
Jacob Pavlovich Adler (February 12, 1855; Odessa
, Russian Empire
(now Ukraine
) – April 1, 1926; New York City, New York), born Yankev P. Adler, was a Jewish actor and star of Yiddish theater, first in Odessa
, and later in London
and New York City
.
Nicknamed "nesher hagodl", ("the Great Eagle"), Adler being the German word
for "eagle", he achieved his first theatrical success in Odessa
, but his career there was rapidly cut short when Yiddish theater was banned in Russia
in 1883. He became a star in Yiddish theater in London, and in 1889, on his second voyage to the United States
, he settled in New York City
. Adler soon started a company of his own, ushering in a new, more serious Yiddish theater, most notably by recruiting the Yiddish theater's first realistic
playwright, Jacob Gordin. Adler scored a great triumph in the title role of Gordin's Der Yiddisher King Lear (The Jewish King Lear), set in 19th-century Russia
, which along with his portrayal of Shakespeare's Shylock
would form the core of the persona he defined as the "Grand Jew".
Nearly all his family went into theater; probably the most famous was his daughter Stella
, who taught method acting
to, among others, Marlon Brando
.
(priest). His paternal grandfather lived with them for some eight years; he was a pious man, and the family was much more observant of Jewish religious practices during the time he lived with them. However, according to Adler, the real patriarch of the family was his wealthy uncle Aaron "Arke" Trachtenberg, who would later be the model for his portrayal of roles such as Gordin's Jewish King Lear.
Adler grew up with one foot in a traditional Jewish world and one in a more modern, European one. His granddaughter Lulla Rosenfeld writes, "Of the haskala
[Jewish Enlightenment] as an organized system of ideas, he probably knew little or nothing." His education was irregular: as the family fortunes rose and fell, he would be sent to cheder (Jewish religious school) or to a Russian language
county school, pulled out of school entirely, or have a private tutor for a few months. He wrote that "the sum of my learning was a little arithmetic, some Russian grammar, and a few French phrases."
He grew up with both Jewish and Christian playmates, but also survived a full-fledged pogrom
around 1862. He played hooky; as a 12-year-old he started going to witness public floggings, brandings, and executions of criminals; later he would develop more of an interest in attending courtroom trials. At 14 he began working in a textile factory, and soon rose to a white collar
job there at a salary of 10 rubles a month, which would have been decent even for an adult. Still living at home, he began to frequent the disreputable district of Moldovanka. His first brush with stardom was that he briefly became a boxer
, known as Yankele Kulachnik, "Jake the Fist". He soon got bored with boxing, but not with his new connections to the "sons of rich fathers, attorneys without diplomas", etc. A good dancer, he became part of a crowd of young toughs who regularly crashed wedding parties. His local celebrity continued, with a reputation as Odessa's best can-can
dancer.
He left the factory, becoming a raznoschik, a peddler; his memoir hints at back-door assignations with "servant girls and chambermaids"; by his own description, his life at this point was just a step from a life of crime. Through his uncle Arke, "a hot theater lover", he became interested in the theater, at first in the beauty of Olga Glebova and the cut of Ivan Kozelsky's clothes, but he had the good fortune to be in one of the great theater cities of his time.
At 17 he became the leader of Glebova's claque
, was working as a copyist for lawyers, and going out to a theater, a tavern, or a party every night. He would later draw on his own life at this time for his portrayal of Protosov in Tolstoy
's The Living Corpse
. Over the next few years he had numerous love affairs, and was prevented from a love marriage with one Esther Raizel because his own dubious reputation compounded the taint of his mother's divorce. He survived another pogrom, but his family was financially ruined by the destruction of their possessions and the theft of their money.
In writing about this period in his memoir, Adler mentions attending and admiring performances by Israel Grodner
, a Brody singer and improvisational actor who would soon become one of the founders of professional Yiddish theater. A song of Grodner's about an old father turned away by his children would later be the germ of the idea for The Yiddish King Lear. He writes that he would have become a Brody singer, like Grodner, except "I had no voice". This lack of a singing voice would be a major factor in the direction of his acting career: according to Rosenfeld, although Yiddish theater was long dominated by vaudeville
s and operetta
s, "He was the only Yiddish actor to rely entirely on classics and translations of modern European plays."
of young men. At his family's urging, Adler bribed his way into becoming a sanitar, an assistant in the Red Cross Medical Corps. He was selected (apparently on little more than his appearance) by Prince Vladimir Petrovich Meshersky to work at a German hospital in Bender
, Moldova
, dealing mainly with typhus
patients. In his four months there, he became a favorite with the established Jewish families there, and earned a Gold Medal for Outstanding Achievement for his brief service to the Tsar.
Returning to Odessa, he got a job distributing newspapers. This respectable work required getting up at 6 a.m., not good for a carouser. Still, newspaper connection meant that he soon heard of one of the war's other effects: the many Jewish merchants and middlemen war brought to Bucharest
were a boon to Abraham Goldfaden
's nascent Yiddish theater there. Two of his Odessa acquaintances—Israel Rosenberg
, a personable con-man, and Jacob Spivakofsky
, scion of a wealthy Jewish family—had become actors there, then had left Goldfaden to found their own company, touring in Moldavia
. Adler wrote them to urge them to bring their troupe to Odessa.
Adler managed to leverage a recommendation from Prince Meshersky and another from Avrom Markovich Brodsky—a businessman so successful as to have earned the nickname "the Jewish Tsar"—to get a job as a marketplace inspector for the Department of Weights and Measures, rather unusual for a Jew at that time. His mildly corrupt tenure there gave him good contacts with the police. These would soon come in handy for smoothing over certain problems of a young and unlicensed theater troupe when Rosenberg and Spivakofsky returned from Romania, penniless because the end of the war had meant the collapse of Yiddish theater in the provinces, and ready to start a troupe in Odessa.
Adler aspired to be an actor, but found himself at first serving the troupe more as critic and theoretician, making use of his now-vast knowledge of Russian theater. The first productions (Goldfaden's Grandmother and Granddaughter and Shmendrick) were popular successes, but Adler's own account suggests that they were basically mediocre, and his Uncle Arke was appalled: "Is this theater? No my child, this is a circus."
. On the other, until his 50s, he was not hesitant to take advantage of his prowess as a dancer, and even occasionally took on roles that called for some singing, although by all accounts (including his own) this was not his forte.
(and of her family) for theater, and their vision of what Yiddish theater could become, kept him in the profession despite his uncle's view. When she was cast by Rosenberg opposite Jacob Spivakovsky in the title role of Abraham Goldfaden
's darkly comic operetta
Breindele Cossack
, she pulled strings so that the role of Guberman would be reassigned to Adler.
His success in the role was cut short by the news that Goldfaden, whose plays they were using without permission, was coming with his troupe to Odessa. Goldfaden's own account says he came there at the urging of his father; Adler attributes it to Rosenberg and Spivakovsky's "enemies". Rosenberg, never the most ethical of men, withdrew his troupe from Odessa to tour the hinterland. (Soon, though, he would come to an accommodation by which his troupe would be an officially recognized touring company attached to Goldfaden's own troupe.) (For greater detail on Adler's time with Rosenberg's company, see Israel Rosenberg
.)
By his own account, Adler took a leave of absence from his job to travel with Rosenberg's troupe to Kherson
, where he made a successful acting debut in as the lover Marcus in The Witch of Botoşani
. He overstayed his leave, lost his government post, and the decision to become a full-time actor was effectively made for him. Adler was unhappy that under Tulya Goldfaden there were "No more communistic
shares, no more idealistic comradeship". Still, under this same Goldfaden regime he had his first taste of real stardom when people in Chişinău
camped in the courtyards awaiting performances. Even the police seemed to have "fallen in love" with the troupe, dressing up the actors in their uniforms at riotous parties after shows, while trying on the troupe's costumes themselves.
Unsatisfied with the low pay, in Kremenchuk
Adler led an unsuccessful actors' strike. A series of intrigues almost led to a breakup with Sonya, but ultimately led both back into Rosenberg's troupe and led to their marriage in Poltova. When this particular troupe broke up, the Adlers were among the few players to remain with Rosenberg to form a new one that included the actress who later became famous under the name of Keni Liptzin
. In Chernigov, Adler turned down the opportunity to act in a Russian-language production of Boris Gudonov. Around this time Goldfaden appeared again and, after using an elaborate intrigue to demonstrate to the Adlers that Rosenberg had no loyalty to them, recruited them to his own troupe, which at the time appeared to be headed for a triumphant entry into Saint Petersburg
.
All that changed with the assassination of Tsar Alexander II
. The mourning for the tsar meant there would be no performances in the capital; in addition the political climate of Russia turned sharply against the Jews. Goldfaden's troupe soldiered on for a time—to Minsk
, to Bobruisk where they played mainly to Russian soldiers, and to Vitebsk
, where he and Sonya ended up having to sue Goldfaden for their pay, and left to rejoin Rosenberg, who was playing in a tent theater in Nezhin. However, matters there proved even worse: Nezhin soon fell prey to a pogrom
. The troupe managed to avoid bodily harm, partly by convincing the rioters that they were a French
theater troupe and partly by making judicious use of the money the Adlers had won in court from Goldfaden.
In Łódź, Adler triumphantly played the title role in Karl Gutzkow
's Uriel Acosta, the first of a series of roles through which he developed a persona he would later call "the Grand Jew". After Łódź, they landed in Zhytomyr
, under an incompetent investor/director named Hartenstein. They thought they had found "a quiet corner" of the Russian Empire in which "to make a bit of a livelihood", but in fact Hartenstein was simply running through his money.
The financial consequences of the collapse of their company were mitigated be a series of three benefit performances, in coordination with the local Russian-language theater company. Sonya returned to Odessa to give birth to their daughter Rivka; Adler stayed on six weeks in Zhytomyr and had sort of a belated apprenticeship with two Russian character actors of national fame, Borisov and Philipovsky. However, he returned to Odessa thinking that he would most likely leave theater behind.
Late in life, when he looked back at his years acting in Adler and Goldfaden's companies, Adler saw it as merely the "childhood" of his career. He describes his thoughts toward the end of this period, "For three years I had wandered in the cave of the Witch
in the clown's rags of Shmendrick and what did I really know of my trade?... If someday I return to the Yiddish theater, let me at least not be so ignorant."
Returning to Odessa, where he discovered that no one would employ him in any job other than as an actor. In 1882, he put together a troupe of his own with Keni Liptzin, and brought Rosenberg in as a partner. This troupe toured to Rostov
, Taganrog
, around Lithuania
, to Dünaburg (now Daugavpils
, Latvia
). Aiming to bring the troupe to Saint Petersburg, they brought back their sometime manager Chaikel Bain. They were in Riga
in August 1883 when the news arrived that a total ban was about to be placed on Yiddish theater in Russia.
The troupe were left stranded in Riga. Chaikel Bain took ill and died. With some difficulty, passage to London
for the troupe was arranged on a cattle ship, in exchange for entertaining the crew. However, about this time Israel Grodner and his wife Annetta
reappeared. Adler wanted to include them in the group headed for London. According to Adler, Rosenberg, who played many of the same roles as Israel Grodner, essentially told Adler "it's him or me". Adler attempted to convince him to change his mind, but insisted on including Grodner in the travel party: Adler considered him one of the best actors in Yiddish theater, a great asset to any performances they would give in London, while he felt Rosenberg lacked depth as an actor. He tried to get Rosenberg to come with them to London, but Rosenberg would not budge.
Adler arrived in London with few contacts. In Whitechapel
, the center of Jewish London at that time, he encountered extremes of poverty that he describes as exceeding any he had ever seen in Russia or would ever see in New York. The quite distinguished Chief Rabbi of the British Empire
at that time, Dr. Nathan Marcus Adler
, was a relative. Adler's father had him written a letter of introduction in Hebrew
, but nothing could have been farther from the rabbi's desires than to assist Yiddish-language theater. Nathan Marcus Adler viewed Yiddish as a "jargon" that existed at the expense of both liturgical Hebrew and the English
necessary for upward mobility, and his Orthodox Judaism
"could not endure so much as a blessing given on stage, for such a blessing would be given in vain..."; further, he was afraid that the portrayals of Jews on stage would give aid and comfort to their enemies.
At this time, Yiddish theater in London meant amateur clubs. The arrival of professional Yiddish actors from Russia worked great changes, bringing Yiddish theater in London to a new level and allowing a modest professionalism, though never at much more than a poverty wage. Adler's memoir acknowledges many people who helped him out in various ways. Eventually, with the aid in particular of Sonya's relative Herman Fiedler—a playwright, orchestra leader, and stage manager—the Adlers and the Grodners were able to take over the Prescott Street Club. There they presented generally serious theater to audiences of about 150. Fiedler adapted The Odessa Beggar from Felix Pyat
's The Ragpicker of Paris, a tragicomic play written on the eve of the Revolutions of 1848
. Adler starred in it, in a role he would continue to play throughout his career.
Two months later, he played Uriel Acosta at the Holborn
Theatre to an audience of 500, including the "Jewish aristocrats of the West End
". The piety of the London Jews was such that they had to use an (unplayable) cardboard ram's horn
so as to avoid blasphemy
. Chief Rabbi Adler and his son and eventual successor Hermann Adler
were present, and both, especially the younger rabbi, were favorably impressed. There were even mentions in the English-language press.
Playing to small audiences, on tiny stages, in communal troupes where all but the stars had day jobs, and playing only Saturday and Sunday (the pious London Jews would never have tolerated Friday performances), Adler focused on serious theater like never before. However, he and Grodner soon fell out: they wrangled over ideology and over parts, and their verbal duels boiled over into improvised stage dialogue. The Grodners ultimately left to do theater in a series of other locations, notably Paris
, but eventually came back to London, where Israel Grodner died in 1887.
By November 1885, Adler had a theatrical club of his own, the Princes Street Club, No. 3 Princes Street (now Princelet Street, E1), purpose-built, financed by a butcher named David Smith. It seated 300; playing every night except Friday, he was earning about £3 s.10 a week, but with a fame well out of proportion to the meagre money. Many of the most prominent figures in Yiddish theater, including Sigmund Mogulesko
, David Kessler
, Abba and Clara Shoengold, and Sara Heine (the future Sara Adler), gave guest performances when they passed through London.
One of Adler's most famous roles from this period was as the villain Franz Moore in Herman Fiedler's adaptation of Schiller's The Robbers, which introduced Schiller into Yiddish theater. On at least one occasion in 1886, he played both Franz Moore and the play's hero, Franz's brother Karl Moore: in the play they never meet.
1886 was to prove a terrible year for Adler. His daughter Rivka died of croup
; Sonya died of an infection contracted while giving birth to their son Abram; meanwhile, he had been carrying on an affair with a young woman, Jenny ("Jennya") Kaiser, who was also pregnant, with his son Charles
. Depressed after Sonya's death, he passed up an offer to relocate to the United States, which was taken up instead by Mogulesko and Finkel. In winter 1887, an audience at the Princes Street Club panicked when they thought a simulated stage fire was real; 17 people died in the stampede. While the authorities determined that this was not Adler's fault, and the club was allowed to reopen, the crowds did not return; "the theater," he writes, "was so cold, dark, and empty you could hunt wolves in the gallery."
Adler's affair with Jennya continued; he also took up with a young chorus girl from an Orthodox Jewish family, Dinah Shtettin
. His memoir is extremely unclear on the sequence of this, and hints at other affairs at this time. The memoir does make clear that the "hot-blooded" Jennya had little interest in a marriage, while Dinah's father insisted on a marriage, even though he despised Alder and made it clear that he doubted the marriage would last.
, where, after a brief initial success, the troupe fell apart due to a combination of labor disputes and cutthroat competition. The Oberlanders managed to start a restaurant; he and Keni Liptzin headed to New York that autumn, where she managed to sign on at the Romanian Opera House; failing to find a similar situation for himself, he returned to London, drawn back to the charms of both Dinah and Jennya.
He did not remain long in London. After some major successes in Warsaw
, which was under Austria
n rule, he returned to London in the spring of 1889, and then again to New York, this time to play for Heine at Poole's Theater. After an initial failure in The Odessa Beggar (he writes that the New York audience of the time was not ready for "tragicomedy"), he was a success in the melodrama Moishele Soldat, and "a more worthy success" in Uriel Acosta. This gave him the basis to bring Dinah to America. Their marriage didn't last, though the divorce was amicable: she remarried, to Siegmund Feinman. Adler fell out with Heine, initially over business; at this time Heine's marriage was also falling apart, and Sara Heine would eventually become Sara Adler.
Adler went on the road with Boris Thomashefsky
, who at the time was pioneering the touring circuit for Yiddish theater in America. They played in Philadelphia and Chicago
, where word arrived of an opportunity to take over Poole's, Heine having moved on to the Thalia. Adler returned to New York, were he managed also to win Mogulesko and Kessler away from Heine.
operetta David ben Jesse at Moishe Finkel's National Theater, the Union Theater temporarily to abandon its highbrow programming and competed head on, with operettas Judith and Holofernes, Titus Andronicus, or the Second Destruction of the Temple, and Hymie in America.
Adler was not content to continue long in this mode, and sought a playwright who could create pieces that would appeal to the Jewish public, while still providing a type of theater he could be proud to perform. He recruited Jacob Gordin, already a well-respected novelist and intellectual, recently arrived in New York and eking out a living as a journalist at the Arbeiter Zeiting, precursor to The Forward. Gordin's first two plays, Siberia and Two Worlds were commercial failures—so much so that Mogulesko and Kessler quit the company—but The Yiddish King Lear
, starring Adler and his new wife Sara was such a success that the play eventually transferred to Finkel's larger National Theater. This play (based only very loosely on Shakespeare) played well with the popular audience, but also with Jewish intellectuals who until this time had largely ignored Yiddish Theater, ending for a time the commercial dominance of operettas such as those of Horowitz and Joseph Lateiner
. The next year, Gordin's The Wild Man solidified this change in the direction of Yiddish theater, which was entering what is retrospectively seen as its first period of greatness.
Over the next decades, Adler would play in (or, in some cases, merely produce) numerous plays by Gordin, but also classics by Shakespeare, Schiller, Lessing
; Eugène Scribe
's La Juive; dramatizations of George du Maurier
's Trilby
and Alexandre Dumas, fils
' Camille
; and the works of modern playwrights such as Gorky
, Ibsen
, Shaw
, Strindberg
, Gerhart Hauptmann
, Victor Hugo
, Victorien Sardou
, and Leonid Andreyev
. Frequently the works of the great contemporary playwrights—even Shaw, who was writing in English—would be staged in New York in Yiddish years, even decades, before they were ever staged there in English.
Having already famously played Shylock
in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice
on the Yiddish stage at the People's Theater, he played the role again in a 1903 Broadway production, directed by Arthur Hopkins
. In this production, Adler spoke his lines in Yiddish
while the rest of the cast spoke in English. The New York Times review of Adler's performance was not favorable: in particular his naturalistic acting style was not what audiences of the period expected in a production of Shakespeare. Some other reviews (such as that in Theater magazine) were friendlier; in any event the same production was revived two years later.
Lulla Rosenfeld writes that Henry Irving
, the great Shylock before that time, played Shylock as "morally superior to the Christians around him... driven to cruelty only by their more cruel persecutions." In contrast, "Adler scorned justification. Total vindication was his aim." In Adler's own words, "Shylock from the first was governed by pride rather than revenge. He wishes to humble and terrify Antonio
for the insult and humiliation he has suffered at his hands. This is why he goes so far as to bring his knife and scales into the court. For Shylock, however, the desired climax was to refuse the pound of flesh with a gesture of divine compassion. When the verdict goes against him, he is crushed because he has been robbed of this opportunity, not becauser he lusts for Antonio's death. This was my interpretation. This is the Shylock I have tried to show." The road from this to method acting
is clear.
After his two Broadway triumphs, Adler returned to Yiddish theater.
In the wake of the Kishinev pogrom
, Adler went back briefly to Eastern Europe in summer 1903, where he tried to convince various family members to come to America. Although he was greeted as a hero, he was only partially successful in convincing people to leave; his mother, in particular, was determined to finish out her life where she was. (His father had died some years earlier.) He persuaded his sister Sarah Adler to follow him to America as her husband had died of heart disease in Verdun in 1897 and she was raising seven children on her own. She emigrated in 1905.
Returning to New York, he and Thomashefsky jointly leased The People's Theater, intending to use it on different nights of the week. Adler, exhausted from his Russian trip, was often leaving his nights unused, and Thomashefsky offered to buy him out for $10,000 on the condition that he would not return to performing in New York. Adler was so insulted that the two did not speak for months, even though at the time they were living across a courtyard from one another, and could see into each other's St. Mark's Place apartments. Adler decided to perform Tolstoy
's The Power of Darkness
, and decided that he would do his own translation from Russian to Yiddish. The play was a great success, the first successful production of a Tolstoy play in the U.S., and Thomashefsky was so obviously happy for Adler that their friendship was renewed. Adler followed with equally successful productions of Gordin's dramatization of Tolstoy's Resurrection
and the Gordin original The Homeless.
In 1904 Adler had the Grand Theater built at the corner of Bowery and Canal Street
, the first purpose-built Yiddish theater in New York. His wife Sara had branched out to do her own plays at the Novelty Theater in Brooklyn, and the family had taken up residence in a four-story brownstone, with an elevator, in the East Seventies. (They would later move one more time, to Riverside Drive
.) Around this time Lincoln Steffens
wrote a piece saying that Yiddish theater in New York had eclipsed English-language theater in quality.
This golden age was not to last. The years 1905–1908 saw half a million new Jewish immigrants to New York, and once again the largest audience for Yiddish theater was for lighter fare. Adler hung on, but the Thomashefskys were making a fortune at the Thalia; plays with titles like Minke the Servant Girl were far outdrawing fare like Gordin's Dementia Americana (1909). It would be 1911 before Adler scored another major success, this time with Tolstoy's The Living Corpse
(also known as Redemption), translated into Yiddish by Leon Kobrin
.
In 1919-1920, Adler, despite his own socialist politics, found himself in a labor dispute with the Hebrew Actors' Union
; he played that season in London rather than New York. A stroke
in 1920 while vacationing in upstate New York nearly ended his acting career, although he continued to appear occasionally, usually as part of a benefit performance for himself, often playing Act I of The Yiddish King Lear: the title character remains seated throughout the entire act. In 1924, he was well enough to perform in the title role of a revival of Gordin's The Stranger, inspired by Tennyson
's "Enoch Arden
": the character is "a sick and broken man", so the Adler was able to integrate his own physical weakness into the portrayal. However, March 31, 1926, he collapsed suddenly, dying almost instantly.
, then to Dinah Shtettin
(later Dinah Feinman) and finally to Sara Adler
, who survived him by over 25 years.
His and Sonya's daughter Rivkah (Rebecca) died at the age of 3. Sonya died from an infection contracted while giving birth to their son Abram in 1886. Abram's son Allen Adler
was, among other things, the screenwriter of Forbidden Planet
.
While still married to Sonya, he began an affair with Jenny "Jennya" Kaiser, with whom he had a son, stage actor Charles Adler
, born 1886.
He had a daughter, Celia Adler
with Dinah.
His six children by his third wife, actress Sara Adler, included the well-known actors Luther
and Stella Adler
and the lesser-known Jay
, Frances, Julia, and Florence.
His sister Sarah/Soore Adler and seven children emigrated to New York in 1905. His niece, Francine Larrimore
, Sarah's daughter, became a Broadway actress, who also appeared in films.
Adler writes vividly and with humor. He describes the director Hartenstein as "a young man from Galicia with long hair and short brains, half educated in Vienna
, and half an actor", and refers to the poor of Whitechapel
as looking as if they "had come out of their mothers already gray and old." Of his early London years, he writes, "We played for a tiny audience, on a stage the size of a cadaver, but we played well, with a drunkenness of happiness."
In a small essay, "Shmendrick, My Mephistopheles", one of the last passages he wrote, Adler describes the last time he saw Shmendrick played, at a memorial for Goldfaden in 1912. Lamenting the choice of play for the memorial—"Goldfaden has written better things"—he nonetheless acknowledges, "that same bitter Shmendrick was our livelihood... I gritted my teeth. I called on the ghosts of Aristophanes
, of Shakespeare, of Lope de Vega
. I wept and swallowed my own tears… And I cursed the fate that bound me to him… Yet even as I cursed and condemned, the tears rose. For my whole life, my whole past, was before me on that stage… Poor weak first step of our Yiddish theater… I thank you for the happiness you gave us… I thank you Shmendrick—my beloved—my own."
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...
, Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
(now Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
) – April 1, 1926; New York City, New York), born Yankev P. Adler, was a Jewish actor and star of Yiddish theater, first in Odessa
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...
, and later in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.
Nicknamed "nesher hagodl", ("the Great Eagle"), Adler being the German word
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
for "eagle", he achieved his first theatrical success in Odessa
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...
, but his career there was rapidly cut short when Yiddish theater was banned in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
in 1883. He became a star in Yiddish theater in London, and in 1889, on his second voyage to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, he settled in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. Adler soon started a company of his own, ushering in a new, more serious Yiddish theater, most notably by recruiting the Yiddish theater's first realistic
Realism (arts)
Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
playwright, Jacob Gordin. Adler scored a great triumph in the title role of Gordin's Der Yiddisher King Lear (The Jewish King Lear), set in 19th-century Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, which along with his portrayal of Shakespeare's Shylock
Shylock
Shylock is a fictional character in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.-In the play:In The Merchant of Venice, Shylock is a Jewish moneylender who lends money to his Christian rival, Antonio, setting the security at a pound of Antonio's flesh...
would form the core of the persona he defined as the "Grand Jew".
Nearly all his family went into theater; probably the most famous was his daughter Stella
Stella Adler
Stella Adler was an American actress and an acclaimed acting teacher, who founded the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York City and the The Stella Adler Academy of Acting in Los Angeles with long-time protege Joanne Linville, who continues to teach and furthers Adler's legacy...
, who taught method acting
Method acting
Method acting is a phrase that loosely refers to a family of techniques used by actors to create in themselves the thoughts and emotions of their characters, so as to develop lifelike performances...
to, among others, Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...
.
Childhood and youth
Adler's father Feivel (Pavel) Abramovitch Adler was a (rather unsuccessful) grain merchant. His mother, née Hessye Halperin, was a tall, beautiful woman, originally from a wealthy family in Berdichev. She became estranged from her family after divorcing her first husband (and leaving behind a son) to marry Adler's father. The marriage to a divorcée cost Feivel Adler (and therefore Jacob Adler) his status as a KohenKohen
A Kohen is the Hebrew word for priest. Jewish Kohens are traditionally believed and halachically required to be of direct patrilineal descent from the Biblical Aaron....
(priest). His paternal grandfather lived with them for some eight years; he was a pious man, and the family was much more observant of Jewish religious practices during the time he lived with them. However, according to Adler, the real patriarch of the family was his wealthy uncle Aaron "Arke" Trachtenberg, who would later be the model for his portrayal of roles such as Gordin's Jewish King Lear.
Adler grew up with one foot in a traditional Jewish world and one in a more modern, European one. His granddaughter Lulla Rosenfeld writes, "Of the haskala
Haskalah
Haskalah , the Jewish Enlightenment, was a movement among European Jews in the 18th–19th centuries that advocated adopting enlightenment values, pressing for better integration into European society, and increasing education in secular studies, Hebrew language, and Jewish history...
[Jewish Enlightenment] as an organized system of ideas, he probably knew little or nothing." His education was irregular: as the family fortunes rose and fell, he would be sent to cheder (Jewish religious school) or to a Russian language
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
county school, pulled out of school entirely, or have a private tutor for a few months. He wrote that "the sum of my learning was a little arithmetic, some Russian grammar, and a few French phrases."
He grew up with both Jewish and Christian playmates, but also survived a full-fledged pogrom
Pogrom
A pogrom is a form of violent riot, a mob attack directed against a minority group, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes and properties, businesses, and religious centres...
around 1862. He played hooky; as a 12-year-old he started going to witness public floggings, brandings, and executions of criminals; later he would develop more of an interest in attending courtroom trials. At 14 he began working in a textile factory, and soon rose to a white collar
White-collar worker
The term white-collar worker refers to a person who performs professional, managerial, or administrative work, in contrast with a blue-collar worker, whose job requires manual labor...
job there at a salary of 10 rubles a month, which would have been decent even for an adult. Still living at home, he began to frequent the disreputable district of Moldovanka. His first brush with stardom was that he briefly became a boxer
Boxing
Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...
, known as Yankele Kulachnik, "Jake the Fist". He soon got bored with boxing, but not with his new connections to the "sons of rich fathers, attorneys without diplomas", etc. A good dancer, he became part of a crowd of young toughs who regularly crashed wedding parties. His local celebrity continued, with a reputation as Odessa's best can-can
Can-can
The can-can is a high-energy and physically demanding music hall dance, traditionally performed by a chorus line of female dancers who wear costumes with long skirts, petticoats, and black stockings...
dancer.
He left the factory, becoming a raznoschik, a peddler; his memoir hints at back-door assignations with "servant girls and chambermaids"; by his own description, his life at this point was just a step from a life of crime. Through his uncle Arke, "a hot theater lover", he became interested in the theater, at first in the beauty of Olga Glebova and the cut of Ivan Kozelsky's clothes, but he had the good fortune to be in one of the great theater cities of his time.
At 17 he became the leader of Glebova's claque
Claque
Claque is an organized body of professional applauders in French theatres and opera houses. Members of a claque are called claqueurs....
, was working as a copyist for lawyers, and going out to a theater, a tavern, or a party every night. He would later draw on his own life at this time for his portrayal of Protosov in Tolstoy
Tolstoy
Tolstoy, or Tolstoi is a prominent family of Russian nobility, descending from Andrey Kharitonovich Tolstoy who served under Vasily II of Moscow...
's The Living Corpse
The Living Corpse
The Living Corpse is a Russian play by Leo Tolstoy. Although written around 1900, it was only published shortly after his death—Tolstoy had never considered the work finished...
. Over the next few years he had numerous love affairs, and was prevented from a love marriage with one Esther Raizel because his own dubious reputation compounded the taint of his mother's divorce. He survived another pogrom, but his family was financially ruined by the destruction of their possessions and the theft of their money.
In writing about this period in his memoir, Adler mentions attending and admiring performances by Israel Grodner
Israel Grodner
Israel Grodner was one of the founding performers in Yiddish theater. A Lithuanian Jew who moved at the age of 16 to Berdichev, Ukraine, Russian Empire, the Broder singer and actor was in Iaşi, Romania in 1876 when Abraham Goldfaden recruited him as the first actor for what became the first...
, a Brody singer and improvisational actor who would soon become one of the founders of professional Yiddish theater. A song of Grodner's about an old father turned away by his children would later be the germ of the idea for The Yiddish King Lear. He writes that he would have become a Brody singer, like Grodner, except "I had no voice". This lack of a singing voice would be a major factor in the direction of his acting career: according to Rosenfeld, although Yiddish theater was long dominated by vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
s and operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
s, "He was the only Yiddish actor to rely entirely on classics and translations of modern European plays."
Sanitar and Inspector
The outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War brought on universal conscriptionConscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
of young men. At his family's urging, Adler bribed his way into becoming a sanitar, an assistant in the Red Cross Medical Corps. He was selected (apparently on little more than his appearance) by Prince Vladimir Petrovich Meshersky to work at a German hospital in Bender
Bender, Moldova
Bender or Bendery, also known as Tighina is a city within the internationally recognized borders of Moldova under de facto control of the unrecognized Transnistria Republic since 1992...
, Moldova
Moldova
Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...
, dealing mainly with typhus
Typhus
Epidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...
patients. In his four months there, he became a favorite with the established Jewish families there, and earned a Gold Medal for Outstanding Achievement for his brief service to the Tsar.
Returning to Odessa, he got a job distributing newspapers. This respectable work required getting up at 6 a.m., not good for a carouser. Still, newspaper connection meant that he soon heard of one of the war's other effects: the many Jewish merchants and middlemen war brought to Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
were a boon to Abraham Goldfaden
Abraham Goldfaden
Abraham Goldfaden ; was an Russian-born Jewish poet, playwright, stage director and actor in the languages Yiddish and Hebrew, author of some 40 plays.Goldfaden is considered the father of the Jewish modern theatre.In 1876 he founded in...
's nascent Yiddish theater there. Two of his Odessa acquaintances—Israel Rosenberg
Israel Rosenberg
Israel Rosenberg founded the first Yiddish theater troupe in Imperial Russia....
, a personable con-man, and Jacob Spivakofsky
Jacob Spivakofsky
Jacob Spivakofsky, a Russian Jew, was one of the first stars in the early years of Yiddish theater.The highly cultured scion of a wealthy Odessa Jewish family, Spivakofsky had an academic education and was already a well-traveled young man who, by Jacob Adler's account "acted with talent and taste...
, scion of a wealthy Jewish family—had become actors there, then had left Goldfaden to found their own company, touring in Moldavia
Moldavia
Moldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...
. Adler wrote them to urge them to bring their troupe to Odessa.
Adler managed to leverage a recommendation from Prince Meshersky and another from Avrom Markovich Brodsky—a businessman so successful as to have earned the nickname "the Jewish Tsar"—to get a job as a marketplace inspector for the Department of Weights and Measures, rather unusual for a Jew at that time. His mildly corrupt tenure there gave him good contacts with the police. These would soon come in handy for smoothing over certain problems of a young and unlicensed theater troupe when Rosenberg and Spivakofsky returned from Romania, penniless because the end of the war had meant the collapse of Yiddish theater in the provinces, and ready to start a troupe in Odessa.
Adler aspired to be an actor, but found himself at first serving the troupe more as critic and theoretician, making use of his now-vast knowledge of Russian theater. The first productions (Goldfaden's Grandmother and Granddaughter and Shmendrick) were popular successes, but Adler's own account suggests that they were basically mediocre, and his Uncle Arke was appalled: "Is this theater? No my child, this is a circus."
Acting career
Lulla Rosenfeld's remark that Adler "…rel[ied] entirely on classics and translations of modern European plays" does not quite tell the whole story. On one hand, he was also responsible for recruiting the Yiddish theater's first naturalistic playwright, Jacob Gordin, and he scored a great triumph in the title role of Gordin's Der Yiddisher King Lear (The Jewish King Lear), set in 19th-century RussiaRussia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. On the other, until his 50s, he was not hesitant to take advantage of his prowess as a dancer, and even occasionally took on roles that called for some singing, although by all accounts (including his own) this was not his forte.
Russia
Adler wrote in his memoir that the passion of his future wife Sonya OberlanderSonya Adler
Sonya Adler , born Sonya Oberlander, early stage name Sonya Michelson, was one of the first women to perform in Yiddish theater in Imperial Russia...
(and of her family) for theater, and their vision of what Yiddish theater could become, kept him in the profession despite his uncle's view. When she was cast by Rosenberg opposite Jacob Spivakovsky in the title role of Abraham Goldfaden
Abraham Goldfaden
Abraham Goldfaden ; was an Russian-born Jewish poet, playwright, stage director and actor in the languages Yiddish and Hebrew, author of some 40 plays.Goldfaden is considered the father of the Jewish modern theatre.In 1876 he founded in...
's darkly comic operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
Breindele Cossack
Breindele Cossack
Breindele Cossack is a darkly comic 1887 Yiddish-language play by Abraham Goldfaden, generally accounted one of the best of his early works. The title character is a woman who, at the start of the play, has already driven five husbands to suicide...
, she pulled strings so that the role of Guberman would be reassigned to Adler.
His success in the role was cut short by the news that Goldfaden, whose plays they were using without permission, was coming with his troupe to Odessa. Goldfaden's own account says he came there at the urging of his father; Adler attributes it to Rosenberg and Spivakovsky's "enemies". Rosenberg, never the most ethical of men, withdrew his troupe from Odessa to tour the hinterland. (Soon, though, he would come to an accommodation by which his troupe would be an officially recognized touring company attached to Goldfaden's own troupe.) (For greater detail on Adler's time with Rosenberg's company, see Israel Rosenberg
Israel Rosenberg
Israel Rosenberg founded the first Yiddish theater troupe in Imperial Russia....
.)
By his own account, Adler took a leave of absence from his job to travel with Rosenberg's troupe to Kherson
Kherson
Kherson is a city in southern Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Kherson Oblast , and is designated as its own separate raion within the oblast. Kherson is an important port on the Black Sea and Dnieper River, and the home of a major ship-building industry...
, where he made a successful acting debut in as the lover Marcus in The Witch of Botoşani
The Witch of Botosani
The Witch of Botoşani or simply The Witch or The Sorceress was an 1878, or possibly 1877, play by Abraham Goldfaden...
. He overstayed his leave, lost his government post, and the decision to become a full-time actor was effectively made for him. Adler was unhappy that under Tulya Goldfaden there were "No more communistic
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
shares, no more idealistic comradeship". Still, under this same Goldfaden regime he had his first taste of real stardom when people in Chişinău
Chisinau
Chișinău is the capital and largest municipality of Moldova. It is also its main industrial and commercial centre and is located in the middle of the country, on the river Bîc...
camped in the courtyards awaiting performances. Even the police seemed to have "fallen in love" with the troupe, dressing up the actors in their uniforms at riotous parties after shows, while trying on the troupe's costumes themselves.
Unsatisfied with the low pay, in Kremenchuk
Kremenchuk
Kremenchuk is an important industrial city in the Poltava Oblast of central Ukraine. Serving as the administrative center of the Kremenchutskyi Raion , the city itself is also designated as a separate raion within the oblast, and is located on the banks of Dnieper River.-History:Kremenchuk was...
Adler led an unsuccessful actors' strike. A series of intrigues almost led to a breakup with Sonya, but ultimately led both back into Rosenberg's troupe and led to their marriage in Poltova. When this particular troupe broke up, the Adlers were among the few players to remain with Rosenberg to form a new one that included the actress who later became famous under the name of Keni Liptzin
Keni Liptzin
Keni Liptzin , surname sometimes spelled Lipzin, was a star in the early years of Yiddish theater, probably the greatest female dramatic star of the first great era of Yiddish theater in New York City....
. In Chernigov, Adler turned down the opportunity to act in a Russian-language production of Boris Gudonov. Around this time Goldfaden appeared again and, after using an elaborate intrigue to demonstrate to the Adlers that Rosenberg had no loyalty to them, recruited them to his own troupe, which at the time appeared to be headed for a triumphant entry into Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
.
All that changed with the assassination of Tsar Alexander II
Alexander II of Russia
Alexander II , also known as Alexander the Liberator was the Emperor of the Russian Empire from 3 March 1855 until his assassination in 1881...
. The mourning for the tsar meant there would be no performances in the capital; in addition the political climate of Russia turned sharply against the Jews. Goldfaden's troupe soldiered on for a time—to Minsk
Minsk
- Ecological situation :The ecological situation is monitored by Republican Center of Radioactive and Environmental Control .During 2003–2008 the overall weight of contaminants increased from 186,000 to 247,400 tons. The change of gas as industrial fuel to mazut for financial reasons has worsened...
, to Bobruisk where they played mainly to Russian soldiers, and to Vitebsk
Vitebsk
Vitebsk, also known as Viciebsk or Vitsyebsk , is a city in Belarus, near the border with Russia. The capital of the Vitebsk Oblast, in 2004 it had 342,381 inhabitants, making it the country's fourth largest city...
, where he and Sonya ended up having to sue Goldfaden for their pay, and left to rejoin Rosenberg, who was playing in a tent theater in Nezhin. However, matters there proved even worse: Nezhin soon fell prey to a pogrom
Pogrom
A pogrom is a form of violent riot, a mob attack directed against a minority group, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes and properties, businesses, and religious centres...
. The troupe managed to avoid bodily harm, partly by convincing the rioters that they were a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
theater troupe and partly by making judicious use of the money the Adlers had won in court from Goldfaden.
In Łódź, Adler triumphantly played the title role in Karl Gutzkow
Karl Gutzkow
Karl Ferdinand Gutzkow was a German writer notable in the Young Germany movement of the mid-19th century.-Life:...
's Uriel Acosta, the first of a series of roles through which he developed a persona he would later call "the Grand Jew". After Łódź, they landed in Zhytomyr
Zhytomyr
Zhytomyr is a city in the North of the western half of Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Zhytomyr Oblast , as well as the administrative center of the surrounding Zhytomyr Raion...
, under an incompetent investor/director named Hartenstein. They thought they had found "a quiet corner" of the Russian Empire in which "to make a bit of a livelihood", but in fact Hartenstein was simply running through his money.
The financial consequences of the collapse of their company were mitigated be a series of three benefit performances, in coordination with the local Russian-language theater company. Sonya returned to Odessa to give birth to their daughter Rivka; Adler stayed on six weeks in Zhytomyr and had sort of a belated apprenticeship with two Russian character actors of national fame, Borisov and Philipovsky. However, he returned to Odessa thinking that he would most likely leave theater behind.
Late in life, when he looked back at his years acting in Adler and Goldfaden's companies, Adler saw it as merely the "childhood" of his career. He describes his thoughts toward the end of this period, "For three years I had wandered in the cave of the Witch
The Witch of Botosani
The Witch of Botoşani or simply The Witch or The Sorceress was an 1878, or possibly 1877, play by Abraham Goldfaden...
in the clown's rags of Shmendrick and what did I really know of my trade?... If someday I return to the Yiddish theater, let me at least not be so ignorant."
Returning to Odessa, where he discovered that no one would employ him in any job other than as an actor. In 1882, he put together a troupe of his own with Keni Liptzin, and brought Rosenberg in as a partner. This troupe toured to Rostov
Rostov
Rostov is a town in Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia, one of the oldest in the country and a tourist center of the Golden Ring. It is located on the shores of Lake Nero, northeast of Moscow. Population:...
, Taganrog
Taganrog
Taganrog is a seaport city in Rostov Oblast, Russia, located on the north shore of Taganrog Bay , several kilometers west of the mouth of the Don River. Population: -History of Taganrog:...
, around Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
, to Dünaburg (now Daugavpils
Daugavpils
Daugavpils is a city in southeastern Latvia, located on the banks of the Daugava River, from which the city gets its name. Daugavpils literally means "Daugava Castle". With a population of over 100,000, it is the second largest city in the country after the capital Riga, which is located some...
, Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
). Aiming to bring the troupe to Saint Petersburg, they brought back their sometime manager Chaikel Bain. They were in Riga
Riga
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...
in August 1883 when the news arrived that a total ban was about to be placed on Yiddish theater in Russia.
The troupe were left stranded in Riga. Chaikel Bain took ill and died. With some difficulty, passage to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
for the troupe was arranged on a cattle ship, in exchange for entertaining the crew. However, about this time Israel Grodner and his wife Annetta
Annetta Grodner
Annetta Grodner was a Ukrainian Jewish singer and actress, the first prima donna in Yiddish theater.The daughter of a bootmaker in Kremenchuk, Ukraine, she met and married Israel Grodner some time around 1870, when he passed through Kremenchuk in the course of his wanderings as a young Broder singer...
reappeared. Adler wanted to include them in the group headed for London. According to Adler, Rosenberg, who played many of the same roles as Israel Grodner, essentially told Adler "it's him or me". Adler attempted to convince him to change his mind, but insisted on including Grodner in the travel party: Adler considered him one of the best actors in Yiddish theater, a great asset to any performances they would give in London, while he felt Rosenberg lacked depth as an actor. He tried to get Rosenberg to come with them to London, but Rosenberg would not budge.
London
Of his time in London, Adler wrote, "... if Yiddish theater was destined to go through its infancy in Russia, and in America grew to manhood and success, then London was its school."Adler arrived in London with few contacts. In Whitechapel
Whitechapel
Whitechapel is a built-up inner city district in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, London, England. It is located east of Charing Cross and roughly bounded by the Bishopsgate thoroughfare on the west, Fashion Street on the north, Brady Street and Cavell Street on the east and The Highway on the...
, the center of Jewish London at that time, he encountered extremes of poverty that he describes as exceeding any he had ever seen in Russia or would ever see in New York. The quite distinguished Chief Rabbi of the British Empire
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
at that time, Dr. Nathan Marcus Adler
Nathan Marcus Adler
Rabbi Nathan Marcus Adler was the Orthodox Chief Rabbi of the British Empire from 1845 until his death, probably the most prominent 19th century rabbi in the English-speaking world.-Life:...
, was a relative. Adler's father had him written a letter of introduction in Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
, but nothing could have been farther from the rabbi's desires than to assist Yiddish-language theater. Nathan Marcus Adler viewed Yiddish as a "jargon" that existed at the expense of both liturgical Hebrew and the English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
necessary for upward mobility, and his Orthodox Judaism
Orthodox Judaism
Orthodox Judaism , is the approach to Judaism which adheres to the traditional interpretation and application of the laws and ethics of the Torah as legislated in the Talmudic texts by the Sanhedrin and subsequently developed and applied by the later authorities known as the Gaonim, Rishonim, and...
"could not endure so much as a blessing given on stage, for such a blessing would be given in vain..."; further, he was afraid that the portrayals of Jews on stage would give aid and comfort to their enemies.
At this time, Yiddish theater in London meant amateur clubs. The arrival of professional Yiddish actors from Russia worked great changes, bringing Yiddish theater in London to a new level and allowing a modest professionalism, though never at much more than a poverty wage. Adler's memoir acknowledges many people who helped him out in various ways. Eventually, with the aid in particular of Sonya's relative Herman Fiedler—a playwright, orchestra leader, and stage manager—the Adlers and the Grodners were able to take over the Prescott Street Club. There they presented generally serious theater to audiences of about 150. Fiedler adapted The Odessa Beggar from Felix Pyat
Félix Pyat
Félix Pyat was a French Socialist journalist and politician.-Biography:He was born in Vierzon , the son of a Legitimist lawyer. Called to the bar in Paris in 1831, he threw his whole energies into journalism...
's The Ragpicker of Paris, a tragicomic play written on the eve of the Revolutions of 1848
Revolutions of 1848
The European Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Spring of Nations, Springtime of the Peoples or the Year of Revolution, were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe in 1848. It was the first Europe-wide collapse of traditional authority, but within a year reactionary...
. Adler starred in it, in a role he would continue to play throughout his career.
Two months later, he played Uriel Acosta at the Holborn
Holborn
Holborn is an area of Central London. Holborn is also the name of the area's principal east-west street, running as High Holborn from St Giles's High Street to Gray's Inn Road and then on to Holborn Viaduct...
Theatre to an audience of 500, including the "Jewish aristocrats of the West End
West End of London
The West End of London is an area of central London, containing many of the city's major tourist attractions, shops, businesses, government buildings, and entertainment . Use of the term began in the early 19th century to describe fashionable areas to the west of Charing Cross...
". The piety of the London Jews was such that they had to use an (unplayable) cardboard ram's horn
Shofar
A shofar is a horn, traditionally that of a ram, used for Jewish religious purposes. Shofar-blowing is incorporated in synagogue services on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.Shofar come in a variety of sizes.- Bible and rabbinic literature :...
so as to avoid blasphemy
Blasphemy
Blasphemy is irreverence towards religious or holy persons or things. Some countries have laws to punish blasphemy, while others have laws to give recourse to those who are offended by blasphemy...
. Chief Rabbi Adler and his son and eventual successor Hermann Adler
Hermann Adler
Rabbi Hermann Adler CVO was the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire from 1891 to 1911. The son of Nathan Marcus Adler, the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica writes that he "raised the position [of Chief Rabbi] to one of much dignity and importance."Born in Hanover, like his father, he had both a...
were present, and both, especially the younger rabbi, were favorably impressed. There were even mentions in the English-language press.
Playing to small audiences, on tiny stages, in communal troupes where all but the stars had day jobs, and playing only Saturday and Sunday (the pious London Jews would never have tolerated Friday performances), Adler focused on serious theater like never before. However, he and Grodner soon fell out: they wrangled over ideology and over parts, and their verbal duels boiled over into improvised stage dialogue. The Grodners ultimately left to do theater in a series of other locations, notably Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, but eventually came back to London, where Israel Grodner died in 1887.
By November 1885, Adler had a theatrical club of his own, the Princes Street Club, No. 3 Princes Street (now Princelet Street, E1), purpose-built, financed by a butcher named David Smith. It seated 300; playing every night except Friday, he was earning about £3 s.10 a week, but with a fame well out of proportion to the meagre money. Many of the most prominent figures in Yiddish theater, including Sigmund Mogulesko
Sigmund Mogulesko
Sigmund Mogulesko — Yiddish: זעליק מאָגולעסקאָ Zelik Mogulesko, first name also sometimes given as Zigmund, Siegmund, Zelig, or Selig, last name sometimes spelled Mogulescu — was a singer, actor, and composer in the Yiddish theater, originally from Kalarash, Bessarabia Sigmund...
, David Kessler
David Kessler (actor)
David Kessler was a prominent actor in the first great era of Yiddish theater. As a star Yiddish dramatic performer in New York City, he was the first leading man in Yiddish theater to dispense with incidental music....
, Abba and Clara Shoengold, and Sara Heine (the future Sara Adler), gave guest performances when they passed through London.
One of Adler's most famous roles from this period was as the villain Franz Moore in Herman Fiedler's adaptation of Schiller's The Robbers, which introduced Schiller into Yiddish theater. On at least one occasion in 1886, he played both Franz Moore and the play's hero, Franz's brother Karl Moore: in the play they never meet.
1886 was to prove a terrible year for Adler. His daughter Rivka died of croup
Croup
Croup is a respiratory condition that is usually triggered by an acute viral infection of the upper airway. The infection leads to swelling inside the throat, which interferes with normal breathing and produces the classical symptoms of a "barking" cough, stridor, and hoarseness...
; Sonya died of an infection contracted while giving birth to their son Abram; meanwhile, he had been carrying on an affair with a young woman, Jenny ("Jennya") Kaiser, who was also pregnant, with his son Charles
Charles Adler (stage actor)
Charles Adler was an American stage and motion picture actor of the 1920s to 1940s. He was the son of actors Jacob Pavlovitch Adler and Jenny Kaiser and stepson of Sara Adler, and the half-brother of Luther Adler, Stella Adler, and Jay Adler, all also actors.He was a member of the Yacht Club Boys,...
. Depressed after Sonya's death, he passed up an offer to relocate to the United States, which was taken up instead by Mogulesko and Finkel. In winter 1887, an audience at the Princes Street Club panicked when they thought a simulated stage fire was real; 17 people died in the stampede. While the authorities determined that this was not Adler's fault, and the club was allowed to reopen, the crowds did not return; "the theater," he writes, "was so cold, dark, and empty you could hunt wolves in the gallery."
Adler's affair with Jennya continued; he also took up with a young chorus girl from an Orthodox Jewish family, Dinah Shtettin
Dinah Shtettin
Dinah Shtettin was a prominent English-born Yiddish theater actress. She was the second wife of Jacob Adler, with whom she had a daughter, Celia; they divorced, and she married Siegmund Feinman...
. His memoir is extremely unclear on the sequence of this, and hints at other affairs at this time. The memoir does make clear that the "hot-blooded" Jennya had little interest in a marriage, while Dinah's father insisted on a marriage, even though he despised Alder and made it clear that he doubted the marriage would last.
Coming to America
With the aid of a small sum of money from his distant relative the Chief Rabbi, Adler got together the money to travel by steerage to New York, with his infant son Abrom, Alexander Oberlander and his family, Keni and Volodya Liptzin, and Herman Fiedler, among others. Adler did not doubt that the rabbi was glad to see Yiddish actors leaving London. In New York, they promptly discovered that neither Mogulesko and Finkel at the Romanian Opera House nor Maurice Heine at the Oriental Theater had any use for them. They headed on to ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, where, after a brief initial success, the troupe fell apart due to a combination of labor disputes and cutthroat competition. The Oberlanders managed to start a restaurant; he and Keni Liptzin headed to New York that autumn, where she managed to sign on at the Romanian Opera House; failing to find a similar situation for himself, he returned to London, drawn back to the charms of both Dinah and Jennya.
He did not remain long in London. After some major successes in Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, which was under Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n rule, he returned to London in the spring of 1889, and then again to New York, this time to play for Heine at Poole's Theater. After an initial failure in The Odessa Beggar (he writes that the New York audience of the time was not ready for "tragicomedy"), he was a success in the melodrama Moishele Soldat, and "a more worthy success" in Uriel Acosta. This gave him the basis to bring Dinah to America. Their marriage didn't last, though the divorce was amicable: she remarried, to Siegmund Feinman. Adler fell out with Heine, initially over business; at this time Heine's marriage was also falling apart, and Sara Heine would eventually become Sara Adler.
Adler went on the road with Boris Thomashefsky
Boris Thomashefsky
Boris Thomashefsky was a Ukrainian-born Jewish singer and actor who became one of the biggest stars in Yiddish theatre; born in Tarashcha , a shtetl near Kiev, Ukraine, he emigrated to the U.S. at the age of 12 in 1881...
, who at the time was pioneering the touring circuit for Yiddish theater in America. They played in Philadelphia and Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, where word arrived of an opportunity to take over Poole's, Heine having moved on to the Thalia. Adler returned to New York, were he managed also to win Mogulesko and Kessler away from Heine.
New York
Renaming Poole's as the Union Theater, Adler attempted to produce the most serious Yiddish-language theater New York had yet seen, with plays such as Scribe's La Juive, Zolotkev's Samson the Great, and Sinckievich's Quo Vadis. However, after Thomashefsky became an enormous popular success in Moses Halevy Horowitz'sMoses Horowitz
Moses Ha-Levi Horowitz , also known as Moishe Hurvitz, Moishe Isaac Halevy-Hurvitz, etc., was a playwright and actor in the early years of Yiddish theater...
operetta David ben Jesse at Moishe Finkel's National Theater, the Union Theater temporarily to abandon its highbrow programming and competed head on, with operettas Judith and Holofernes, Titus Andronicus, or the Second Destruction of the Temple, and Hymie in America.
Adler was not content to continue long in this mode, and sought a playwright who could create pieces that would appeal to the Jewish public, while still providing a type of theater he could be proud to perform. He recruited Jacob Gordin, already a well-respected novelist and intellectual, recently arrived in New York and eking out a living as a journalist at the Arbeiter Zeiting, precursor to The Forward. Gordin's first two plays, Siberia and Two Worlds were commercial failures—so much so that Mogulesko and Kessler quit the company—but The Yiddish King Lear
The Yiddish King Lear
The Yiddish King Lear was an 1892 play by Jacob Gordin, and is generally seen as ushering in the first great era of Yiddish Theater, in which serious drama gained prominence over operetta.Gordin, a respected intellectual and...
, starring Adler and his new wife Sara was such a success that the play eventually transferred to Finkel's larger National Theater. This play (based only very loosely on Shakespeare) played well with the popular audience, but also with Jewish intellectuals who until this time had largely ignored Yiddish Theater, ending for a time the commercial dominance of operettas such as those of Horowitz and Joseph Lateiner
Joseph Lateiner
Joseph Lateiner was a playwright in the early years of Yiddish theater, first in Bucharest, Romania and later in New York City, where he was a co-founder in 1903 with Sophia Karp of the Grand Theater, New York's first purpose-built Yiddish language theater building.Lateiner got his start writing...
. The next year, Gordin's The Wild Man solidified this change in the direction of Yiddish theater, which was entering what is retrospectively seen as its first period of greatness.
Over the next decades, Adler would play in (or, in some cases, merely produce) numerous plays by Gordin, but also classics by Shakespeare, Schiller, Lessing
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was a German writer, philosopher, dramatist, publicist, and art critic, and one of the most outstanding representatives of the Enlightenment era. His plays and theoretical writings substantially influenced the development of German literature...
; Eugène Scribe
Eugène Scribe
Augustin Eugène Scribe , was a French dramatist and librettist. He is best known for the perfection of the so-called "well-made play" . This dramatic formula was a mainstay of popular theater for over 100 years.-Biography:...
's La Juive; dramatizations of George du Maurier
George du Maurier
George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier was a French-born British cartoonist and author, known for his cartoons in Punch and also for his novel Trilby. He was the father of actor Gerald du Maurier and grandfather of the writers Angela du Maurier and Dame Daphne du Maurier...
's Trilby
Trilby (novel)
Trilby is a novel by George du Maurier and one of the most popular novels of its time, perhaps the second best selling novel of the Fin de siècle after Bram Stoker's Dracula. Published serially in Harper's Monthly in 1894, it was published in book form in 1895 and sold 200,000 copies in the United...
and Alexandre Dumas, fils
Alexandre Dumas, fils
Alexandre Dumas, fils was a French author and dramatist. He was the son of Alexandre Dumas, père, also a writer and playwright.-Biography:...
' Camille
The Lady of the Camellias
The Lady of the Camellias is a novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils, first published in 1848, and subsequently adapted for the stage. The Lady of the Camellias premiered at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris, France on February 2, 1852. The play was an instant success, and Giuseppe Verdi immediately set...
; and the works of modern playwrights such as Gorky
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov , primarily known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.-Early years:...
, Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
, Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
, Strindberg
August Strindberg
Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography,...
, Gerhart Hauptmann
Gerhart Hauptmann
Gerhart Hauptmann was a German dramatist and novelist who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1912.-Life and work:...
, Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
, Victorien Sardou
Victorien Sardou
Victorien Sardou was a French dramatist. He is best remembered today for his development, along with Eugène Scribe, of the well-made play...
, and Leonid Andreyev
Leonid Andreyev
Leonid Nikolaievich Andreyev was a Russian playwright, novelist and short-story writer. He is one of the most talented and prolific representatives of the Silver Age period in Russian history...
. Frequently the works of the great contemporary playwrights—even Shaw, who was writing in English—would be staged in New York in Yiddish years, even decades, before they were ever staged there in English.
Having already famously played Shylock
Shylock
Shylock is a fictional character in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.-In the play:In The Merchant of Venice, Shylock is a Jewish moneylender who lends money to his Christian rival, Antonio, setting the security at a pound of Antonio's flesh...
in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice is a tragic comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is perhaps most remembered for its dramatic...
on the Yiddish stage at the People's Theater, he played the role again in a 1903 Broadway production, directed by Arthur Hopkins
Arthur Hopkins
Arthur Hopkins was a Broadway theater director and producer in the early twentieth century.Hopkins was born in Cleveland. He was the youngest of ten children born to a Welsh couple, David and Mary Jane Hopkins...
. In this production, Adler spoke his lines in Yiddish
Yiddish language
Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages...
while the rest of the cast spoke in English. The New York Times review of Adler's performance was not favorable: in particular his naturalistic acting style was not what audiences of the period expected in a production of Shakespeare. Some other reviews (such as that in Theater magazine) were friendlier; in any event the same production was revived two years later.
Lulla Rosenfeld writes that Henry Irving
Henry Irving
Sir Henry Irving , born John Henry Brodribb, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility for season after season at the Lyceum Theatre, establishing himself and his company as...
, the great Shylock before that time, played Shylock as "morally superior to the Christians around him... driven to cruelty only by their more cruel persecutions." In contrast, "Adler scorned justification. Total vindication was his aim." In Adler's own words, "Shylock from the first was governed by pride rather than revenge. He wishes to humble and terrify Antonio
Antonio (Merchant of Venice)
Antonio is the title character in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. He is a middle-aged bachelor and merchant by trade who has his financial interests tied up in overseas shipments when the play begins. He is kind, generous, honest and confident, and is loved and revered by all the Christians...
for the insult and humiliation he has suffered at his hands. This is why he goes so far as to bring his knife and scales into the court. For Shylock, however, the desired climax was to refuse the pound of flesh with a gesture of divine compassion. When the verdict goes against him, he is crushed because he has been robbed of this opportunity, not becauser he lusts for Antonio's death. This was my interpretation. This is the Shylock I have tried to show." The road from this to method acting
Method acting
Method acting is a phrase that loosely refers to a family of techniques used by actors to create in themselves the thoughts and emotions of their characters, so as to develop lifelike performances...
is clear.
After his two Broadway triumphs, Adler returned to Yiddish theater.
In the wake of the Kishinev pogrom
Kishinev pogrom
The Kishinev pogrom was an anti-Jewish riot that took place in Chişinău, then the capital of the Bessarabia province of the Russian Empire on April 6-7, 1903.-First pogrom:...
, Adler went back briefly to Eastern Europe in summer 1903, where he tried to convince various family members to come to America. Although he was greeted as a hero, he was only partially successful in convincing people to leave; his mother, in particular, was determined to finish out her life where she was. (His father had died some years earlier.) He persuaded his sister Sarah Adler to follow him to America as her husband had died of heart disease in Verdun in 1897 and she was raising seven children on her own. She emigrated in 1905.
Returning to New York, he and Thomashefsky jointly leased The People's Theater, intending to use it on different nights of the week. Adler, exhausted from his Russian trip, was often leaving his nights unused, and Thomashefsky offered to buy him out for $10,000 on the condition that he would not return to performing in New York. Adler was so insulted that the two did not speak for months, even though at the time they were living across a courtyard from one another, and could see into each other's St. Mark's Place apartments. Adler decided to perform Tolstoy
Tolstoy
Tolstoy, or Tolstoi is a prominent family of Russian nobility, descending from Andrey Kharitonovich Tolstoy who served under Vasily II of Moscow...
's The Power of Darkness
The Power of Darkness
The Power of Darkness is a five-act drama by Leo Tolstoy. Written in 1886, the play was banned in Russia until 1902.The central character is a peasant, Nikita, who seduces and abandons a young girl Marinka; then the lovely Anisija murders her own husband to marry Nikita. He impregnates his new...
, and decided that he would do his own translation from Russian to Yiddish. The play was a great success, the first successful production of a Tolstoy play in the U.S., and Thomashefsky was so obviously happy for Adler that their friendship was renewed. Adler followed with equally successful productions of Gordin's dramatization of Tolstoy's Resurrection
Resurrection (novel)
Resurrection , first published in 1899, was the last novel written by Leo Tolstoy. The book is the last of his major long fiction works published in his lifetime . Tolstoy intended the novel as an exposition of injustice of man-made laws and the hypocrisy of institutionalized church...
and the Gordin original The Homeless.
In 1904 Adler had the Grand Theater built at the corner of Bowery and Canal Street
Canal Street (Manhattan)
Canal Street is a major street in New York City, crossing lower Manhattan to join New Jersey in the west to Brooklyn in the east . It forms the main spine of Chinatown, and separates it from Little Italy...
, the first purpose-built Yiddish theater in New York. His wife Sara had branched out to do her own plays at the Novelty Theater in Brooklyn, and the family had taken up residence in a four-story brownstone, with an elevator, in the East Seventies. (They would later move one more time, to Riverside Drive
Riverside Drive (Manhattan)
Riverside Drive is a scenic north-south thoroughfare in the Manhattan borough of New York City. The boulevard runs on the west side of Manhattan, generally parallel to the Hudson River from 72nd Street to near the George Washington Bridge at 181st Street...
.) Around this time Lincoln Steffens
Lincoln Steffens
-Biography:Steffens was born April 6, 1866, in San Francisco. He grew up in a wealthy family and attended a military academy. He studied in France and Germany after graduating from the University of California....
wrote a piece saying that Yiddish theater in New York had eclipsed English-language theater in quality.
This golden age was not to last. The years 1905–1908 saw half a million new Jewish immigrants to New York, and once again the largest audience for Yiddish theater was for lighter fare. Adler hung on, but the Thomashefskys were making a fortune at the Thalia; plays with titles like Minke the Servant Girl were far outdrawing fare like Gordin's Dementia Americana (1909). It would be 1911 before Adler scored another major success, this time with Tolstoy's The Living Corpse
The Living Corpse
The Living Corpse is a Russian play by Leo Tolstoy. Although written around 1900, it was only published shortly after his death—Tolstoy had never considered the work finished...
(also known as Redemption), translated into Yiddish by Leon Kobrin
Leon Kobrin
Leon Kobrin was a playwright in Yiddish theater, writer of short stories and novels, and a translator. As a playwright he is generally seen as a disciple of Jacob Gordin, but his mature work was more character-driven, more open and realistic in its presentation of human sexual desire, and less...
.
In 1919-1920, Adler, despite his own socialist politics, found himself in a labor dispute with the Hebrew Actors' Union
Hebrew Actors' Union
The Hebrew Actors' Union , formed in 1899 as a craft union for actors in Yiddish theater in the United States , was the first actors' union in the United States. Until it was decertified by the umbrella organization of theatrical unions in October 2005, it remained as one of the seven branches of...
; he played that season in London rather than New York. A stroke
Stroke
A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...
in 1920 while vacationing in upstate New York nearly ended his acting career, although he continued to appear occasionally, usually as part of a benefit performance for himself, often playing Act I of The Yiddish King Lear: the title character remains seated throughout the entire act. In 1924, he was well enough to perform in the title role of a revival of Gordin's The Stranger, inspired by Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular poets in the English language....
's "Enoch Arden
Enoch Arden
"Enoch Arden" is a narrative poem published in 1864 by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, during his tenure as England's Poet Laureate. The story on which it was based was provided to Tennyson by Thomas Woolner....
": the character is "a sick and broken man", so the Adler was able to integrate his own physical weakness into the portrayal. However, March 31, 1926, he collapsed suddenly, dying almost instantly.
Family
Adler was married three times, first to Sophia (Sonya) OberlanderSonya Adler
Sonya Adler , born Sonya Oberlander, early stage name Sonya Michelson, was one of the first women to perform in Yiddish theater in Imperial Russia...
, then to Dinah Shtettin
Dinah Shtettin
Dinah Shtettin was a prominent English-born Yiddish theater actress. She was the second wife of Jacob Adler, with whom she had a daughter, Celia; they divorced, and she married Siegmund Feinman...
(later Dinah Feinman) and finally to Sara Adler
Sara Adler
Sara Adler was a Russian Jewish actress in Yiddish theater who made her career mainly in the United States. She was the wife of Jacob Adler and the mother of prominent actors Luther and Stella Adler, lesser-known actors Jay, Julia Adler, Frances, and Florence...
, who survived him by over 25 years.
His and Sonya's daughter Rivkah (Rebecca) died at the age of 3. Sonya died from an infection contracted while giving birth to their son Abram in 1886. Abram's son Allen Adler
Allen Adler
Allen Adler was an American writer, also involved in theater in various ways. With Irving Block he wrote the story for the screenplay for Forbidden Planet, based on Shakespeare's The Tempest, but was a victim of the Second Red Scare and was blacklisted from the film industry.-Biography:Adler was...
was, among other things, the screenwriter of Forbidden Planet
Forbidden Planet
Forbidden Planet is a 1956 science fiction film directed by Fred M. Wilcox, with a screenplay by Cyril Hume. It stars Leslie Nielsen, Walter Pidgeon, and Anne Francis. The characters and its setting have been compared to those in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, and its plot contains certain...
.
While still married to Sonya, he began an affair with Jenny "Jennya" Kaiser, with whom he had a son, stage actor Charles Adler
Charles Adler (stage actor)
Charles Adler was an American stage and motion picture actor of the 1920s to 1940s. He was the son of actors Jacob Pavlovitch Adler and Jenny Kaiser and stepson of Sara Adler, and the half-brother of Luther Adler, Stella Adler, and Jay Adler, all also actors.He was a member of the Yacht Club Boys,...
, born 1886.
He had a daughter, Celia Adler
Celia Adler
Celia Feinman Adler was an American Jewish actress, known as the "First Lady of the Yiddish Theatre"....
with Dinah.
His six children by his third wife, actress Sara Adler, included the well-known actors Luther
Luther Adler
Luther Adler was an American actor best known for his work in theatre, but who also worked in film and television. He also directed plays on Broadway.-Life and career:...
and Stella Adler
Stella Adler
Stella Adler was an American actress and an acclaimed acting teacher, who founded the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York City and the The Stella Adler Academy of Acting in Los Angeles with long-time protege Joanne Linville, who continues to teach and furthers Adler's legacy...
and the lesser-known Jay
Jay Adler
Jay Adler was an American actor in theater, television, and film.Born in New York City, New York, he was the eldest child of Yiddish theater stars Jacob and Sara Adler, and the brother of the more famous Luther and Stella.Jay Adler died at age 81 in Woodland Hills, California and was buried in the...
, Frances, Julia, and Florence.
His sister Sarah/Soore Adler and seven children emigrated to New York in 1905. His niece, Francine Larrimore
Francine Larrimore
Francine Larrimore Francine Larrimore Francine Larrimore (August 22, 1898 – March 7, 1975 was a stage and screen actress. Born in France she came to the United States when a child. Her parents were J. Louis La Remee and Sarah Adler, a sister of the Yiddish stage star Jacob Adler and not to be...
, Sarah's daughter, became a Broadway actress, who also appeared in films.
Memoir
Adler's memoirs were published in the New York socialist Yiddish-language newspaper Die Varheit in 1916–1919, and briefly resumed in 1925 in an unsuccessful revival of that paper; his granddaughter Lulla Rosenfeld's English translation was published only in 1999. The 1916-1919 portion of the memoir gives a detailed picture of his Russian years. The 1925 portion gives a comparably detailed picture of his time in London, although with some evasions around the relative timing of his relationships with his wife Sonya and with Jennya Kaiser and Dinah Shtettin. It contains only a relatively fragmentary description of his New York career. In the English-language book of these memoirs, Rosenfeld attempts to fill the gaps with her own commentary.Adler writes vividly and with humor. He describes the director Hartenstein as "a young man from Galicia with long hair and short brains, half educated in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, and half an actor", and refers to the poor of Whitechapel
Whitechapel
Whitechapel is a built-up inner city district in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, London, England. It is located east of Charing Cross and roughly bounded by the Bishopsgate thoroughfare on the west, Fashion Street on the north, Brady Street and Cavell Street on the east and The Highway on the...
as looking as if they "had come out of their mothers already gray and old." Of his early London years, he writes, "We played for a tiny audience, on a stage the size of a cadaver, but we played well, with a drunkenness of happiness."
In a small essay, "Shmendrick, My Mephistopheles", one of the last passages he wrote, Adler describes the last time he saw Shmendrick played, at a memorial for Goldfaden in 1912. Lamenting the choice of play for the memorial—"Goldfaden has written better things"—he nonetheless acknowledges, "that same bitter Shmendrick was our livelihood... I gritted my teeth. I called on the ghosts of Aristophanes
Aristophanes
Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...
, of Shakespeare, of Lope de Vega
Lope de Vega
Félix Arturo Lope de Vega y Carpio was a Spanish playwright and poet. He was one of the key figures in the Spanish Golden Century Baroque literature...
. I wept and swallowed my own tears… And I cursed the fate that bound me to him… Yet even as I cursed and condemned, the tears rose. For my whole life, my whole past, was before me on that stage… Poor weak first step of our Yiddish theater… I thank you for the happiness you gave us… I thank you Shmendrick—my beloved—my own."
External links
- Jacob Adler on the Internet Broadway DatabaseInternet Broadway DatabaseThe Internet Broadway Database is an online database of Broadway theatre productions and their personnel. It is operated by the Research Department of The Broadway League, a trade association for the North American commercial theatre community....
Accessed September 29, 2006. Accessed September 29, 2006. - —, "Yiddish Shylock Viewed From Ghetto Standpoint", New York Times, May 31, 1903, p. 10.
- Adler, Jacob, A Life on the Stage: A Memoir, translated and with commentary by Lulla Rosenfeld, Knopf, New York, 1999, ISBN 0-679-41351-0.
- Berkowitz, Joel. Shakespeare on the American Yiddish Stage (Iowa City, 2002).
- Nahshon, Gad "The Great Eagle: great Yiddish actor-legend, Jacob Adler", October 2001, The Jewish Post of New York. Accessed online at Jewish-theatre.com, October 1, 2006.
- Prager, Leonard, "Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice in Yiddish" in Mendele: Yiddish literature and language, Vol. 07.098, November 6, 1997. Accessed online September 29, 2006.
- Rosenfeld, Lulla, "The Yiddish", New York Times, June 12, 1977, p. 205, 32 et. seq.