Boris Thomashefsky
Boris Thomashefsky | |
---|---|
באָריס טאָמאשעבסקי | |
publisher, educator | |
Spouse | Bessie Thomashefsky 1891–1939 (separated 1911) |
Children | 4 |
Boris Thomashefsky (
Early life
He was born Boruch-Aharon Thomashefsky in
In 1881, he emigrated with his family to the United States,
Although Thomashefsky left
Career
Thomashefsky managed to convince a local tavern owner to invest in bringing over some performers. The first performance was Abraham Goldfaden's Yiddish operetta די מכשפה (The Witch). The performance was a mild disaster: pious and prosperous "uptown" German Jews opposed to the Yiddish theater did a great deal to sabotage it. His performing career was launched in part due to an instance of this sabotage—bribing the soubrette to fake a sore throat: Thomashefsky went on in her place.[4]
Shortly afterward, the teenage Thomashefsky was the pioneer of taking Yiddish theater "on the road" in the United States, performing Goldfaden's plays in cities such as
In 1887, playing in Baltimore, he met 14-year-old Bessie Baumfeld-Kaufman, when she came backstage to meet the beautiful young "actress" she had seen on stage, only to discover that "she" was Boris. Bessie soon ran away from home to join the company, and eventually took over the ingenue roles, as Boris moved on to romantic male leads. They married in 1891.[4]
In 1891, with Mogulesko, Kessler, and Adler all engaged in starting the Union Theater, Moishe Finkel brought the still relatively unknown Thomashefsky back to New York to star at his National Theater, where Thomashefsky became enough of a success in Moses Halevy Horowitz's operetta David ben Jesse as to force the Union Theater temporarily to abandon its highbrow programming and compete head on.[6]
After Adler recruited
Other notable Thomashefsky productions included Yiddish versions of
According to the Jewish Virtual Library, in an adaptation of Hamlet called Der Yeshiva Bokher (The Yeshiva Student), "a wicked uncle smears [a]
By 1910, Thomashefsky owned a 12-room home on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn, plus a bungalow by the sea, and 20 acres (81,000 m2) in Hunter, New York, which included an open-air theater, Thomashefsky's Paradise Gardens. Each of his three sons had an Arabian horse.[9]
However, in 1915, Thomashefsky filed for bankruptcy, listing assets of $21,900 and debts of $76,297.65.[10]
In 1935, late in his career, Thomashefsky was an actor/singer in Henry Lynn's Yiddish film Bar Mitzvah,[11][12][13] in which he played a melodramatic role with gusto and co-produced the film. He sang, Erlekh Zayn (Be Virtuous), a song from a 1924 Yiddish play, Bar Mitzvah.
Personal life
With his wife, actress
Death and legacy
Thomashefsky is buried with his wife, who, although separated from him by 1911, never divorced him, in the Yiddish theater section of the Mount Hebron Cemetery, Flushing, Queens, New York.
Both Thomashefskys did much to shape the world of modern theatre from the follies to Broadway and gave a start to many actors, composers and producers who went on to start and own theaters and movie studios. Even the Gershwin brothers had their start with the Thomashefkys. They were also prominent in addressing controversial social issues of the day and in teaching the Greenhorns how to be Americans. They not only founded theaters and production companies, but had publishing houses and many other successful business adventures. Boris Thomashefsky even founded and funded a Jewish Army which he sent to Israel and was named after him. The unit later became a unit in the British Army.[18]
In the third
In 2011, Shuler Hensley portrayed Boris Thomashefsky in The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater, a concert stage show celebrating the Thomashefskys and the music of American Yiddish theatre hosted by their grandson the conductor Michael Tilson Thomas. The show aired on the PBS series Great Performances in 2012.[19]
Works
- 'The Broken Violin (1918), music by Joseph Rumshinsky[20]
References
- ^ "Boris Thomashefsky (1868 - 1939)". Jewish Virtual Library.
- ^ a b c Zylbercweig, Zalmen (1934). "Tomashefsky, Boris" (in Yiddish). Leksikon fun yidishn teater [Lexicon of the Yiddish theatre]. Vol. 2. Warsaw: Farlag Elisheva. Columns 804-840; here: col. 804. (Note: The birth year 1886 at the beginning of the entry is clearly a typographical error, apparently for 1868, since the author estimates that T. was in Berdichev as an 11-year-old in 1879.)
- ^ a b c "The Timeline". The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater. wwwthomashefsky.org. Retrieved 2016-12-26. The website is based on the musical show by the same title, which was written, hosted, and conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas (grandson of the Thomashefskys), and premiered in New York in April 2005.
- ^ a b c d "Boris Thomashefsky". Jewish Virtual Librtary. www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Retrieved 2016-12-26.
- ^ Adler, 1999, pp. 312-314.
- ^ Adler, 1999, p. 318 (commentary)
- ^ Adler, 1999, pp. 329-330.
- ^ Adler, 1999, passim, 359 (commentary).
- ^ [Adler, 1999, 359 (commentary).
- ^ "East Side Actor Bankrupt" (PDF). The New York Times. February 28, 1915.
- ^ Hoberman, J. (1991). Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds. Museum of Modern Art, published by Shocken Books. p. 191n.
- ^ Bar Mitzvah at the TCM Movie Database
- IMDb
- ^ Berkowitz, Joel (2002). Shakespeare on the American Yiddish Stage. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. p. 70
- ^ Schechter, Joel (December 8, 2009). "Yiddish King Lear on the Relief Roll", The Forward. Retrieved 2021-01-30.
- ^ "Official Website". thomashefsky.org. Retrieved December 13, 2022.
- ^ "Stage Killing". Forward.com. Archived from the original on July 13, 2012.
- ^ a b The Thomashefskys: Music, Memories and Life in the Theater.
- ^ Jones, Kenneth (March 29, 2012). "Thomashefskys, Musical Portrait of Yiddish Stage, Airs on PBS March 29". Playbill. Archived from the original on April 10, 2012.
- ISBN 9780231541077– via Google Books.
Sources
- Chira, Susan, "100 Years of Yiddish Theater Celebrated", The New York Times, October 15, 1982, C28.
- ISBN 0-679-41351-0.
- Liptzin, Sol, A History of Yiddish Literature, Jonathan David Publishers, Middle Village, NY, 1972, ISBN 0-8246-0124-6.
- Boris Thomashefsky from the Jewish Virtual Library (JVL), retrieved February 28, 2005.
- Timeline from The Thomashefsky Project