Stephen A. Schwarzman Building > Collections & Reading Rooms > Dorot Jewish Division > Yiddish
Theater
Boris Thomashefsky (1868?-1939)
observed by Hutchins Hapgood
in his Spirit of the Ghetto
New York, 1902
Although the best actors of the three Yiddish theaters in the ghetto are
realists by instinct and training, the thoroughly frivolous element in the
plays has its prominent interpreters. Joseph Latteiner is the most popular
playwright in the Bowery, and Boris Thomashevsky perhaps the most popular
actor. Latteiner has written over a hundred plays, no one of which has form
or ideas. He calls them Volksstücke (plays of the people),
and naively admits that he writes directly to the demand. They are mainly
mixed melodrama, broad burlesque, and comic opera. His heroes are all intended
for Boris Thomashevsky, a young man, fat, with curling black hair, languorous
eyes, and a rather effeminate voice, who is thought very beautiful by the
girls of the ghetto. Thomashevsky has a face with no mimic capacity, and
a temperament absolutely impervious to mood or feeling. But he picturesquely
stands in the middle of the stage and declaims phlegmatically the role of
the hero, and satisfies the “Romantic” demand of the audience.
Nothing could show more clearly how much more genuine the feeling of the
ghetto is for fidelity to life than for romantic fancy. How small a part
of the grace and charm of life the Yiddish audiences enjoy may be judged
by the fact that the romantic appeal of a Thomashevsky is eminently satisfying
to them. Girls and men from the sweatshops, a large part of such an audience,
are moved by a very crude attempt at beauty. On the other hand they are so
familiar with sordid fact, that the theatrical representation of it must
be relatively excellent. Therefore the art of the ghetto, theatrical and
other, is deeply and painfully realistic....
In speaking of the popular playwright, and the purely commercial character
and consequent formlessness of the plays before the appearance of Adler,
important mention should be made of Boris Thomashevsky, already briefly
referred to as the idol of the Jewish matinee girls. He is the most popular
actor
on the Yiddish stage, and for him Latteiner particularly writes. Thomashevsky
is a large fat man, with expressionless features and curly black hair,
which he arranges in leonine forms. He generally appears as the hero, and
is a
successful though a rather listless barnstormer. The more intelligent
of his audience are inclined to smile at Mr. Thomashevsky’s talent
in romantic parts, of the reality of which, however, he, with a large section
of the community, is very firmly convinced. In fairness, however, it should
be said that when Mr. Thomashevsky occasionally leaves the role of hero
for
an unsentimental character, particularly one which expresses supercilious
superiority, he is excellent. As time goes on he will probably take less
and less the romantic lead and grow more and more satisfactory. He is
the youngest of the prominent actors of the Bowery. Before the coming of
Heine’s
company in 1884, he was a pretty little boy in the ghetto, who used to
play female roles in amateur theatricals. But when the professionals came,
he
was eclipsed and went out of sight for some time. He grew to be a handsome
man, however; his voice changed, and, with the help of a very different
man, Jacob Adler, Thomashevsky found an important place on the Yiddish stage.
He and Adler are now the leading actors of the People’s Theater, but
they never appear together, Thomashevsky being the main interpreter of
the plays which appeal distinctively to the rabble, and Adler of those which
form the really original Yiddish drama of a serious nature.
