Museum Page Rabbi Sussman

001 1. YIDDISH SHEET MUSIC Columbus – From You I Have Nothing! Words: D. Meerovitz Music: Louis Friedsell Sung by: Petter Graff
002 2. PLAYBILL A Majority of One Molly Picon and Robert Morley Phoenix Theater, London, England Premier performance: Wednesday March 9th, 1960 From the PLAYBILL: …….. After the war (WWII) Molly and herhusband, Jacob Kalish, were the first to come to Europe to entertain the liberated concentration camps, an experience they can never forget. In 1950, after the Korean War had broken out, Molly Picon was flown in General Ridgeway’s plane to Seoul where she entertained the US troops, giving as many as many as seven shows a day, often under shellfire………………...
003 3. ORIGINAL BROADWAY CAST RECORDING MILK AND HONEY STARRING: ROBERT WEEDE, MIMI BENZELL, MOLLY PICON Music and Lyrics: Jerry Herman RCA Victor, 1961
004 4. RECORDING AT HOME WITH THE BARRY SISTERS Dynamic Stereo A Roulette Recording
005 5. PLAYBILL How to be a Jewish Mother Molly Picon and Godfrey Cambridge Premier Performance: December 28, 1967 Hudson Theater, New York Based on the book by Dan Greenburg
006 6. PHOTOGRAPH Otto Preminger Directing the movie, EXODUS, in Israel This candid photograph was taken by Alex Pfau Read the commentary
007 YIDDISH SHEET MUSIC Read the commentary on Thomashefsky et al.
008 Molly Picon as a Bride in an Unnamed Musical Review. Hand-colored photograph, circa, 1920s Loaned by Rita Rosen Poley

Commentary for Image #6 - Otto Preminger Produced and directed by Otto Preminger, Exodus is a 212-minute screen adaptation of the best-selling novel by Leon Uris. The film is concerned with the emergence of Israel as an independent nation in 1947. Its first half focuses on the efforts of 611 holocaust survivors to defy the blockade of the occupying British government and sail to Palestine on the sea vessel Exodus. Paul Newman, a leader of the Hagannah (the Jewish underground), is willing to sacrifice his own life and the lives of the refugees rather than be turned back to warravaged Europe, but the British finally relent and allow the Exodus safe passage. Once this victory is assured, 30,000 more Jews, previously interned by the British, flood into the Holy Land. Based on Leon Uris' sweeping novel, "Exodus" is the epic saga of the founding of Israel in the days following World War II. Paul Newman stars as an Israeli resistance fighter, a member of the Hagannah, involved in the effort to bring a group of 600 European Jews from British-blockaded Cyprus into newly-partitioned Palestine, right before the United Nations is to vote on making it a Jewish homeland. Otto Preminger was born in Vienna in 1905, the son of a prosecutor for the Austrian Empire. He studied law but wanted to become an actor, and at 17 joined the company of Max Reinhardt. He rose quickly to director, was chosen to take over Reinhardt's theater on the latter's retirement, and was offered, at age 27, the post of the head of the State Theatre in Vienna. He turned it down on learning that a condition of assuming the post was conversion to Catholicism (the Premingers were Jewish, although Otto was not religious). Preminger's theater successes came to the attention of film and theater producers in America, and in 1936, he arrived in Hollywood to direct for 20th Century-Fox. He died in New York in 1986 Compiled by Chris Fujiwara Back to Photograph

Commentary on Image 007 The soon to become legendary Boris Thomashefsky (1868–1939) (grandfather of conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas) had persuaded a benefactor to bring an acting troupe from London for a performance of Avrom Goldfadn's Di kishefmakhern (The Witch). The production, in which the young Thomashefsky also sang and acted, took place in 1882 and more or less gave birth to popular Yiddish theater in America. Thomashefsky—by dint of his larger-than-life personality, his natural theatricality, and his remarkable marketing instincts - went on to found Second Avenue as a stage genre and a virtual way of life. By 1912 he had his own venue, the Downtown National Theater. Joseph Rumshinsky joined Tomashefsky’s theater in 1916 and persuaded him to introduce a full professional dance corps, and to avoid reliance upon vaudeville style. He insisted on a full pit orchestra with a minimum of twenty-four professional musicians, upgrading the entire orchestral parameter for the future of Second Avenue. Indeed, it is the size, quality, and instrumentation of the pit orchestra for full-scale Yiddish theatrical productions that is one of Rumshinsky’s most enduring contributions. He insisted on fully trained singers with legitimate light operatic voices. That, too, became the standard. Back to Photograph