Lives in the Yiddish Theatre
SHORT BIOGRAPHIES OF THOSE INVOLVED IN THE Yiddish THEATRE
aS DESCRIBED IN zALMEN zYLBERCWEIG'S "lEKSIKON FUN YIDISHN TEATER"

1931-1969
 

Gustave Goldstein

 

G. was born in 1884 in Iasi, Romania. His father was a housepainter. From his early youth he had a desire to compose songs, and at the age of thirteen he participated in an amateur offering of Horowitz's Khurbn bayram," which G.'s friend, the actor Avraham Zilberman, had studied. A year later he participated as "Avinadav" in the "Shulamis" offering put on by the guest-starring troupe under the direction of Philip Weisenfreund, then with Treitler as "Di kishufmakherin (The Sorceress)" in the play 'Yona hnvya."

At the age of fifteen G. fled to Czernowitz, where he went around, singing songs at inns, singing at circumcisions (brisses), composing several songs and "programs." He traveled from there to Paris, where he played from time to time in Yiddish productions, and then he came to America where he entered into Local 5, played for several years in Yiddish vaudeville, then in legitimate theatre with the Silberts, again in vaudeville, then in legitimate theatre with the Hollanders, with Mike Thomashefsky and in the province, and in 1928-9 in the Prospect Theatre with Nathan Goldberg.

G. wrote songs and couplets for which he also composed music by himself. As to his popular songs (of which many have been published) there were heard: "Der yold iz mikh mkna," "Di milkhome", "Helft di milkhome-karbones", "Der klokmayker vet zign" and "Ikh for aheym."


Sh. E.

 


 

 

 

 


 

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Adapted from the original Yiddish text found within the  "Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre" by Zalmen Zylbercweig, Volume 1, page 377.
 

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