G. was born on 20 December 1900 in Boston, America.

His father was a member in a dramatic club, his mother a Yiddish actress, and an aunt who was a chorus singer in the Yiddish theatre. He learned Yiddish with a teacher and finished public and high school in Chicago, where his parents, who had directed a Yiddish itinerant troupe, had in the meantime settled.

Until age fourteen he acted in children's roles in the local troupe, and in school he took part in the yearly English productions.

The first role as an adult: "Menasha" in Gordin's "Yidisher glkh", and from then on he has acted in buff comical roles in his father's troupe.

In 1919 he acted for a season in the English theatre with the Belasco Stack Company in San Francisco.

Thomashefsky, who had seen him act in Cleveland, engaged him in 1923 for his Yiddish theatre on Broadway in New York where he performed in the lover roles, and there he acted for twenty-eight weeks. Then he toured with the troupe across the province, acting a season in Boston with Julius Nathanson, two seasons in the National with Louie Goldberg, and during the summer of 1927 and 1928 in English vaudeville on the Fox circuit.