Chapter One: In The Beginning

                      Consider this archetypal Yiddish melodrama: A father leaves turn-of-century, virulently anti-Semitic Russia with half his family, to plant foot in America, before sending for the other half. A year later, having established himself in Manhattan on the Lower East Side after much struggling, the father sends the steamship tickets back to Russia, to bring over the balance of the family.

                       Things go smoothly exiting the country, but in England, at the final way station on the journey to New York, there is a horrible mix-up and the eldest son, age eleven, is left behind to fend for himself.

                        The marooned child, not knowing a single word of English, wanders the cold, dismal, dangerous streets of London, barely surviving until, two years later, he is reunited with his joyful parents.

                         This is marvelous material for a writer of trashy fiction, perfect for the gristmill of Yiddish Theatre, to be ground course or fine, by hacks and truer artists. Except that this particular story line is fact in its broader outline, and strangely enough happened to, of all people, Maurice Schwartz, arguably the greatest figure in the century-old history of Yiddish theatre, once a vibrant and thriving, but long-since deceased world.

                         The pages that follow are an attempt not only to resurrect the undisputed monarch of this vanished kingdom, but to illustrate the world he inhabited, a time when the American Jew was as much European as he was a Yankee, until the balance shifted in the span of a few generations and the reign was over.

                          Avram Moishe Schwartz was born in 1888, in the small Ukrainian town of Sudlekow, which lay in the Polish section of Russia, some one hundred and fifty miles due west of Kiev, and eighty miles east of Lemberg. The patriarch of the family, Isaac, was a comfortable grain dealer in the prime wheat-producing area of Russia. A devout Jew, his life was bounded by the typically standard Orthodox triangle of family, synagogue and work. Besides his wife Rose, that family consisted of three boys and three girls. Moishe, the oldest of the boys, had an outstanding alto singing voice that stood out in the synagogue choir. He was also a born performer, but the Orthodox branch of Judaism turned its pietistic nose up at all forms of artistic expression, except for the Esther-centered plays during Purim. Choir singing had to suffice for those with other more worldly talents.

                        In 1898, Isaac split the family in two, taking his three teenage daughters to America, leaving behind Rose and the three boys, Moishe being the oldest at ten. It was a well- conceived plan, as the girls were old enough to obtain work in New York and help accumulate the money to buy another round of steamship tickets. The waiting period however was short, as after a year of scrimping and saving—Isaac had created a rag-sorting business on Lower Broadway—Rose received a letter from America that contained the tickets and their marching orders.

                        Rose Schwartz immediately packed the family’s belongings and within a week they were in the port of Hamburg (the jumping off place for most European Jews), and on their way to London. In the British capital, they took a train 200 miles across the waist of England to Liverpool. From this port, they’d board a vessel jam-packed with other like-minded immigrants and brave the awesome Atlantic to the Golden Medina. This route, Isaac had discovered, was considerably cheaper than sailing directly from Hamburg.

                       The snafu began innocently enough. Isaac had sent Rose an adult ticket for herself and three half-price tickets for his sons. But during the year’s separation, Moishe had shot up like the proverbial beanstalk, not exactly a man, but with a man’s appetite. Because of the short hop from Hamburg to London, this wasn’t deemed a problem, but the boarding agent in Liverpool was incensed: why a strapping lad like Moishe could eat for two, even three! The agent told Rose and the two younger boys to please board the ship first.

                       Rose, who’d become disoriented and confused over the half-price ticket hassle, dutifully obeyed, certain that the matter would be quickly resolved. After the ship got underway however, she soon discovered that Moishe was not with them, that he’d been detained on shore. After the error was realized, Rose wailed and beat her breast in vain for the captain to return to Liverpool. The journey without her eldest son must have been hellish, each day soaked in tears, sorrow and guilt. Not the least of her problems was what to tell Isaac.

                      Those first few hours had to have been equally as devastating for the misplaced child. Not a shilling in his pocket, not a word of English at his command. Truly a Joseph in the alien land of Egypt. The impact on his psyche, on his inchoate personality, cannot be overestimated. “It gave me an insight into what life is. It was my first university”  (Braggiotti).

                       When his situation became apparent, he fled the steamship office onto the street, tearful and panic-stricken. A passerby thought enough to stop the boy who, using gestures, made his plight known. The stranger led Moishe back to the office, where he was given a refund for the half-price ticket. A tag was attached to the boy and he was shipped back to its London headquarters like a piece of lost luggage. There, in the narrow, garbage-strewn streets and back alleys of Whitechapel, the city’s worst slum area, he had to fend for himself.

                        After the refund ran out, he lived catch-as-catch-can, searching for odd jobs and barely managing to stay alive. In the winter he slept in the subway and in church basements, on park benches in the summer. And starved all four seasons of the year. He joined breadlines and queued up at soup kitchens, accepting charity ladled out by young volunteers.

                          The week before The Day of Atonement, wandering along Whitechapel Road in the Jewish enclave, he heard music coming from within a synagogue. He entered and won a job singing in the choir. The choirmaster was a kindly, hoop-bellied man named Simon Hawkins. Taken with the young urchin, Hawkins gave him a pair of his own but oversized trousers. The boy found a length of cord to use as a belt. Moishe couldn’t afford a haircut and looked for all the world like one of the many shabbily dressed clowns who scraped out a living on the even shabbier streets. Even the most hardened East Ender would gawk at the boy. Children would throw stones as if he were some mangy dog.

                         After the brief synagogue gig was over, Moishe resumed his ways as a homeless vagrant, until a Bobbie spied him on a park bench one night and took him to a German bakery along his beat. The baker gave him shelter, allowing the urchin to sleep in the back room. For months, the boy walked the streets during the day, covered head to toe in flour dust, making him an even greater subject of ridicule Later on, Moishe found a corner in a tannery to occupy, and in the evening he would climb out a window, to an inner courtyard where herrings were being pickled. Night after night he’d dine on sour herring and stale bread. For seven months he existed on nothing else. Often he’d find his way down to the Thames and stare dejectedly at the blinking lights of distant ships. Indeed, once he stared out and wondered what was the use of enduring it all. “But at that moment I saw my mother’s face in the water and I said no, I shall live on”  (Braggiotti).

                        All good things and some bad eventually come to an end. In Moishe’s case, rescue came at the close of his second year in Whitechapel. Long before, his father had placed an ad in the London newspapers and at last there were results. More than a few Londoners had noticed the hapless child. When Isaac arrived and saw his son, barely recognizable under his rags and tangled mop of hair, the overwrought father fainted. Revived, Isaac had to remind himself more than once that this filthy ragamuffin was indeed his son. Convinced, he set about rehabilitating the boy, first with a hot bath then a haircut and finally a visit to a clothing store on Whitechapel Road for a completely new wardrobe.

                         The year was 1901, and Isaac hadn’t seen this semi-stranger in three years. In that period Moishe had endured more suffering and privation than most experience in a lifetime. The time spent in London would also serve him well in the coming years of huge success and terrible failure, of the high peaks of elation and deep valleys of depression, of bitter disappointment and sparkling moments of the greatest triumphs Yiddish Theatre has ever known.
 

Chapter Two: “I Burned With a Passion For the Theatre.”

                        On the packed steamer crossing the limitless Atlantic Ocean, arriving in New York after the incredibly long voyage, Moishe and Isaac had plenty of time to get reacquainted. It had been three grueling years since the father split the family down the middle and took his half to America. Fully one-quarter of Moishe’s life had been spent out of Isaac’s influence, perhaps the most important segment of any youngster’s life.

                        The reunion with his mother and siblings was warm and emotional, as the tears flowed freely from all participants, especially from Rose, who still blamed herself for much of the turmoil in Liverpool. But the tears soon washed away the stains of guilt and the family was made completely whole again. Rose and Isaac brought their reclaimed child home to the modest apartment on Cherry Street on the Lower East Side, practically in view of the East River.

                        But the child Rose had inadvertently left behind in England was not the young man she’d embraced with her every fiber at the gangplank in New York. It was more than the physical changes that had taken place in the shift from age ten to thirteen. After all, he’d lived alone in London’s worst hellhole, survived its jungle of assorted predatory animals. His childhood amputated and jettisoned, he’d grown a tough carapace. Moreover, it would take Moishe a while to get used to being shivered over by a loving mother, to taking orders from an often stern father, to blending in with his brothers and sisters. By thirteen he’d become a country of one.

                        At once, Isaac registered him in the Baron de Hirsch school on East Broadway. De Hirsch, the foremost Jewish philanthropist in the world, had established a trade school for the sons of recent Jewish émigrés from Russia, to help them become useful citizens. The Baron had made it his personal mission to rescue as many victims of Czarist persecution as possible. A quick learner, having picked up Cockney English in Whitechapel, Moishe (now Morris) adapted well, especially in his literature class. Afternoons found him toiling in the small factory his enterprising father had begun, supplying recycled rags to the burgeoning clothing industry in Lower Manhattan.

                        The America that Morris had come to at the dawn of the twentieth century was a vibrant overturned anthill of a growing nation, flushed with pride after having flexed its muscles and beaten Spain three years earlier, becoming a world power in the process. The population was exploding, mainly from the avalanche of hopeful immigrants—nearly a million by 1905—passing through Castle Garden, Ellis Island and other portals of entry. Most of them settled in Manhattan, especially the Jews, favoring the Lower East Side. New York City quickly became the largest Jewish city in the world.

                         At once, Morris developed an intense bonding with his uncle Mendl, who would often receive cheap tickets to the galleries of the Yiddish theatres on the Bowery close by. “He secretly took me to a Sunday, and at that moment, from the first curtain, I became a theatre fanatic”  (Schwartz 1 Jan. 1941).

                         For many reasons, all of them sound, Isaac Schwartz took a dim view of his son’s newfound interest. His hope was for Morris to become foreman in his factory. Morris, as it so happened, had other plans.

                          At the time, Yiddish Theatre was confined to a few blocks on the Bowery between Canal Street and East Houston Street, and consisted of three major playhouses and a few minor ones. In each of them, wrote Hutchins Hapgood , is the ghetto world, the New York of Russian Jews, a world of “tinsel variety shows, ‘dive’ music halls, fake museums, trivial amusement booths of all sorts, cheap lodging houses, ten-cent shops and Irish-American tough saloons [. . .]”  (113).

                           While Isaac railed against the foolish waste of time and money, his difficult son hung around the unsavory Bowery. Morris was too headstrong to obey his father, a boy who’d heeded only his own voice for so long. The arguments over the kitchen table became so heated that Isaac actually fired his son who’d some time earlier quit school to work full time in the rag factory, and, more than once, despite Rose’s frantic pleas, the boy packed up and left home, only to return the next day or the day after. But Morris never surrendered to his father’s demands and Isaac was forced to accept the seamy love affair with the Bowery theatres. If this is what my son wants, Isaac’s manner suggested, then so be it. But he’ll regret it later.

                         Together Morris and his uncle would saunter off to the Bowery, mostly to see and hear and delight in the star who’d captured both their hearts, the comic genius Zelig Mogulesko. Their idol was the first professional Jewish actor anywhere. Avram Goldfaden had hired him for the troupe of players he was assembling in Bucharest, Romania, where Mogulesko had sung in synagogue choirs and in the chorus of French operettas. By age 30 this natural performer was recognized as a major talent.

                          Morris had become what was first known in Russian-Yiddish theatre, then in American, as a patriote.  A fan in the most rabid sense. Patriotten would dress like their idols, ape their manners, their voice patterns and the clothes they wore. They had favorite meeting places, usually a restaurant near the playhouse, where they would gather for hours, debating and bragging about their actor-heroes.

                            The first object of patriote love was Boris Thomashevsky, Uncle Mendl’s favorite. Unbelievable as it may seem, Thomashevsky had practically originated Yiddish Theatre in America. An immigrant cigar maker’s son who also worked in a cigar factory in Manhattan, Thomashevsky claimed to have been in the first Yiddish play presented in New York in 1882, The Witch by Goldfaden, though this has never been firmly established.

                        Hapgood describes him as “a young man, fat, with curling black hair, languorous eyes and a rather effeminate face, who is thought very beautiful by the girls of the Thalia. Thomashevsky has a face with no mimic capacity and a temperament absolutely impervious to mood or feeling”  (139).

                         Morris was a loyal but not fanatical follower of Mogulesko. For his preference he got a black eye from a patriote fiercely attached to another star of the period, Sigmund Feiman.

Uncle Mendl was not a great Feinman partisan either, nor fond of any serious play in which he acted. He much preferred the wildly popular lowbrow operettas and musicals. When Morris would take him to see a more realistic offering, Mendl would groan. “You’re making me spend my few pennies so that I should see real life in the theatre. Don’t I have enough real life at home? When I see real life on stage I feel melancholy. When I come to the theatre, I want to laugh. I want to hear people sing. I want to see them dance”  (Schwartz 2 Feb. 1941).

                        This was no idiosyncratic tic. Mendl was expressing the view of most Yiddish theatre-goers, then and over the next half century, much to the disgust and frustration of the serious Yiddish actor, director, playwright and producer. But the Yiddish audience then was an unusual one. The vast majority of them were recent immigrants who’d barely escaped the many forms of the Czar’s wrath. They’d come to America expecting to find paradise on earth, only to discover intolerable sweatshops and crowded tenements. Like Mendl, they attended theatre as a reprieve from, not a reminder of, their own tawdry lives—if only for a few hours. Anyone in Yiddish Theatre who offered otherwise was only swimming upstream against a strong current.

                        In all honesty, Morris loved the lighter fare, the Thomashevsky extravaganzas, nearly as much as Uncle Mendl. He adored the music, the grand, sweeping, impossibly trite plots. He knew all the songs by heart, would sing them at the drop of a hat. From the very start, he was never a strict ideologue, a theorist driven by one pair of philosophic blinders or another. To him, good theatre transcended categories and labels. And so Morris steeled himself to remain above blind partisanship and heated arguments over which star shone the brightest. “Yet I burned with a passion for the theatre [. . .]. I worked for my father all week and thought every second about the theatre”  (Schwartz 5 Feb. 1941).

                       Before long however, Morris found an actor not to idolize, but to emulate. David Kessler, to whom Morris was to hitch his wagon a decade later, had a riveting stage presence, powerful dominating eyes, and a sonorous voice. Born in 1871, he’d come to America fifteen years later and at once became a popular figure in better Yiddish plays. Hapgood labeled him “one of the best of the Ghetto actors in realistic parts  and one of the worst cast, as he often is, as the romantic lover”  (131).

                       If theatre was now in Morris’s blood, the infection spread to his brain. For months on end he didn’t miss a single Kessler performance. There were nine of them weekly, one a day plus Saturday and Sunday matinees. For the true believer, the Saturday matinee was the week’s high point. The faithful would begin lining up early Saturday morning waiting for the box office to open, their lunches and snacks crammed into brown paper bags. The queues for the gallery would extend into the street and around the block. Tickets would be quickly sold out. There was an excitement in the crowd as palpable as rain. They were like pilgrims waiting to be admitted to a holy shrine.

                       The theatre packed chock-a-block, its house lights would dim around 2 PM or thereabouts, Yiddish Theatre of that era being notorious unpunctual. The footlights would spring to life; the band would play the introduction; the curtain would rise, as an awed hush fell over the boisterous throng. And Morris would be transported to wherever the playwright was taking him.

                         A subtle shift took place in Morris during his Kessler phase, and he wondered how in God’s name he might become an actor like this man, which was a far cry from hero worship. But where to begin? How to break into what surely was a rarified brotherhood of the gifted and the lucky. He confessed this dream to his parents. Ever the cynic (or realist), Isaac shook his head and made dire predictions. An Orthodox Jew, he had no love for that which  frivolously displays itself in public, and on the Sabbath yet. Being a businessman, his father also knew how hard it was to make a living at even a legitimate trade. Rose however refused to discourage him, certain as only a Jewish mother could be, that her son would grow up to be not only a good man, but a prosperous one.

                        Morris’s proclivity towards Kessler continued until he saw Jacob Adler in   Solomon the Wise  and The Jewish King Lear, both by Jacob Gordin at the People’s Theatre. The careers of both Gordin and Adler, playwright and actor, are permanently entwined. Each propelled the other to great heights, and together they launched the first magnificent Golden Age of Yiddish Theatre.

                          Jacob P. Adler, born in Odessa in 1855, had been a dilettante and a dandy in that very cosmopolitan Russian city. Until he met Goldfaden and his traveling players in 1879 and decided he had to become an actor. After some success in London that ended in tragedy—he lost his first wife and child to illness, and his theatre to a mistaken call of ‘fire’ that resulted in seventeen patrons being trampled to death—he came to America in 1887. He was no immediate success like Kessler and Mogulesko. With his second wife Dinah, he went off to Chicago where competition was less keen. Nothing came of it, so the Adlers returned to London then reversed themselves and left once more to try New York.

                         This circuitous route led to the People’s Theatre on the Bowery and favorable recognition, then ultimately to his dominating the Yiddish stage for many years. An actor of enormous power and noble features, Adler despised the type of acting (exemplified by Thomashevsky) that used exaggerated body motions, gestures and comic antics. Adler preferred employing face, voice and eyes to extract the inner truth of the role he was playing. To be natural and honest was the sum and substance of his career.

                          Jacob Gordin had also emigrated from Russia, but directly. “He was a man of varied literary activity,” wrote Hapgood. “Of a rarely good education, a thorough Russian schooling, and of uncommon intelligence and strength of character. He is Russian in appearance, a large broad-headed man with thick black hair and beard”  (167). Natural allies, the two men formed a loose partnership that endured for years. Together they created a vital center for Yiddish intellectualism. For nearly two decades Gordin’s plays were the most important ones on the Yiddish stage, with Adler their finest interpreter.

                           Secretly, Morris began running with the Adler faction headquartered on Eldridge Street. Of all the sects of stalwarts, the Adler boys were the toughest, the most devoted. They called their leader the Great Eagle, because in Yiddish ‘adler’ means eagle. “The splendid eagle has spread its wings” was how his patriotten announced to each other the opening of a new  play starring their idol.

                        The incipient actor began to educate himself, reading better literature to fully appreciate Adler and Gordin, as he never could have in a formal school, this teenager who’d received the first part of his education on the streets of Whitechapel. Ibsen and Shakespeare were among the non-Jewish dramatists he furiously attacked, absorbing entire monologues from Ghosts and The Merchant of Venice.  “After a year of reading all the published plays, I understood how an actor performed and what he brought to the play and what was not the intention of the writer [. . .]. I was never interested in the playwright before, but now he was beginning to interest me more than the actor”  (Schwartz 12 Feb. 1941).

                         Since its inception, Yiddish Theatre had always been an actor-driven medium rather than play-oriented, the vehicle for the star. And if Schwartz believed then in the writer’s primacy, time and painful experience later modified his views and actions. This shift and many others in Schwartz’s long, unparalleled career has been the subject of much written about him in English and Yiddish, a great deal of it unflattering. Word and deed did not always coincide with Schwartz when he became the vital powerhouse behind the Yiddish Art Theatre. Eventually, a play, a novel, a short story to him would be merely the raw material from which to extract good theatre. In his hands, the Yiddish Art Theatre became neither an actor’s nor a playwright’s vehicle, but the director’s. For this reason, Schwartz anticipated the rise and dominance of the movie director.

                        One day, a bolt of lightning sizzled through the Lower East Side. A new playhouse was to be built on Grand Street. It would be the first theatre specifically constructed to house Yiddish Theatre. Before, there had been only three top grade locations of any substance, all on the Bowery, within sight of one another. The most sophisticated was the People’s at 199 Bowery, close to Delancy Street, with a seating capacity of 1750. It was opened in 1883 by Harry Miner and bore his name in the original title. Among its early stars, before transition into a Yiddish playhouse, were Lily Langtree and Thomas Keene. Its current Yiddish attractions were Mogulesko, Adler and Thomashevsky, the latter two never appearing together in the same play. Adler would take the high road, while Thomashevsky usually traveled the low of less-than-artistic clunkers.

                          Down a few blocks at 45 Bowery was the Windsor, which billed itself as ‘the largest and most popular theatre in the City.’ Before it closed forever in 1917, the Windsor had survived a fire and several name changes. During its Yiddish phase, it served as the site of many popular operettas. Directly across the street at 46 was the elegant Thalia with its five-stories high front of Greek columns. Like its two competitors, the Thalia began as a non-Yiddish theatre called the Bowery. It served up mostly German language plays. David Kessler was the main attraction during its Jewish phase.

                          But now a fourth temple of sorts was to rise on Grand Street and speculation ran high among the various factions as to who would open it. Kessler? Adler? Mogulesko? Maybe even Boris Thomashevsky and his actress-wife Bessie. Those with and without money bet on their favorites. Tension mounted, but the various opposing armies maintained a kind of uneasy truce. With other partisans, Morris would stand and gawk at the construction site. “And even though the many fan clubs didn’t know if their stars were going to perform at the new theatre, they couldn’t hide their joy that they would be there. Their happiness was passed from house to house, from shop to shop”  (Schwartz 20 Feb. 1941).

                          When the posters went up announcing the grand opening, the Lower East Side let out a collective sigh. The first play was to be Joseph Lateiner’s  On the Rivers of Babylon,  a biblical epic, one of many from the lightning pen of the master of such gaudy melodramas. The era of good feelings among the usually opposing forces continued. Whoever would be the performers, whatever the play, they all pulled together for a smashing start for the Grand. On the night before the opening, many of the faithful slept on the theatre’s fire escapes and by the stage doors.

                           Of course every ticket had been sold long in advance and only the gallery was available. A squad of police had been dispatched to maintain order. Eager patriotten were circulating in the lobby offering to pay up to fifteen dollars for a seat, any seat. “The crowds were so thick people fainted and had to be continually taken out. Peddlers did well, selling bagels and soda”  (Schwartz 26 Feb. 1941). And for all their prayers and anticipation despite being squeezed in the gallery like oranges in a crate, the play was a terrible disappointment. Instead of applause, the actors were rewarded with boos, catcalls and curses. Groups of every loyalty boycotted the Grand, refusing to make the long climb to the gallery.

                         After a disastrous half season of like offerings, the Grand closed. A donnybrook then took place over possession of the once-virginal but now sullied theatre. The Zukor-Loew’s powerhouse organization wanted the Grand as a movie house. That year, The Great Train Robbery  --a twelve minute film-- had become an enormous hit, ushering in a new form of entertainment for the masses. But Jacob Adler yearned for a home to do the more realistic plays of Gordin and his successors. After much wrangling that ended up in New York State Supreme Court, Adler got his wish.
 

Chapter Three: “Go Home and Don’t Get Involved in Theatre.”

                        Severe shock waves were felt by foot soldiers and civilians alike on the Lower East Side over the Grand Street Theatre fiasco. Patriotten  of every preference and intensity made it their cause celebre, as they filled the cafes and restaurants, and made longwinded speeches every evening until dawn, when it was time to go to their sweatshops and offices, retail stores and pushcarts. Nowhere were the reverberations more keenly felt and with greater passion than in the many amateur dramatic clubs that were springing up in the Ghetto like mushrooms after a summer rain.

                         Even before there was Yiddish theatre in America, a few such clubs were in existence, devoted to the cultural enrichment of the mostly Russian immigrants. The Promised Land had developed no solid achievement of drama schools the way Russia, France, England and Germany had, so these restless, gifted, but culturally starved Eastern European Jews created their own. Not in the traditional temples of art, but in social halls, private homes and any convenient location large enough to accommodate a group of stage struck young Jews sufficiently motivated to talk about and perform in serious drama.

                           Within a generation, these literary and theatrical clubs became a major force for good literary drama, as well as the breeding ground for budding actors and playwrights. Each member was the patriote of  an even larger army. Some clubs were named for the writer of their choice: the Jacob Gordin Dramatic Society, the Mendele Moshe Sforim Literary-Dramatic Society, the I. L. Peretz Society. Its members would slave all week in their shops, factories and stores, but in the evening and on weekends they’d present theatre to a very rarified and appreciative audience of the like-minded. Not only were incipient playwrights and actors nurtured, but a matching public was cultivated to enjoy as well.

                         A literary society of smaller size and much less polish was the Delancey Street Dramatic Club, which actually met in a basement on Attorney Street close-by. It boasted over 60 adherents, few old enough to vote or legally consume alcohol. But children then were more mature, especially the offspring of immigrants, who were often on their own, trapped between two cultures—the one at home and the one on the streets. Through a friend, Joseph Schwartzberg (hereafter known as ‘Spufka’), a member of the club, Morris had been invited to audition for membership. There was no other way to join. He was thoroughly tested and accepted.

                          Meanwhile the storm continued unabated over the demise of the Grand and Adler’s somewhat suspicious takeover, the biggest brouhaha ever to hit the very circumscribed world of Yiddish Theatre until then. It was common wisdom among the  patriotten that if the first play of the season was a bomb, the entire season was lost. And so it happened with the Grand despite the enormous talents of those involved on stage and behind the footlights. When it trickled down that the Eagle had seized the prize in his talons, wiping out the jobs of so many actors, a holy war—more a children’s crusade—began against Jacob Adler. Marcus’s Restaurant on Grand Street and Goldstein’s Café on Forsyth percolated with wild talk about using force to deny Adler his prize. Hotheads threatened to use metal spikes, wooden clubs, knives.

                         Round and round went the threats to clip the Eagle’s wings, but nothing came of it. The dismissed actors quickly found work elsewhere, some with the new despised owner, as Adler moved swiftly to reopen the Grand. Nevertheless the opposing patriotten were neither satisfied nor forgiving. “Among the foes, a life-and-death struggle broke out. Each fan had to swear by his parents that he would shun the Grand Theatre. For months the playhouse remained under excommunication”  (Schwartz 12 Mar. 1941).

                           The first offering of the reopened theatre didn’t go over well, but the second,  Broken Hearts, became a runaway hit. The play was written by that post-Gordin , transitional dramatist Solomon Libin, who wrote over 50 plays, many well-crafted and depicting the life and woes of the immigrant sweatshop worker, the problems of real people in true situations all too familiar to the Ghetto inhabitants, Libin himself a former factory worker. The highly successful piece at the Grand shattered the opposition’s resistance. The more they tried to deny Adler, the more the general public flocked to catch his performance. Unable to hold out any longer, and despite his own conscience, Morris went to see what all the fuss was about. Afraid to be caught by the more physical anti-Adlerites, he took in a Monday evening performance, when no self-respecting patriote would be there. He sat in the first row of the gallery hoping to be pleasantly disappointed. But the Eagle worked his theatre magic and soon Morris was drawn back into the fold. Adler the actor was forgiven even if Adler the man couldn’t be.

                        What Morris loved the actor for was the Eagle’s total immersion in his work, as Schwartz himself would be later on. “Every minute of his life was dedicated to the theatre. This was his life. It occupied every minute of the day. He even played theatre at home. There was almost no difference between the stage and his private life”  (Schwartz 19 Mar. 1941).

                         As Adler’s fortunes rose at the Grand, David Kessler’s declined, if only temporarily, at the Thalia. One play after another became an instant hit, especially the ones Gordin wrote for him: The Demented, The Stranger, and The Tree of Wisdom. Previously, Jacob Gordin had been closely allied with Kessler, but as with Morris, his loyalty had shifted. In Schwartz’s view, the noble and lofty playwright had made the change for mundane reasons. “Adler paid better. Adler invested more money on stage sets. Adler’s wife Sarah was a treasure and a terrific talent. What her husband lacked, she completed”  (Schwartz 19 Mar. 1941).

                        Morris couldn’t help feeling pity for the put upon actor, yet aware that much of Kessler’s woes were of his own making. Adler came prepared; he knew his lines perfectly, every shade and nuance, and never mind the prompter’s aid. But Kessler would spend hours in Marcus’s, gorging himself with food and drink, and playing pinochle until near curtain time. He’d rely heavily on the prompter to feed him his part.

                          Divided loyalties troubled young Morris’s conscience, but the windstorm raging among the faithful at the Delancey Street Dramatic Club was even worse, with the most hot-tempered hurling silverware and curses across the meeting hall. Often, weekly sessions would deteriorate into shouting matches that would spill out onto Attorney Street. Crowds would gather to take sides, cheering and jeering from the curbs. Threats were made to kidnap Gordin, to maim Adler. In a calm moment, a plan was drafted to send a small group to visit Gordin and beg him to return to Kessler. But that harebrained scheme had to be abandoned: how do you get any two patriotten to agree on anything? A brighter idea took hold. Morris would confront the mighty blackbearded Gordin himself, a party of one, and make the plea. He’d take the ferry to Brooklyn where Gordin lived, fall to his knees, pour out his heart.

                        Late next afternoon, Morris made his way along the East River, then under the newly constructed Williamsburg Bridge, hoping possibly to catch his man at the ferry slip. All the while, he berated himself for his audacity .”Then I saw him coming, looking distinguished. I hid behind the wooden statue of an Indian in front of a tobacco shop. I saw him at the corner. [. . . ] Short of breath, I ran to him. I spoke hoarsely. ‘Mr. Gordin, save the great Kessler’ “  (Schwartz 29 Mar. 1941).

                         Morris must have appeared like a madman, raving crazily. Gordin saw him and raised his cane as if to ward off a thief. Almost incoherently, Morris spewed out what was on his troubled mind. Gordin listened attentively, now at ease, used to the mad  pronouncements from young theatre striplings.

                        After Morris had exhausted the speech he’d gone over again and again between Grand Street and the ferry slip, Gordin led him to a candy store, where he ordered seltzer for the boy and a dish of chocolate ice cream for himself. Between gulps, Morris made his pitch. “I want you to write a few good plays for David Kessler. It’s a real shame. I feel for him”  (Schwartz 29 Mar. 1941).

                          Gordin regarded him with compassion. He paid for the seltzer and the ice cream then invited the now calm youngster to take the ferry with him to Brooklyn. On the river, they’d talk things over. At that hour of the day the ferry was deserted. Gordin sat him down by a window and took off his jacket. It had been uncommonly hot and sweat was dripping from his magnificent beard, and he asked about his old friend and recent enemy with a poignant bitterness. He leaned on his cane as he spoke, observing the gentle waves the ferry was making. Then he turned back to Morris, his eyes misty. “Such a food lover. Such gluttony. He will die looking into a food plate .[. . .] Such talent, such temperament. He should be able to conquer the entire universe, but to him hot dogs and pinochle are more important” (Schwartz 2 Apr.1941).

                       Gordin then grew silent for a long while, drawing figures with his cane on the ferry deck. On the Brooklyn side, he glanced up at Morris with an infinite sadness. “Boy, go home and don’t get involved in theatre. Even composers and  actors die of hunger in the Jewish Theatre. Forget about Kessler”  (Schwartz  2 Apr. 1941).

                        The playwright got off the vessel but Morris remained onboard, watching Gordin disappear into the approaching darkness. Morris swallowed hard and returned home. Not longer after, he came to a decision. He would disregard the great artist’s advice. The fire in him refused to die and he would no longer settle for a life of reflected glory as a mere admirer. He found himself going over in his mind the performances of every actor he’d ever seen, knowing with absolute and arrogant certainty that he could do better, or if not, then differently, on his own terms and with no convenient mold to pour himself into. He simply had to become the character he was playing.

Chapter Four: The Start of an Incredible Adventure

                        Brave resolutions notwithstanding, Morris soon found himself adrift in a morass of doubt and despair. “A gallery patriote have I been and a gallery patriote I’ll remain,” he whispered to himself  (Schwartz 5 May, 1941). More than a few evenings, after a day laboring in the rag factory, he’d tiptoe out the apartment on Cherry Street, skulk along the night-draped streets of the Ghetto, to the walkway of the Williamsburg Bridge, as he’d once been drawn to the bridge over the Thames. The darkest thoughts would swamp his self-tortured mind about the hopelessness of his life. With the first arrows of sunlight announcing the new day, an idea lit up his brain. If he couldn’t enter Yiddish Theatre through the front door, he’d find his way in via the back door, the Jewish music halls. That very evening he went to Spivack’s Music Hall on Eldridge Street. He was prepared to offer himself free of charge, even sweep the floors. Try any entry-level position.

                          Isadore Rabinowitz, the manager at Spivack’s, glanced at him disdainfully, asked what the wet-behind-the ears kid wanted, probably knowing full well. Morris sucked in his belly, threw out his chest and declared that he wanted to be an actor.

                           “He wants to be an actor,” repeated Rabinowitz, first to the fearful Morris, then louder to the young men, cronies, backstage with the manager. The same idea for mischief must have simultaneously infused all three men because they ordered him to disrobe, except for his pants. Morris obeyed and they told the makeup man to apply greasepaint and a wig. “I sensed that they were making fun of me, but I was helpless [. . .]. I reasoned that maybe this is how it had to be to get a role” (Schwartz 5 May 1941).

                         Adorned with as much makeup as the jokesters could pile on, Morris was trotted out on stage during a live performance. “The footlights blinded me. Barefoot, I ran from one side of the stage to the other, searching for a way out. The other actors watched and wouldn’t let me escape. I began to run towards the audience, hearing their laughter. A cold sweat covered my face and my naked body. ‘Act, do theatre,’ I heard from behind the stage”  (Schwartz 5 May 1941).

                         The humiliation kept up for minutes longer though it seemed like hours. Everyone in Spivack’s appeared to be in on the gag, everyone except Morris. At last, the boy ripped off as much of the glued-on hair as he could and barreled his way through the blockade of performers and out the stage door. Nearly naked, he fled along the streets of the Ghetto as if on fire.

                          This first-hand episode with the cruelty of grown men towards a green kid should have been the final nail in the coffin, should have been ample evidence against entering a profession ruled by actors behaving badly because they were afraid of allowing new talent in. Not long after and recomposed, Morris was at the Forsyth Street Café with his friends. Together they concocted a scheme to form their own acting company and go out on the road. They were only following the example of what Yiddish performers were doing ever since Goldfaden’s group first began touring the big cities and hinterlands of Romania and Russia. In the larger American cities such as Chicago and Philadelphia there were a few more-or-less permanent houses vying for the theatrical nomads. During the summer, Yiddish actors formed itinerant companies bringing much needed culture to the smaller towns as well as a few sorely needed dollars for themselves.

                         In ‘the provinces’ finding a suitable theatre and a place to hang one’s hat was no easy matter. “Sometimes a troupe had to settle for a dingy room three flights up, off a dirty alleyway and far from the Jewish neighborhood [. . .]. Sometimes a troupe was invited to appear at a local synagogue or community center with the understanding that the play would suit the host’s convictions”  (Sandrow 80).

                         Undeterred and undaunted, the boys began dreaming aloud. What they had in abundance was an enormous amount of energy, an unbounded faith in themselves, and a limitless love of theatre. What more did they need?  They had no one to chide them for their youthful ignorance. The untried group chose Bridgeport, Connecticut as the first stop on the tour because it was closest, the ferry ride a doable 75 cents. A few days later, on a glorious spring morning they boarded the ferry, a festive air of adventure and celebration suffusing each member. They’d taken along enough sandwiches and wine for the entire trip, and a large basket of fruit, nuts and candy. The day was warm and impossibly sunny, each of them bursting with courage and hope for the new, incredible adventure, unsure of what lay ahead but certain they’d acquit themselves well, if not brilliantly. Plans were made and expanded upon as the ferry ploughed toward Bridgeport. “We’ll play in different cities of America, return to New York and show them what kind of actors we are”  (Schwartz 7 May 1941).

                         What awaited them was a baptism of fire never to be forgotten, a serio-comic catalogue of everything going wrong that could possibly go wrong. With practically no money they checked into a small boardinghouse, took full advantage of the owner, waited an eternity to finally get booked into the local YMHA, went door-to-door and store-to-store selling tickets while talking up their non-existent triumphs back in Manhattan. They made their collective debuts before a pumped up, over-expectant audience, with few costumes, little makeup and no musicians in The Immigrant, a piece made famous by Mogulesko. Not surprisingly, the Jews of Bridgeport rebelled and nearly started a riot. The police had to be summoned and the audience’s money was refunded. The disgraced troupe left town on the first train out. They returned home a beaten lot, their tails between their legs like whipped dogs.

                         At low ebb, Morris was deeply chagrined over the entire fiasco and told his father he was seriously thinking about getting a workaday job. Isaac was not impressed with his son’s admission of failure and promise to do better with his life. He knew that very soon they’d be battling again over the same thorny issue. However, for the time being, peace blanketed he Schwartz household. The family—except for Isaac—was ecstatic over the conversion of the sinner. Isaac remained noncommittal, waiting for the day when the same scenario would be replayed and he’d have to throw Morris out of the house once more for the final time. Until the next time.

                         Not to put the family through the wringer as he’d done so often in the past, Morris voluntarily left the apartment on Cherry Street. He found a dark tiny room on Forsyth Street around the corner from the Grand and got a job in a factory making brass and copper signs. He worked for ten hours a day and earned five dollars a week. With that paltry sum, Morris found that he could eat decently, pay his rent, and buy a book now and then. His free time he spent holed up in his room, trying to find a more solitary and less frenetic use of his creative instinct. He tried his hand at writing. He also began reading poetry, especially the work of Morris Rosenfeld, the exquisite sweatshop poet.

                         The job in the sign factory and his life as an isolated writer didn’t last long. The old itch returned, insistent as ever. In the bowels of despair, Morris languished in his small space until one evening Spufka pounded on his door. He hadn’t been seen in weeks and his friends were worried. But more than that, Spufka had come with good news. “Come on, Morris. Come to rehearsal. We’re doing The Twentieth Century in Brooklyn at Teutonic Hall. You’re going to play the role of the father. It’s a big part. Morris, you’ve been rescued”  (Schwartz 17 May 1947).

                        While preparing for his New York debut at the Teutonic, another opportunity came along that he couldn’t ignore. He was asked to journey to the hinterlands of Brownsville, Brooklyn to Singer Hall on Pitkin Avenue, its main thoroughfare. Singer Hall “was a narrow room with wooden benches, a stage the size of a yawn, and a curtain that fell making noise as it came to rest on its wooden frame”  (Schwartz 17 May 1941).

                         The play they were going to do was The Wild Man, the Jacob Adler vehicle he owned, given him legally by its writer Jacob Gordin. Morris signed for the stupendous sum of three dollars a week, playing an elderly father. It was a juicy part, and the chance to do theatre and get paid for it. But word soon got back to Adler that his private property was going to be sullied in the farmlands of Brooklyn, and by a band of rank amateurs. The Eagle threatened vociferously in Marcus’s and other Yiddish watering holes to have the thieves arrested.

                          But his interest perked, Adler had to come and see for himself. He appeared on opening night, bringing along an entourage of four that included his attorney. Taking his seat in the audience after being recognized and paid homage, Adler muttered loudly that he would teach these robbers a lesson. A lawsuit. Prison. Behind the footlights, the cast saw and heard the thundering—and trembled. The company manager came out from backstage, approached Adler with fear and reverence and “begged the great Eagle to have mercy on us. We swore never to touch any play over which he had legal rights, but begged him to let us perform this one”  (Schwartz 21 May 1941).

                          Adler wasn’t moved. He sat nonchalantly opening a box of chocolates on his lap, eating one after another, repeating his threats of prison for the insolent boys. After the first act was over however, Adler stood up and initiated the cheers. The audience immediately joined in, the ovation lasting a full three minutes. He and they were genuinely moved. Morris noticed the Eagle take out a handkerchief to wipe away his tears. After the final curtain fell, the entire company basked in the lengthy ovation that more than made up for the jarring effect of Adler’s presence. No matter: the Eagle had helped the struggling youngsters, tending to convince them that indeed they may yet become recognized actors.

                         Their exhilaration was short-lived. The company manager had a dispute with the landlord and they had to leave. Morris was not terribly upset, as the engagement at Teutonic Hall was coming up fast. Soon Morris and his friends were busily involved, preparing for The Twentieth Century, the play they were supposed to do in Bridgeport had not misfortune overtaken them. In the Zolatarevsky piece, a priest’s son falls in love with a Jewish girl, causing a pogrom, as if just being Jewish in Russia wasn’t reason enough.

                          The prospect of Isaac viewing the play was surely the reason Morris had labored so diligently on his role. Of the Schwartzes, including the aunts, uncles and cousins, only his father had never seen him act. Isaac, it seemed to Morris, had been holding back on purpose, a last ditch effort to deny the reality of his errant son’s choice of career. Morris worked on the family to get his father to the theatre. He spoke to Rose, the girls, even Mendl, to apply pressure on all fronts. Stodgy, intractable Isaac finally gave in. He’d go see the silly nonsense about, of all things, a pogrom, as if he had to be reminded. Pogroms had been one of the reasons he’d left Russia less than a decade ago.

                         The day his father would attend, Morris rose early and rehearsed before his mother and three sisters. He became that old man, the father of many daughters who are raped, whose house is ransacked and destroyed. The sobs he wrung from his trial audience braced him. He prayed he might do the same to his father later that evening. With every fiber of his body, Morris wanted Isaac’s approval, if not understanding, of how much theatre meant to him.

                         Heart beating faster and irregularly, Morris arrived at Teutonic Hall at 6 PM, planning to have enough time to transform himself into a 60-year-old man. “I needed at least 60 wrinkles on my face. I wasn’t experienced in mixing colors to get the proper shade for wrinkles—the eyebrows, the beard, the deep lines in my forehead, the sunken bones in my cheeks”  (Schwartz 21 May 1941).

                           Exiting the cubicle of a dressing room where Morris had aged 40 years in two hours, he ran smack into Isaac and Mendl in the narrow corridor. “Neither of them recognized me. Uncle Mendl asked where he could find Morris Schwartz, who was in the play. I felt like shouting out, ’Uncle, Father, it’s me.’ I would have loved to kiss my father for coming to the theatre. He’d finally acknowledged me as an actor”  (Schwartz 24 May 1941).

                        In his much-practiced role voice, Morris informed the pair that they couldn’t see Morris Schwartz, that he was busy putting on makeup and changing into costume. The two men started to leave, to join the rest of the family in their seats. Morris couldn’t hold out any longer and ran ahead of them, blocking their way. He identified himself, had to do it a few times, then Isaac at last recognized his son and wished him good luck with all his heart. “I seized his wrinkled hands and kissed them. He became very emotional. In a rush he opened the door and left. I mounted the stage, ready for my performance”  (Schwartz 24 May 1941).

                         For that particular and special evening, Morris didn’t merely give a performance, he lived it, pouring every drop of himself into the horribly violated man from Kishinev. Waiting at home later was his family. In the kitchen, Rose was preparing potato pancakes, an indication of their great happiness. Isaac, whose reaction was uppermost in Morris’s mind, sat in his customary chair at the kitchen table, grinning broadly and sipping his strong, black , Russian tea. It was 1 AM and he had to be up at 4 to recite his morning prayers before going off to work. The voices of the family swirled about Morris’s head, full of praise for his portrayal on stage. In their midst Morris approached his father with great trepidation and asked what he thought of the play, of his part in it.

                        “Fairly good,” came the lukewarm reply. “You played the role of an old man very well. Your voice was a little peculiar but maybe that’s how it was supposed to be”  (Schwartz 24 May 1941).

                        Morris had expected much more. He’d used everything he knew, stretched himself further than ever before—and for so little in return from his father. He retreated to his bedroom, tears barely held back. His father understood that he’d offended the boy and entered Morris’s room and gave him a kiss on the forehead. “When does a father ever kiss his children? It had happened to me only once before, when he left for America. I understood now that he approved of my career. My success was a foregone conclusion”  (Schwartz 24 May 1941).

Chapter Five: "You'll Be in Good Hands."

                        The day after his bracing personal triumph at Teutonic Hall, impressing his father (and that unexpected kiss), Morris learned he’d also impressed someone else nearly as important. Leo Largman, the renowned and respected impresario, had heard about the excellent youngster from, of all people, Jacob Adler. The Eagle had sung his praises in Marcus’s Restaurant, which was like having it printed in the Forward.

                         Largman’s particular niche was producing Yiddish theatre outside New York City, the cost of operation being lower, therefore the profits greater. Many a touring company, condemned to ‘the provinces’ depended on, even flowered, under Largman’s expertise in organizing theatre companies, booking playhouses, and routing the groups logistically to cities with the greatest concentration of Jews.

                        Like some scavenger, Largman would come to New York City, scout the smaller theatres and halls looking for fresh talent and even the superannuated old timer willing to work for literally pennies. It was not an entirely one-sided deal. The arrangement permitted the nascent actor to gain the necessary experience denied him in a city overpopulated with Yiddish actors who were often trapped between a solid cadre of established but insecure players and an unforgiving audience. What had happened to Morris at the music hall was but a microcosm of backstage reality. Besides, it was impossible for a beginner to break into the Hebrew Actors Union, which Morris was to relearn a few years later. Its entrance requirements: being approved by the entire membership after reciting a few well-chosen monologues, were too strict for even the finest hopeful to pass.

                         On the evening Morris had acted his heart and soul out for Isaac, Largman had been in the audience, liked what he saw and heard, and sent for the seventeen year-old who’d transformed himself so remarkably into a sixty year-old. When in Manhatan, Largman resided on Broome Street, where Morris was told to go. For moral support he took along Joe Schwartzberg, the steadfast and reliable Spufka. Admitted to Largman’s chambers, Morris was scrutinized from head to toe then offered a place in the company he was organizing to play in Baltimore. First though, they’d play Bridgeport, Hartford and New Haven. “For these shows you won’t get paid. On the contrary, you’ll have to pay me. The key to your success lies in my hands,” said Largman in a booming voice (Schwartz 24 May 1941).

                         Morris listened, frozen by awe, as Largman smugly smoked one cigarette after another, but the boy had enough presence of mind, sufficient self-confidence, to stand up to the famed impresario, wheedling from him a contract of eight dollars a week, with an extra dollar thrown in to serve as stage manager, though Largman failed to describe the duties. He emphasized that salary would begin in Baltimore.

                          The offer was accepted. Spufka was also hired, conditions left unstated by Largman.

                         “Eight dollars?” his father asked incredulously after Morris told him. “For this you have to paint your face every night?”  (Schwartz 24 May 1941).

                          In Patterson, New Jersey, the company had its first tryout. By then, Morris had developed a strong dislike for Largman, who turned out to be, despite his surface charm, a terrible bully. Morris’s second role was as Eliezer in Goldfaden’s melodramatic operetta The Sacrifice of Isaac which was first produced in America in 1887. For it, Mogulesko composed a song in which Eliezer laments the death of his child. “For years I wanted to perform that role and sing the song. I always hated to see how an actor would stand center stage and sing as if he were in a cabaret or Romanian restaurant [. . .]. I believed the actor should sing the song within the dramatic scene”  (Schwartz 28 May 1941).

                        He told Largman his idea but was cautioned against making any changes in the time-honored script. “Bigger actors than you have sung right up in front of the audience. The audience likes it that way,” said Largman. “Don’t spoil things, Mister. There are ten actors waiting for your spot”  (Schwartz 28 May 1941).

                         The direct warning went unheeded, as Morris, convinced he was correct theatrically, did the song his way: within the context of the play’s action, not apart from it. At first the audience hissed, then laughed, but he persisted. In the wings Largman was making loud threats to pull down the curtain. After the song was over, the converted crowd burst into wild ovation, then asked him to do it again. Morris hesitated until Largman dashed out and raised  the boy’s hand, telling the audience, “I found this young man in a hall in Brooklyn. I arranged this for you, friends. I told him to sing the song differently [. . .] and he listened to me”  (Schwartz 28 May 1941).

                        Largman wasn’t the first Yiddish manager to take credit for his actor’s innovations, nor the last. A decade later, Morris (then Maurice) would do the same, in a slightly different situation. But pleased with the successful rebel, Largman signed him up for another two years, sealing the bargain with a fifty dollar advance. Morris took the five ten-dollar bills and brought them home to Rose like a trophy he’d won. “Mama, you’re going to get more like these”  (Schwartz 28 May 1941).

                        Less than half Largman’s age and hardly his equal, Morris had the grit, the audacity, to follow his instincts. He’d taken a huge risk—and it paid off. Risk would become the very essence of his theatrical cachet from then on, usually with more at stake but often with fewer positive results.

                        Before long, to his Baltimore crew Largman added two other actors, Clara Rafalo and her husband Morris Goldberg. The pair was a study in contrast. ”Clara was young and charming, and had burning gypsy eyes. She had a strong voice and knew how to sing. Her husband, who ruled her with an iron hand, was a peculiar, very angry fellow with bright red hair. The troupe took an instant liking to her, but hated him”  (Schwartz 31 May 1941).

                        As with many traveling companies, theirs was a viper’s nest of intrigue and backstage politics: who got what role and how, who took the most elegant bows, who was dallying with whom—all grist for their Byzantine mills. Before long, the Largman company was in a state of extreme unrest, rendered unable to carry on in top form. It soon broke apart with Morris going off with the Goldbergs to Cincinnati, where Clara’s parents owned a grocery store. It was a small group, and Morris may have gone for the chance to grow as an actor, a bigger fish in a smaller pond.

                         Ohio: a world away and Morris’s first time in the Midwest. The Goldbergs rented the Auditorium Theatre, where they did theatre only twice a week, Wednesdays and Sundays.  Morris was immensely content within the confines of the Auditorium, not only because he took on more roles, but as he also served as stage manager, a function Largman never really allowed. Being the Goldbergs’ stage manager in reality meant toting around scenery and applying makeup. He relished the work however, as he could absorb the technical side of the profession.

                           The playhouse owned two projectors that were gathering dust since only the footlights were employed to light the stage. “When I saw the projectors, I decided to surprise Clara in a scene she was doing in Bar Kochba. Her singing that evening was totally different. She looked much better [. . .] and performed differently. The audience applauded more enthusiastically than ever”  (Schwartz 31 May 1941). For his ingenuity, Goldberg fumed and cursed, as had Largman. Clara stood by her makeshift lighting director, encouraging him to carry on with fresh ideas and novel approaches.

                        Above the marital fray, Morris continued to experiment. With his own meager savings of thirty dollars—a nice piece of change then—he bought ten, hardly-used projectors from a British traveling company down on its luck in the States. So armed, he tried out original placements of the lights about the stage, resulting in amazing effects and ambiences. He’d toil hard between breaks and performances, while fellow actors leisured in bars and restaurants, or played cards.

                         One evening, in the audience was an even greater impresario than Leo Largman: the master manager from Chicago, Elias Glickman. Next to New York, Chicago was Yiddish Theatre’s favorite city (The Eagle himself performed at Glickman’s Palace Theatre.) To capitalize on the situation, Clara announced to the crowd that the famous impresario was among them in a box seat. Glickman came on stage to praise the fine cast. Taking Morris aside, he asked the boy wonder to come to his room at the Queen’s Hotel where he was stopping. Could Morris dare say no? Turn down the biggest chance of his life? He agreed but asked for permission to bring Spufka along to act as his prompter.

                        With Joe Schwartzberg to feed him the lines he may have forgotten, and to provide inspiration, Morris delivered as never before for this very special audience, never mind that it was in a hotel room. After the sound of his own voice ceased echoing in his ears and the room had grown eerily quiet, Morris waited. And waited, continuing to wait while Glickman contemplated the floor, the high ceiling, the four walls. At last, he spoke. “Young man, you have a fine voice, as soft and delicate as needed. Your motions are not bad, a little nervous, but that can be corrected. You’ll be in good hands. I’ll pay you fifteen dollars for the first week, eighteen dollars for the second, and twenty-two dollars for the third. Our season begins August 15^th”  (Schwartz 31 May 1941).

                        Morris tried not to betray his ecstasy at being deemed worthy of working for Glickman, and at an improved salary. He wasn’t that self-absorbed not to ask about Spufka, a par excellence prompter. Spufka however was years to young to be a true practitioner of that art. Besides crouching in a small box in front of the footlights to cue a performer, a prompter would also scribble down changes in the script that arose during rehearsals. He’d often act as consultant to the director, even deciding on choice of play and when to change the menu. More than a few playwrights rose from the prompter’s box.

                         On a warm June evening a short while later, with nothing much to do after the season at the Auditorium ended and the troupe had disbanded for the summer to take fill-in work until the fall, Morris was standing at his window, feeling serene and relaxed, though a bit homesick for Cherry Street. He’d sent fifty dollars of Glickman’s check to Rose, and her return letter brought a longing to glimpse her face. His eyes drifted dreamily along the Cincinnati skyline, coming to rest on the building across the alleyway. Framed in a window parallel to his was a young lady peering at him. Morris recognized her as the daughter of the corner grocery store owner. They’d met earlier but briefly though he’d noticed that she was stunningly beautiful, with milky blue eyes and hair the color of wheat. Her name was Bella.

                        Over the next month, in the languorousness of the superheated Midwestern summer, a mild flirtation with the grocer’s daughter exploded into Morris’s first love affair. Spufka did his best to cool down his hopelessly romantic friend reminding him that pretty girls were fourteen to the dozen but roles with Glickman’s troupe were rarer than hens’ teeth. Disregarding the sound if cynical advice, Morris carried on with Bella, walking the baked streets of Cincinnati along the Ohio River in the late afternoons, making promises to the young lady he shouldn’t have.

                       Then reality intruded in the form of a telegram from Glickman, ordering him and Spufka to Chicago to begin rehearsals. Morris asked Bella to elope with him; she refused, unwilling to run off and shame her parents. Rendered weak and helpless by her refusal, Morris surrendered to Spufka’s admonitions, and the two young men caught the evening train to Chicago.

                        Elias Glickman was pleased to see his two recent employees. He introduced them to the rest of the cast, many of whom were familiar to Morris, ex-New Yorkers who had sought a steady berth out west. As might be expected, the troupe viewed the new additions with normal Yiddish Theatre suspicion. At once, Morris immersed himself in his work yet Bella remained an obsession with him no matter how hard Spufka tried to dislodge the girl from his mind. He kept hammering at Morris to move on. His efforts at first were wasted as Morris sunk further and further into a slimy pit of depression.

                        Morris credited Joe Schwartzberg’s tough love and constant attention with getting him over the brief and unsatisfied love affair. The crisis ended, his addiction to Bella became history and he could concentrate on theatre as never before. He had plays to do, lots to learn. He’d lost Bella before he ever really knew her, sacrificed to ambition. The trade-off looked better each time he thought about it. Theatre was his one true and abiding love, his perpetual mistress. He would never again find himself having to make such a choice.

                         As Largman had come hunting for fair game at Teutonic Hall, as Glickman had scavenged the Auditorium in Cincinnati, so Mike Thomashevsky, Boris’s younger brother, paid a visit to the Palace. The meeting with Mike, probably just as covert as the one with Glickman, soon took place. Thomashevsky told him to come visit in New York. If Morris wasn’t considering a radical sea change at the moment, Spufka was. He reminded his friend that Philadelphia, where Mike ran the Green Street Theatre, was a thousand miles closer to New York than Chicago. “From there you’re within a few hours of the family. You can also go see Feinman, Kessler and Mogulesko”  (Schwartz 28 June 1941).

                         Meanwhile, Schwartz’s relationship with Elias Glickman was fast souring. Like Largman, like most actors turned manager, Glickman was more smoke than substance. Vain, insulated by the flattery of surrounding parasites, he wasn’t as concerned about theatre as he was about making money. Certainly, Morris’s disenchantment was deepened by the prospect of working for Mike Thomashevsky—and the proximity to the Bowery. We’ll never know if harsh words were traded, only that after a single season, the boys quit Glickman.

                         They’d been away for two years and while gone Yiddish Theatre in New York continued to thrive. Stars such as Adler and Kessler were still worshiped from below by the enamored patriotten, who continued to fight each other claw and fang, while their idols carried on the same old rivalries and animosities. It was however “a period of uncertainty and vacillation between the production of better plays and of cheaper pieces and operettas”   (Lifson 242). The trend toward realism initiated by Gordin and Adler was strong but counterbalanced by a return to the Hurwitz/Lateiner school of what came to be known as shund (trash).

                          If a kind of homeostasis prevailed on the Bowery during Morris’s absence, much had happened in the greater world, In Russia, an abortive revolution had been brutally quelled by a terrified ruling class. Albert Einstein had created his own revolution in science by presenting his all-encompassing Theory of Relativity. After years of seething controversy in France, Alfred Dreyfus was acquitted of treason, in the process fanning the flames of a virulent native anti-Semitism.

                        When Morris breezed into Marcus’s in the summer of 1907, he carried with him like an aura the earned reputation of solid achievement, a person to keep an eye on, a comer. He was dressed to the nines in the spiffy new clothes purchased in Chicago. At the Schwartz apartment, he’d been treated like a conquering hero, exactly as Morris had envisioned that spring day two years before on the ferry to Bridgeport. To his son’s pique, Isaac regarded Morris with characteristic misgivings, never mind the fancy duds and the money sent home to Rose.

                        Marcus’s Restaurant—more than just the mecca where patriotten like himself would press their noses to the window and gawk at the luminaries—was also where theatre managers met to clinch deals, to work out terms of a contract with the players. The arrangement “was written on a small piece of paper, regardless of whether it was a big or a small part. [. . .] How happy was the actor who could take a walk on Grand Street with a contract in his pocket, knowing that he had a job for the next season”  (Schwartz 28 June 1941).

                         Mike Thomashevsky was waiting for him at a table in the rear. He’d brought along Anshul Schor, his manager at the Green Theatre in Philadelphia. Schor, a vastly talented playwright as well, wrote over fifty dramas and musicals, in addition to managing theatres on the East Coast. He made the final decision to hire Morris, as he made most of the decisions at the Green Street. The negotiations were brief and to the point. “My wages were to be twenty-nine dollars a week, a rarity among actors at my level. I was as happy as anyone could be”  (Schwartz 28 June 1941).

Chapter Six: Greening Out in Philadelphia

                            The only person in all of Manhattan unhappy over the contract with Mike Thomashevsky was Joe Schwartzberg. After so many good and bad years together, they’d have to go separate ways, Morris now on the fast track to fame (or so they thought). Unfortunately, the Green Street Theatre had its own prompter on a thinly stretched payroll, and Joe couldn’t be hired no matter what.

                        The regulars at the Green Street were the usual Yiddish Theatre mix of long-time thespians (some excellent, others dreadful has-beens) and young climbers with the same wide range of talent. Both groups were as jealous and guarded with Schwartz as Largman’s and Glickman’s ensembles had been, not that every Yiddish theatrical company in every era wasn’t a richly complex novel overflowing with odd characters, superheated love affairs, petty intrigues, smoldering hatreds and crosscurrents of conflicting purposes.

                       This particular company boasted its own vital center of important players, Ida and Charles Nathanson. By that year, Charles had already amassed an enviable list of credits, though only 34 and already a veteran of European Yiddish Theatre. His wife Ida was a lesser light, her strong suit being Charles’s spouse. The Nathansons proved to be quite antagonistic towards Mike’s latest find, especially Ida, who immediately sniffed out a definite threat to her husband. An instant dislike blossomed between Morris and the Nathansons.

                        Anshul Schor was an able ringmaster in this circus of barely-tamed performers. He favored Mike’s new find, gave Morris the choice secondary parts opposite Charles Nathanson. While Ida would stand in the wings and mutter her discontent.

                        Turkel, the influential critic of the Philadelphia Tag was overly lavish in his praise of the newcomer. In the same column he needled Nathanson for his tendency to overact, to rant. Demonstrating a total lack of sensitivity, Morris took advantage of the column, exacerbating tensions by hanging up in the Green Street lobby an assortment of photos: Morris in the roles he hoped one day to tackle, roles he eventually did recreate elsewhere and with supreme authority, among them King Lear, Uriel Acosta and The Wild Man.

                        Though only 20 years old, Morris was no stranger to backstage chicanery and must have known the problems he was creating, especially with the Nathansons, the prideful old lions. But arrogance of the worst order was the kindest that could be said of his actions. He’d believed the flattering review by Turkel and through design or accident caused a terrible row at the Green Street. Ida cornered Mike and told him to get rid of those damned photos in the lobby, then the trouble-making upstart who’d hung them there.

                        Over the next few weeks, a power struggle took place between the rightfully indignant Nathansons and the too-self-impressed Morris, with Schor trapped in the middle. Charles and Ida threatened to quit unless the boy was fired. Which he subsequently was, only to be rehired when his absence—according to Schwartz—took its toll at the box office.

                        For the next season, the troupe relocated to the Arch Street Theatre on Seventh and Arch because their former home had been declared a fire hazard. The Arch was a stately old Greek style structure that resembled the Parthenon, with its columned front and wide stone steps. Built in 1828 as a rival to the Walnut Street and the Chestnut Street Theatres, it was once managed by Louise Drew, grandmother of the Barrymores.

                        During his short stay in Philadelphia, Morris would play every role handed him, never bothering to take an evening off, never refusing to go on for an actor who wanted an evening to himself. If he’d felt any resentment at being overworked, nothing of it surfaced in his writings. Indeed, to such an ambitious, hard-driving neophyte, the chance to show off his versatility, his wide range, was a blessing. By the end of the second season, Morris had gained enough self-assurance and expertise to take charge of a nearly defunct theatre, the Columbia, owned by Sol Dickstein, his to experiment with and resuscitate.

                        At about the same time he met Celia Adler, Jacob’s daughter by Dinah Feinman. Celia had been raised in Yiddish Theatre, first on the stage in 1892, a baby in her father’s arms. Six years later, while Morris was singing in the choir at Sudlekow, she’d been a child actress at the Thalia, appearing in Gordin’s Mirele Efros with Keni Liptzin, David Kessler and Mary Epstein, Boris Thomashevsky’s sister.

                        Morris and Celia met, and at once the sparks of common interest and sexual attraction flew between them. She was Morris’s age and very bright, extremely talented, overflowing with ambition and the passionate yen to do better than was being offered to the Yiddish Theatre patron. The company that Schwartz cobbled together for the summer of 1910 “was made up primarily of young actresses and actors who were in love with theatre. Usually, a director has problems with actors coming late to a rehearsal. This was not the case with us. Most of us would run to the theatre at nine in the morning, even though rehearsals didn’t begin until eleven “   (Adler 268).

                        This enterprise was the first evidence of Schwartz’s charismatic effect on a troupe. Initially, he tested the waters with minor stuff: sketches, a few songs from Yiddish classics, then a one-act play he wrote especially for Celia, his first. “The heroine was a young lady who couldn’t have the man she loved because he was already married and the father of two children. She arranges a party for him in her home, the only guest at the party. She drinks a glass of wine with him. The wine contains poison. They both die”  (Schwartz 29 July 1941).

                        It could have been predicted  with some degree of accuracy that Schwartz, ever the romantic, would fall head over heels for Celia. “You know what happens. You’re together day in, day out, with rehearsals and performances taking up most of the day. You become very close, almost like a family. He was for the most part very amusing, pleasant and interesting. We [. . .] became friends. Schwartz began to flirt with me and we dated”  (Adler 190).

                        At first, to Morris’s great discredit, he thought of Celia more as a prize to be won than as a young, lovely, vital actress on his wavelength. The reason was a matter of naked ambition. Joe Schoengold, a fellow actor, was also a close friend who became Jacob Adler’s son-in-law. “I wished him the best, but I started to feel jealous. Adler was a king and now Schoengold had become a prince and would perform the best roles after Adler died. Joe would become his heir. I wasn’t concerned about the money, just the plays”  (Schwartz 29 July 1941).

                        Again Schwartz revealed his dark , self-serving, monomaniacal side. Love of theatre superceded every other form of that emotion, even self-love. Over the years, this obsession would surface so many times, in so many ways, that everyone who knew him took it for granted.

                        Between rehearsals at the Columbia, the actor and actress would meet for lunch at Childs. She’d order a sandwich, while he’d have only a cup of coffee. He’d tell Celia he wasn’t hungry, but later she learned that he hadn’t enough money for two meals. Obviously, running the Columbia Theatre wasn’t a very financially rewarding endeavor. Before long, any thought of becoming a prince like Joe Schoengold had vanished, consumed by his growing passion for Celia. And the more he pursued her, the more elusive and evasive she grew. Morris was certain of the reason. “Although Celia didn’t hate me, she was thinking of her future. Her family had suffered enough in the theatre and her mother Dinah used to say, ‘Get married to a man who can give you and your children a satisfying piece of bread’ “  (Schwartz 29 July 1941).

                        Undoubtedly Celia liked and at times loved the marvelously entertaining young man—but not as a husband. His future prospects may have been good, but managing the Columbia was more a labor of love than a means of support. In her memoirs, Ms. Adler recorded her ambivalence toward the relentless actor. “Schwartz was the first grownup young man that courted me, showing me signs of genuine love [. . .]. Was it true love? Or is that how a young girl feels when experiencing her first relationship, when she is standing face to face with a real love affair? My heart refused to answer me”  (273).

                         An incident was supposed to have taken place that, if accurate, confounds the writer seeking clues to the true character of this brilliant and protean figure. Celia and Dinah were preparing to go to Lodz to have erected a headstone on Papa Feinman’s grave. (He’d died there on stage a few years earlier.) Morris paid a call on them to say bon voyage, and to inform them that come the fall, he might be working for David Kessler, in the new theatre being constructed for him on Second Avenue, a half-mile north of the Bowery playhouses. Despite her cruel toying with his affections in the past, Morris had pressed on, hounding her for a commitment. Celia, as usual, put him off again, at least until her return from Poland.

                         On the boat during the long sea voyage to Europe, alone with her mother, Celia broached the general topic of Morris Schwartz. Wisely, she didn’t bring up the subject of marriage, discussing only his talent as an actor. Then, in Poland, in the mingling with Yiddish Theatre people, Celia overheard her mother state as fact the impending marriage of her daughter to ‘that up and coming actor, Morris Schwartz.’ A short while later, in her hotel room, Celia dashed off a letter to Morris, telling of her mother’s approval at long last.

                         The next morning an envelope arrived from Schwartz containing only an invitation to the wedding of Morris Schwartz and Eva Rafalo.

                         Eva Rafalo? Celia knew of her as the 19-year-old sister of Clara Rafalo from Cincinnati, and also an actress. After rereading many times the invitation, she handed it to Dinah. Not another word on that subject was spoken on the interminable journey home, though Celia thought of nothing else, a blend of outrage and shame making her mute and morose. Her first evening back in Manhattan, the pending bridegroom, according to Celia, paid her a visit. His eyes were full of guilt and he was unable to offer a satisfactory explanation for his actions, for diddling her for so long, for the inexplicable deception. Incoherent rambling was the best he could come up with.

                        Years later, Sol Dickstein, owner of the Columbia, told Celia that the man who claimed to adore her had been engaged to Eva for two years, long before he’d come to Philadelphia. Vastly more experienced and infinitely wiser by then, Celia felt no pain, no anger.

                          Actually, Morris and Eva did wed, but the marriage lasted no longer than most honeymoons. From Schwartz’s account of his rather shabby treatment of Bella, the beauty he’d run out on to answer Glickman’s call, she may very well have been Eva Rafalo, both women being from Cincinnati and grocers’ daughters.

                        In the autumn of this pivotal year of Morris’s life, he cryptically announced to the cast at the Columbia that he has to rush to New York and would tell everybody why later, after he got back. The reason was his friend Sholom Perlmutter, Kessler’s prompter, sent for him pronto. “You’re in luck, Morris. You now have the chance to become famous overnight. But you have to learn the role of the attorney in Madame X overnight”  (Schwartz 16 Aug. 1941).

                         The French play by Alexandre Bisson, written in 1908, is a sudsy piece about a woman who is forced to abandon husband and child, then descends into a life of crime. Twenty years later, she re-emerges as the murderer of a man intent on harming her son, who happens by chance to act as her defense attorney. As things occurred in the tight community of Yiddish Theatre, Morris Morrison, his friend and co-performer at the Arch Street had a leading part in the piece and was asked to recommend someone special to play the lawyer. Kessler was out of town on tour and the final choice was left to Perlmutter.

                             “The idea of acting in New York for the first time, so suddenly, without rehearsal or preparation was like trying to swim across the ocean in a couple of hours”  (Schwartz 16 Aug. 1941). Nevertheless, Schwartz left Philadelphia at once. Perlmutter met him at the station, took Morris to his apartment on Avenue A, stuffed him with food, then fed him the lines he had to master by the next day. They remained at the impossible task until 2 AM, until Morris and the attorney had fused into one, until the actor felt confident enough for a visit backstage at the Thalia to meet the cast. Over Sholom’s objections. He didn’t want the boy parading himself before Kessler’s troupe, knowing what bloodthirsty sharks they were, worse than Ida Nathanson. For more than mere sport, they’d pick him apart, enjoy the feeding frenzy.

                        Perlmutter fought Morris as long as possible then consented. At the Thalia, Morris learned how correct the prompter had been. “When I went to my dressing room, the actor Leibush Gold offered me a welcome. ‘Just who are you, kid’ he asked icily, then launched a string of colorful insults”  (Schwartz 20 Aug. 1941). A second actor and Kessler’s other prompter added their corrosive comments to Gold’s. The combined object was to make Schwartz’s one-time-only New York debut as difficult as possible, perhaps even keep the outsider on the outside.

                         Disregarding everything but the chance to excel, Morris eagerly went on that evening. “I played my part with confidence, as if I’d already played the part a hundred times. I did a great job [. . .] not like an actor, but rather like a real young lawyer”  (Schwartz 20 Aug. 1941).

                        Schwartz claimed receiving ten curtain calls (an exaggeration?) accepting the audience’s adulation, but the attempt to intimidate him by Kessler’s crew, then going onstage to give his all, took its toll. After the final bow, he retreated to his dressing room, where he collapsed in a chair, trembling, unable to remove his makeup. He expected a panic attack, but if it took place, it was short-lived, ended by Max Wilner, Kessler’s son-in-law and business partner. He burst into the room, lavish with praise, promising that as soon as Kessler returned to New York, there’d be a contract signing. Guaranteed.

Chapter Seven: "He Was a Bad Teacher, a Mean Teacher."

                       Exhilarated after his one-night triumph, Morris returned to Philadelphia, still on an Alpine high. His fellow actors were more than warm in their congratulations, the news having reached the city faster than the train. Those he wanted most to impress: Celia and her mother were cordial but cool. Dinah however remained firm in her unwillingness to consider him a suitor. Was it his profession still, or the sticky marriage he’d gotten into and out of in record time? Waiting at home for him was a letter from Perlmutter. “Come to New York tomorrow. Kessler wants to hire you. Twelve noon at the Thalia. Don’t expect anything big because Kessler wants everything for almost nothing”  (Schwartz 22 Aug. 1941).

                        He would be returning to New York in grand style after having spent six years in the hinterlands, learning his craft, perfecting other theatrical skills, surviving overly critical audiences, pouting prima donnas of both sexes, and managers better suited to run a cotton plantation—all while keeping body and spirit together on subsistence wages. He’d be arriving at the epicenter of his chosen world, and nothing or no one would keep him from claiming what was his by virtue of skill and hard work. This would be his posture with Kessler, he told himself.

                        Next day at noon at the Thalia “Kessler looked me over with his big, evil-looking eyes that were always bursting with fire, even when he was easy to get along with. His pupils were fixed in one direction, joining his thick black eyebrows, surrounded in a sea of white, like a thief in the forest”  (Schwartz 27 Aug. 1941).

                         Kessler opened with a compliment, recalling one of Morris’s top-notch performances at the Arch Street Theatre. That out of the way, Kessler shouted for his manager to write up a contract for thirty dollars a week, thirty five dollars the next season if Kessler liked him, if he lasted. End of negotiations.

                        In the fall, Schwartz pulled up stakes and returned to New York, eager to get started. As the Second Avenue Theatre was not yet completed, Kessler and company took up temporary residence at the much less impressive Lyric Theatre on Siegel Street in Brooklyn, a thoroughfare lined with stores and pushcarts. Now part of this first-rate troupe in its second-rate theatre, Morris soon discovered that David Kessler was no absentee owner like Largman and Glickman, men more interested in being flashy promoters than dedicated managers. The boss proved to be a hands-on tyrant, an impossible taskmaster, a blusterer in dealing with his actors, cursing and ridiculing them soundly, publicly, in Yiddish, Russian and English. “He was a bad teacher, a mean teacher, who wouldn’t explain, but a teacher from whom I could learn a lot. [. . .]Almost all those who played with him grew to be—some more, some less—actors with well-defined tastes for better acting. His mockery often pushed actors to do better”  (Bialin 7).

                        On September 1, 1911, Kessler’s Second Avenue Theatre opened with befitting hoopla and ceremony. Mayor William Jay Gaynor, one of New York City’s most colorful characters, was on hand, as well as a host of Jewish and Christian dignitaries. The theatre, the finest of it time, was completely modern, with sinfully plush seats and an overhanging balcony for special guests. Kessler had thought in terms of a larger, more refined, better-incomed trade to see him perform. Max Wilner thought only of the bigger box office revenue the change in location would generate. For the premiere, Kessler chose a safe bet, or so he thought: God, Man and Devil. At higher prices than the Thalia would fetch.

                        “The opening was a total fiasco. The management counted on a very huge audience. But they made a gigantic miscalculation. The crowd had already seen [the play] and were not in a rush to pay the higher prices”  (Schwartz 20 Sept 1941). But this would change as other, fresher plays were given and accepted by the public. Business picked up, and more restaurants opened close by to accommodate the increased traffic. Following Kessler’s lead, other Yiddish playhouses would open along the avenue , from First to Fourteenth Street, thus shifting the geographic center of Yiddish Theatre.

                        For the length of his contract, from 1911 to 1913, Morris accepted every role demanded of him by his mentor, a man Schwartz came to love and admire despite his glaring faults. With two productive years under his belt, Morris decided that the time was ripe to obtain his Hebrew Actors Union card, the indisputable badge of legitimacy for Yiddish actors. It would be an undeniable entry into the charmed circle, the steep mountain to be conquered before he could be considered an actor. As has already been established, those within the union did their utmost to keep out those attempting to enter, regardless of ability. The first obstacle for Morris was the one hundred and fifty dollar fee, a near impossible sum for a struggling performer. It was overcome after Morris importuned  his mother, Mendl and a cluster of relatives to pony up the cash, strictly as a loan. Not a cent came from Isaac, who was dead set against throwing away good money in a hopeless cause.

                       The test was scheduled at the union office at 108 Second Avenue, two blocks from the theatre. Morris was given fourteen days to prepare material sent him. He’d be doing monologues from Shomer’s Ezekiel Mazik that had been first directed by Boris Thomashevsky in 1911, starring Rudolph Schildkraut. His friends had two weeks to do some serious politicking to change minds already made up, their votes predetermined. Disregarding the obvious, Morris threw himself into perfecting his material, naïve enough to believe that by sheer ability alone he’d prevail. It was the only game in town, and he had to be one of the players.

                       The day of the test arrived. The union hall was abuzz with actors and actresses who’d known him personally or by reputation during his two seasons with Kessler, most of them avid to trim the upstart’s sails. In fact, they considered it their solemn duty to man the barricades against all invaders, no matter the fact that in the years immediately prior to the First World War, Yiddish Theatre in general was robust, with playhouses proliferating on Second Avenue and spreading to Brooklyn and the Bronx.

                        The test was scheduled for 3 PM. Long before, the noise began as idle chatter and kept rising steadily like water filling a tub. Heated arguments for and against Morris reverberated throughout the room. There were no neutrals. ”The hall was dark. The small electric bulb didn’t illuminate it properly. I saw the audience as in a fog or steam bath. I avoided the actors’ faces and did my monologue with fire and clarity”  (Schwartz 27 Sept. 1941). And when he was done, drained of his boundless energy, he held his breath and waited, nerves frayed to tenuous threads, skittish as a condemned man awaiting an eleventh-hour reprieve from the governor.

                        Overwhelmingly, he was rejected by a vote of 96 to 11.

                        David Kessler was livid when he heard that his favorite protégé had been so badly treated. He took Morris aside, tried comforting him, but without success. Heartsick, Morris couldn’t help wondering if his bright future at the Second Avenue Theatre hadn’t been suddenly eclipsed. Needless worry, as Kessler, who may have been a martinet, was also a loyal friend. He wasn’t about to abandon the fine young actor he’d been cultivating for two years, who could be depended upon to handle any role and at a moment’s notice. He ordered Max Wilner to draw up a new contract for the 1913-1914 season that included a ten-dollar raise. Morris could hardly express his gratitude.

                        Within days after his rejection, Morris was urged by Uncle Mendl to apply for a second test. After a short healing period, he contacted the union and was granted permission to try again. So what would change the votes of those who’d turned thumbs down on him before? He would, by doing even better than before, so smashingly that they’d have to feel remorse and  welcome him in.

                        For the second test however Morris realized that he had to work behind the scene to improve his chance at acceptance, to build a groundswell, as if he were running for Congress. Uncle Mendl, who’d grown extremely knowledgeable about theatre, suggested they go see Abe Cahan, the chief editor of the Forward and the most powerful force in New York Yiddish culture. Mendl told his nephew that no one knew better than Cahan who was talented and who wasn’t. With large measures of hope and fear, Morris went to face the revered giant in his castle at The Forward Building on East Broadway. He’d met Cahan before, in Chicago, at a labor benefit dinner, and recognized him at once as the person contributing most to the overall betterment of American Jewry. He also admired Cahan as a drama critic who favored the kind of theatre that was “an expression of life experience, not just amusement material”  (Schwartz 8 Oct. 1941).

                        Morris screwed up his courage and entered The Forward Building. In the lobby, he nearly changed his mind, recalling how Cahan would terrorize the blustering David Kessler after the actor presented shund plays or strayed from the printed text. Whenever the feared editor was expected to attend a performance, Kessler would diligently bone up on the dialogue and never improvise. With a few strokes of his pen, Cahan could make or break a play. Berating his  own chutzpah, Schwartz entered the Managing Editor’s outer office. He stood in limbo, listening to Cahan in his private office, barking out orders to Hillel Rogoff, his assistant editor, a proven maven himself in Yiddish cultural affairs. A second editor, Leon Gottlieb, approached Morris, asked the lad what he wanted.

                        With admirable self-command, Schwartz identified himself and explained his purpose in coming. Gottlieb listened patiently, then his expression changed from indifference to interest. He knew of the young actor and his problem with the Hebrew Actors Union. Offering sympathy, he led Morris into Cahan’s office, the sanctuary of the almighty arbiter of Jewish culture in America.

                        “Schwartz? Schwartz ?” Cahan plumbed his mind. “Where is he playing? What is he playing in? A newcomer to America?” he asked gruffly  (Schwartz 15 Oct.1941). However, Cahan instantly regretted his slight. He asked Gottlieb what roles had the twenty five year-old played? The assistant editor rattled off a few and Cahan promised to visit Kessler’s theatre very soon to catch the performer. He conceded that Yiddish Theatre could use a transfusion of new blood.

                        ‘Very soon,’ was too indefinite for Morris, as the second test was fast approaching. He asked if he could audition for Cahan here and now, only a few minutes needed to show his stuff, He’d done the same for Elias Glickman. Cahan didn’t object, warming at once to the plea. “A talented actor can perform in a restaurant, even in his home, while a non-talent couldn’t be helped with a crown and a royal costume”  (Schwartz 15 Oct. 1941).

                         Emboldened, Morris gave his audience of two a sample of what he would present to the union: one of Chatzel Drachma’s monologues from God, Man and Devil. He blocked out everything from his mind—the editor’s office, the minimal audience, his previous failure—and gave a superb rendition. When Chatzel became Morris once more, the chief editor ordered Gottlieb to find out why Schwartz had been denied his due.

                         The morning of the second test, a Friday the union hall was packed; many more had shown up for this test than the last. Not only the actor-members, but critics, theatre managers and owners. It was a true Lower East Side happening, and one of the attending journalists quipped that Schwartz couldn’t hope for a larger turnout at his own funeral, which in a large sense this might be should he fail again. If he’d given a bravura performance for Cahan, Morris gave an even more spectacular rendition this Friday afternoon, pulling out all the stops and holding back nothing. Cooling off after, he sweated out the ballot counting alone, with only his thoughts and emotions.

                        He’d won, and by a razor-thin margin, and though he was saddened by how many had voted against him, he was elated that at last he’d have a union card, He could now play in any Yiddish theatre and with a salary more commensurate with his skills. Relaxed and buoyed by his victory, he dove into new roles, expanding his repertoire, learning, always learning, growing. Friends warned him against getting too cocky, too full of himself. There still existed many who couldn’t abide him for his talent, his aggressiveness. Modesty was always required, and a union card was no free pass to become careless or lazy.

                         During the years from 1911 to 1918, while Schwartz was serving his apprenticeship with David Kessler, not very much progress was made in the cause of a more literary Yiddish Theatre. Any sincere trend in this direction was met by three forces of resistance present since the very beginning, when the Hebrew Opera and Dramatic Company presented The Witch at Turn Hall on East 4^th Street in 1882.

                        The first serious obstacle was the all-pervasive influence of the star system, where the leading player would appropriate a role whether or not it dramatically suited him. “The stars of great talent such as Adler and Kessler could really portray the role and the public would believe them. But with it they set a bad example for those who came after them, when performers with scant talent permitted themselves to attempt the same”  (Adler 86). With these lesser talents and even with the brightest luminaries, Yiddish Theatre was shortchanged in the fare offered the public. The star, who was often the manager and the director, would decide the play and the cast regardless of suitability. The piece’s author was frequently forced to tailor the role to the star's tastes.

                        In effect, what ‘starism’ did was smother the star’s rivals in the very circumscribed and competitive world where opportunity for advancement was severely limited and the laws of the jungle prevailed. The result of course was not the play being the thing, but who the star was.

                        The second detriment to the more creative theatre movement initiated by Jacob Gordin was the benefit ticket system. Traditionally, new plays were reserved for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but to keep the playhouse alive and solvent during the week, ‘literary’ plays and experimental works were presented then. These benefit audiences were often first-timers, introduced to Yiddish Theatre by the sponsors of the various organizations, clubs, benevolent associations and labor unions that working class Jews belonged to. Discounts to these groups ranged as high as seventy-five percent, while tickets to their members were resold at full price, the difference used to support that particular group. The money given to theatre managers went a long way to cover a weekly nut of from three to five-thousand dollars.

                         With benefit money so vital, it’s no wonder that theatre managers did their best to please the organizations’ sponsors with known, pre-sold winners, with what had always worked in the past and was sure to work well in the future. With working class audiences in the majority and quite content with shund, small wonder that the fare presented held little cultural or  literary value. It was the same material that had enthralled Uncle Mendl.

                            And lastly, Yiddish Theatre stagnated because of the mindset of its managers, who “were obligated to satisfy the committees [. . .] and the societies that purchased the benefit performances for their organizations. Thus the theatre benefit trade governed the repertoire of the established theatres”  (Lifson 252).

                       Jacob Gordin was dead by 1908 and his influence after waning. Shund reigned supreme once more, if it indeed it had ever abated. Only Kessler, Adler and occasionally Thomashevsky kept the flame alive by resurrecting Gordin’s better plays, and by offering—if only rarely—younger playwrights such as Leon Kobrin, Sholem Asch, Ossip Dymov and David Pinski, all of whom were trying mightily to break into the profession.

                        Yiddish Theatre may have been stuck in neutral, but American Theatre was beginning to stir itself—not on Broadway, but off the beaten track. In 1915, The Neighborhood Playhouse was started on Grand and Pitt Streets by the Lewisohn sisters, as an outgrowth of the Henry Street Settlement House. The Playhouse, designed specifically as a holy shrine for art pieces, presented the Jewish community on the Lower East Side with the newest and finest in English-speaking and Yiddish plays. A year earlier, the Washington Square Players developed from the elite intellectual group known as The Liberal Club, a theatrical company that offered full-length plays that ran counter to the mostly inane pap appearing on Broadway. Among the playwrights introduced were Eugene O’Neill, George Bernard Shaw, Chekhov and Maeterlinck. Later, it would transmute itself into the Theatre Guild.

                        A third movement toward better theatre during this period was the Provincetown Playhouse on Cape Cod, but transplanted to Greenwich Village. At first, one-acters were given, then full-length works by O’Neill, John Reed, Maxwell Bodenheim and Paul Green. More than strictly a theatre company, the Provincetown was also a laboratory for training young playwrights and taking risks on experimental works.

                        But with the coming of a cataclysmic war, there were also changes that would filter down to Yiddish Theatre. The younger generation was replacing the old, even as the old ways hung on like survivors clinging to a life raft. For a while immigration was halted as the war intensified. With their ancestral homes cut off, Jews turned their attention to the very circumstances of living in America. The new Yiddish playwrights, reflecting the changes, would begin to place more and more emphasis on surviving in the Golden Medina. Theatre people like Morris Schwartz would sense the shift in wind direction and chafe at doing the same old things in the same old ways. When the time was right, they would rise up and take action.

Chapter Eight: “I’ll Be Looking For Greener Pastures.”

                        The assassination in 1914 of Arch Duke Ferdinand in the Bosnian city of Sarajevo ignited a powder keg that had been smoldering for decades. With Europe devastated by conflict, America was transformed into democracy’s arsenal, its factories from coast to coast turning out supplies to feed the Allies’ war machine. Employment, prices for all goods and services, profits, and the pace of life in America rose, and with everything else, America’s influence and power in the world.

                        Rising too in the swell of prosperity was Yiddish Theatre, especially at David Kessler’s Second Avenue Theatre. In every Jewish restaurant and store along the Avenue, photographs of Kessler’s troupe adorned the walls as if they were saints and presidents. Not only did East Siders flock to see the newest Kessler piece, but Jews from every neighborhood in New York came in droves.

                        In May of 1914, after the season ended and the war in Europe was but a month away, Morris married Anna Bordofsky, a twenty-four-year-old, oddly beautiful girl from Brest-Litovsk in Russia, where the treaty ending hostilities between Germany and Russia would be signed three years later. She’d been in America for a decade. The marriage was to last, despite enormous pressures on it, over forty-six years, ended only by Schwartz’s death in 1960. About their courtship, little is known, though if Morris was true to form, it must have been a rocky one, the suitor a man of strong, often ungovernable emotions. They’d met during Morris’s apprenticeship at the Second Avenue Theatre. She may have been an incipient actress originally, but becoming and remaining Mrs. Schwartz, appealed more to her than a career in the limelight. They were, like so many other couples, young, poor and wildly in love. Together, they shared the same dream of success and fame.

                       On the surface, everything seemed rosy at the Second Avenue Theatre, but inches below, a veritable cauldron of intrigue as convoluted as a Balkan political plot was eroding the playhouse and the man whose name was part of the title. Though David Kessler happened to be divorced, with a young daughter to raise, he’d met and fallen in love with Rachel Wilner, a recently divorced woman, mother of five and proprietor of Wilner’s Full Dress Parlor, a highly regarded ladies shop on the Lower East Side. After a tempestuous courtship, they married. At once, David opened his magnanimous arms and embraced Rachel’s children, especially her two sons, Max and Harry, installing them at the Thalia, Max as manager, Harry in the box office.

                       As with most family-operated businesses, there were plenty of problems besides those engendered by the normal routine of commerce. Morris did his best to remain aloof from the constant bickering between David and Max. Instead, pupil and teacher jousted on the higher plane of theatre: the plays selected, the shund Kessler presented to pay the bills, and the basic acting techniques that marked their differences. “I brought books to Kessler to demonstrate that it’s not the actor’s role to cry on stage, but to make the audience weep. I would give examples from Shakespeare [. . .] but Kessler was not convinced. He claimed that talented actors do not depend on books to teach them how to act”  (Schwartz 18 Nov. 1941).

                         Easily ignited, especially after a run-in with Rachel’s sons, Kessler would strike out blindly, embarrass his protégé during rehearsals over interpretation, use of body motions, inflection of voice. The exchange would end in Kessler blowing up, becoming furious, then lighting a cigar before executing an about-face and stalking off somewhere to puff away and decompress in isolation. Leaving Schwartz to carry on as best he could, feelings battered, faith shaken, muttering to himself and wondering how much longer would he be able to tolerate the giant who was being hewn down little by little each day. In seething anger, Schwartz silently swore, “I’ll be looking for green pastures”  (Schwartz 18 Nov. 1941).

                        Yet there were times he and Kessler got along splendidly. And hadn’t David Kessler been his greatest champion in an hour of extreme need? Gratitude however can be the most fleeting of emotions, and the truth was Schwartz had been experiencing growing pains as an artist, and as a young husband with higher ambitions.

                           Joseph Edelstein prided himself on knowing what was happening in every Yiddish theatre in New York. He was one of those clever non-acting theatre owners who’d made several fortunes by giving the Yiddish public what it wanted, which was cheap, lugubrious melodrama. Concerned only with the bottom line “he was no expert in acting, but was an excellent businessman. His definition of the theatre was a comparison with a grocery store. When a customer came in to buy bagels, cheese, herring or sour milk, he had to be treated nicely. The same should apply to the theatre”  (Schwartz 18 Nov. 1941).

                        Out of desperation to escape Kessler’s often stifling orbit, Morris secretly agreed to meet Joe Edelstein at the Actors Club for lunch. Right off, the very direct Edelstein offered to feature him at the People’s, one of Edelstein’s properties, in better plays, as well as the troupe’s manager. Joe had pushed all of Schwartz’s buttons, dazzling him. He’d be onstage at the legendary People’s, which still had a reputation for grandeur. The salary proposed was $120 a week, far more than Kessler was paying him. Persuaded, overwhelmed actually, Morris signed on the dotted line. He knew full well however that he’d have to eventually face those advocates—led by Cahan—for better theatre, who would be gunning for him should Edelstein fail to live up to his promises. But Joe was a man of his word, a rara avis among his fellow owners.

                        At his first rehearsal next season of Libin’s The Angry Mother-in-law, Morris realized he’d made a horrible mistake. The play was worse than terrible, and at the first reading with full cast, he asked himself why he’d left Kessler. A strong sense of shame overcame him and he’d give anything to undo the damage, to return to the Second Avenue. Alone with Anna, his new bride, he admitted his recklessness. He’d been an overreaching fool who’d made an unwise career move. From the very start, she’d tried reasoning with him when he told her of his intention to sign with Edelstein. She’d cautioned that shifting to the People’s would prove to be a step backwards. His future and the future of Yiddish Theatre, his kind of Yiddish Theatre, resided on Second Avenue.

                        This was a pattern to be repeated throughout Schwartz’s career: Anna the prudent businessperson offering sound advice, Morris the impractical hothead, never fully considering the hazards, the end results. It is said with much accuracy that Schwartz would never have been able to remain afloat financially without Anna. She took full charge of the checkbook and the province of dimes and dollars. Inspiration was his forte, not practicality. He would never have soared so high if Anna didn’t provide the ballast to anchor him to earth.

                        To everyone’s surprise except Edelstein’s, the play and Schwartz scored big. After the piece’s full run however, the obligation to Joe considered met, Morris asked for and received a release from his contract. Not long after, Morris was summoned to Kessler’s dressing room. A warm embrace from the master—and a question: when would Morris be ready to work again? So Schwartz returned to the fold, doing loads of shund, but also performing in the quality plays he loved. For the 1915-1916 season, he was allowed to coordinate a benefit evening for himself.

                        Actors’ benefits were a vital part of a Yiddish performer’s income. They were labeled ‘honor nights,’ which was less ignoble-sounding than charity. When an actor signed contract at the beginning of the season, there would always be a clause entitling him such an evening and from half to all the receipts. “Ambitious actors would do it because on that evening they would appear in roles they wanted to play but couldn’t otherwise because of their status in the theatre. For others, it was simply a matter of making the few hundred dollars they needed so badly”  (Adler 125). With Schwartz, it was never the money but always the chance to do good theatre and shine at it. For his first benefit, he chose Ibsen’s Ghosts, assigning the plum role of Oswald to himself.

                        Schwartz reported that the benefit was an unqualified success despite a prediction of failure from David Kessler. When Morris had arranged the evening and told his boss what play he’d chosen, Kessler warned him in his usual caustic manner against presenting such radically far out material, especially from a non-Jewish, humorless playwright. Not a song, nor a dance, nor a single laugh in the entire script. Benefits, Kessler reminded him, were for filling the theatre using accepted crowd-pleasers in order to maximize the receipts, even if the play was    ancient and shopworn. But as he’d done in the past, and during his entire career, Schwartz defied the obvious, the traditional, the accepted wisdom of his elders, and went with his own internal soundings.

                        The morning after the benefit, Kessler greeted him with an off-putting comment “So, you took the audience with drums and trumpets. From now on you’ll have to keep them on a high plateau. You’ve poisoned them with literature. They won’t accept less”  (Schwartz 18 Nov. 1941). In one of his blackest and bitterest moods, perhaps weary of trying to enlighten an audience that only wanted to be entertained, Kessler had revealed his contempt for them. Of course there was no way for Schwartz to know that many years later he too would become as depleted and disheartened as Kessler, though he’d never grow disillusioned with the idea of mounting great theatre, never surrender to cynicism about the Yiddish playgoer’s lack of intelligence or his desire to be honestly moved, even if that special audience would slowly melt away.

                       The more enmeshed in these benefit evenings he became, the more Morris loved the involvement. He was able to use the many skills required in cherrypicking the cast, holding meetings to discuss interpretation of the main theme and the individual characters, the production details, the lighting, choice of music and the myriad of secondary people to deal with. Then the next level of rehearsing with his actors and actresses. He found that he actually relished the initial chaos then bringing order out of it, something akin to what God did in creating His world, but longer and with more confusion. He could only admire how the lesser deities such as Adler, Thomashevsky and his own Kessler would do it over and over again, season after season. It was after one of these ambitious projects that Morris knew he’d be leaving Kessler again, and this time permanently. Kessler was rapidly falling apart, and with him, the theatre he’d built. He was becoming more and more indifferent, giving mechanical performances on stage. By 1917, the sad, embattled titan was relying to a great extent on inferior material, much to Schwartz’s disgust. “I have to escape a theatre that permits such mediocre plays, an offense to an actor, an artist. I have to save myself”  (Schwartz 22 Nov. 1941).

                         In defense of David Kessler, the man was suffering enormously with family problems that seemed to have no solution. He became bogged down in a long and acrimonious lawsuit with Max Wilner and lost his beloved playhouse, which bore more than merely his name. Banished from the premises, Kessler became a journeyman actor, rootless after decades of being practically an institution.

                         While negotiations had been going on to have Kessler ousted—he’d refused to sign the documents, insisting that his name must be first removed from the theatre everywhere it appeared—Morris stepped into the vacuum created by the turmoil. He directed a few plays with himself in the starring role. The news in the cafes on the Bowery and along Second Avenue (probably spread by Wilner) heralded the rise of the youthful successor and of the revamped theatre.

                        With Kessler’s departure a done deal, Morris met with him to say he’d be leaving too, in a show of solidarity. Perhaps this was merely a token gesture, an attempt to make up for deserting Kessler a couple of years before. Deeply touched, Kessler could only respond with abject silence, his eyes becoming pools of tears. If the beau geste was indeed made, the fact remains that after Kessler had been aced out of his own house, Morris did not leave in his wake. Wilner, now in full command, asked Morris to take over Kessler’s favorite roles. According to Schwartz, he refused flat out, but was ordered to by Hershel Zuckerberg, the genial but dictatorial head of the Hebrew Actors Union. The Second Avenue couldn’t survive a second hole in its troupe, Zuckerberg was said to have told him. Dozens would be thrown out of work.

                        And so Morris stayed, for reasons known only to himself, ambition surely high on the list. A marriage of convenience, he called it though Celia Adler detected the realpolitik in the arrangement. “In a word, Wilner saw Schwartz as his winning lottery ticket for the future of his business in the Yiddish Theatre. No sooner had he thrown Kessler out of his theatre than did he make Schwartz his right hand. He allowed him to be the director at the Second Avenue Theatre until the end of the season”  (426).

                       The year Kessler was booted from his tiny kingdom, Czar Nicholas was evicted from a much vaster one. On March 5^th, 1917, the Russian Revolution began with rioting and strikes over food shortages and the nation’s continued participation in the war. Jews the world over rejoiced at the prospect of the hated Romanovs losing their thrones. The Great War had been in progress for three horrific years, and finally on April 6^th, America entered the fray. By June, the first divisions of the AEF landed in France, commanded by General John J. Pershing, whose nickname was ‘Blackjack’ because he’d once led a regiment of Negro soldiers. Before this bloody year was over, in September, Kerensky would proclaim Russia a republic, only to be overthrown two months later by Lenin and his Bolsheviks.

                        The world was changing precipitously and forever.

Chapter Nine: “The Theatre Must Be a Sort of Sacred Place.”

                         “Everything is in a tumult over the great bomb that the young actor Morris Schwartz threw at the Yiddish Theatre. We mean about Schwartz becoming a director and securing a lease on the German Irving Place Theatre on 14^th Street,” wrote A Theatre Patriote (a pen name) in the Forward. ”Many old theatrical producers have been going around trying to secure a theatre and then suddenly, just like that, a young actor gets a theatre”  (15 Feb. 1918).

                        It was by no means ‘just like that,’ capturing a playhouse in an expanding market with a limited number of sites (eight regular theatres and two presenting a mix of vaudeville and motion pictures) in Manhattan and Brooklyn, all of them set to open for the 1918-1919 season.

                        Toward the close of 1917, Schwartz told his boss, the surviving member of the Kessler/Wilner partnership, that it would be his final season at the Second Avenue. He was through playing trash and planned to open his own shop dedicated to the classics. Max expressed his regret at losing the very excellent young man who’d done quite nicely as temporary director and general all round actor. Nailing down the Irving Place Theatre would be an impossibility, Wilner told his brash employee, houses being so scarce, and this particular one owned by a Gentile. But the more Wilner considered losing Schwartz—who would certainly siphon off his best players to the bargain, perhaps even open up within walking distance of the theatre wrested from Kessler—the more interesting the move became. Wilner wondered how the loss might be turned into a gain.

                        “He asked me how much money I had. I replied about $2000 of my own and another $2000 I could borrow. Wilner said get your share and I’ll invest from $10,000 to $12,000. We’ll become partners” (Schwartz 26 Nov. 1941). Whether Wilner actually believed this overly aggressive hustler would actually obtain a lease on the Irving Place is moot. The point was, Schwartz believed it and went about the serious business of getting one, as if he believed that wanting something and getting it were parts of the same continuum.

                        In his free, restless hours, Morris had often dropped in to observe the German plays at the Irving Place Theatre and got to know Rudolph Christians, its producer. He knew that hard times had fallen on the playhouse because of the wartime anti-German sentiment sweeping the nation, despite twenty-seven successful years in operation. Morris had also met Dr. Max Winder, its business manager, who’d listened to Schwartz’s plan and suggested he go to the building’s owner and make an offer. The theatre was in a deep financial hole, losing money steadily. The owner, General Sessions Court Judge Thomas Crain was not interested in a deal however. He was willing to tough out the war now that the American doughboys were there to clean up the mess. With peace and the anti-German prejudice subsiding, things would be back to normal in short order. Morris made his pitch regardless, presenting letters of recommendation from Christians and Winder.

                       Perhaps Schwartz’s brass and elan changed the Judge’s mind. More likely it was the sea of red ink the Irving Place Theatre was drowning in. A month later, Crain sent Morris a proposal offering a ten-year lease at a fair rent, an eleven-year renewal option, and a request for $5000 as security deposit. “I ran to Wilner like a crazy one, and he told me to get my $4000. I brought him the money, then his lawyer took over. Like an inexperienced actor, I kept signing papers”  (Schwartz 26 Nov. 1941). Later, Morris was to discover that the contract he so willingly signed without benefit of his own attorney loaded the deck in Wilner’s favor. Naively, he believed that Wilner would give him carte blanche to create an Art Theatre, one with choice actors and worthy plays.

                        Much too soon, the lack of marketplace acumen and the absence of an attorney was to cost Schwartz dearly. Anna was not involved in the contract signing and therefore could not voice an objection to its one-sidedness. It is doubtful, had she expressed a negative opinion, if Morris would have listened. He was totally hypnotized by the thought of having his own troupe like Kessler and Jacob Adler, except his would be better, truer to his own ideals. He’d avoid the pitfalls of playing down to the public with shund. The fine points and small print in the contract were of minor importance by comparison.

                        In February, the Theatre Patriote of the Forward, noting Schwartz’s fantastic coup, expressed a measure of mistrust about what Morris would do with the Irving Place, having seen other fiery young reformers come and go over the years. “Any day, he’ll outline his plans. Our young actors and actresses, Schwartz will snap up [. . .]. Then we’ll see if they go into the new temple and play new things, or if they will fall back on the old theatrical tricks”  (15 Feb. 1918).

                        The ink barely dry on the contract, Morris began a high-powered campaign to generate interest in his dream come to fruition. A manifesto of sorts appeared simultaneously on March 2^nd in both the Day (the second most influential Yiddish paper in New York) and in the Forward, under the provocative title: “Can New York Support a Better Yiddish Theatre?”  It began provocatively: “For the last few years there’s been a lot of talk about plans to open a people’s theatre [. . .] where one could stage better plays. In that time, I’ve been carrying around in me this plan to put together a company that will be devoted to performing superior literary works that will bring honor to the Yiddish Theatre”  (Day 2 March 1918).

                       After a long, rambling discourse on theatre economics and other problems in operating a theatre in the current business climate, he formally announced that he’d secured the Irving Place Theatre. That stated, Schwartz went on to outline his own agenda for successful, quality theatre based on smaller operating costs in a smaller playhouse. It included a grandiose program of not only superior artist and superior play, but the installing of a subscription so that a foundation of involved  audience members would be in place as a source of funds. “This theatre must be a sort of sacred place, governed by a festive and artistic spirit”  (Day 2 Mar. 1918).

                        This was quite a tall order for Yiddish Theatre, where historically shund had been king since its inception. But as Sandrow has pointed out, Schwartz’s chimeric tenets had been promulgated before by the Vilna Troupe and the Moscow Yiddish State Art Theatre. (261). With such worthy goals expressed  in typical Schwartz exuberance, it’s no wonder that he made of himself a huge target to the Yiddish press and its hardcore readership of ideologues and cynics. Idealists, especially the outspoken, flamboyant kind, are a newspaperman’s red flag, the more to deflate after reality erodes their bright and shiny principles and sends them crashing to earth. And so, after the March Manifesto, the knowing men of the Yiddish Fourth Estate sharpened their pens and waited.

                        On that subject, and perhaps as a response to Schwartz’s pronouncements, a columnist wryly diagnosed: “Literature in the Yiddish Theatre is like a dangerously ill patient in a hospital [. . .]. You tiptoe around the patient so that he doesn’t die. You’re afraid to utter a single word. You’re very quiet and slow so the patient, God forbid, won’t catch a cold. An earnest dramatic work lives a sick life on stage”  (Forward 8 Mar. 1918).

                        Nevertheless, Schwartz began constructing his troupe with, of all people, Celia Adler, who since their days together in Philadelphia, had become an amazingly skilled actress. Schwartz knew that if he could win her services, others of equal abilities would soon follow, not like a Judas goat, but as a guiding light toward better theatre. Celia was working at the former Kessler theatre, but like Schwartz, she was dissatisfied with the material being foisted on the actors and the public. Schwartz knew instinctively that she would jump at the chance to work strictly literary pieces; she would be the crown jewel in the Irving Place collection. “He bewitched me with the beautiful colors he used to depict his fantasy theatre. He wanted me for his leading lady. He needed me to help him. [. . . ] He promised me that I would be advertised together with him, that nobody would get as large a billing as the two of us”  (430).

                        Soon after Celia came onboard, he spoke to her about bringing Bertha Gersten into the fold. A twenty-four year-old sensuous beauty, she’d already attained stardom at Boris Thomashevsky’s National Theatre when Morris approached her. Gersten told him that she wanted a guarantee of leading lady before she’d consider leaving Boris. Betwixt and between, wanting Gersten as his romantic lead, Morris went back to Celia, who had that position already locked in by contract. Humble and contrite, Schwartz begged Celia to reconsider their agreement. She relented and gave in. It was, after all, a rare and wonderful journey they were embarking on, and, truth be told, Bertha’s demand was not unreasonable. Schwartz then applied his considerable powers of persuasion to effect a compromise. Celia and Bertha would be billed as co-leading ladies along with Morris, a kind of ménage à trois they all could live with.

                       With two quality players safely accounted for, Schwartz went back once more to Celia for a third. “He wanted Ludwig Satz [. . . ] and only I could convince him. Satz had recently been hailed by the public and the press for his performances with Jacob Adler at the Grand Street Theatre. He felt very loyal to Adler, who’d given him his first chance to shine”  (Adler 432). Satz had been a great comedic actor for many years and lately a smash in Dymov’s The World in Flames. He was also married to Celia’s younger sister Lillie, and she appealed to Satz as a relative with his best interests at heart, even if it meant he should leave her father’s employ.

                        Satz continued to resist, but the onslaught of Celia, Lillie and their mother Dinah Feinman hammered away about his sacred duty to become an integral part of this historic project. In the end, Satz caved in and became the third pillar in Schwartz’s temple of better theatre. For her part, Celia felt no sense of betrayal in taking Ludwig away from her father, her faith in Schwartz that strong.

                        Anna Appel was also hired and remained for ten years. A relative unknown, she’d also worked for The Eagle, and before him, Max Gabel. After leaving Schwartz, she would oscillate between Yiddish and English-language theatre. Jacob Ben-Ami was among the last players engaged for the 1918-1919 season, and the most troublesome. As it worked out, because of this problem, Schwartz won his enduring high place in Yiddish Theatre. Ben-Ami  was a rara avis in his chosen profession, an intellectual, an ideologue with a well-defined philosophy on theatre, not an actor like Schwartz who’d learned his craft on- and backstage. Like so many Yiddish actors before him, Ben-Ami had left home in his teens to join a traveling company, performing in Odessa, Vilna and London. He emigrated to America in 1913. A handsome, dark-haired, noble-featured man, with the air and manners of a university professor, Ben-Ami came to New York City in 1915 to work for the Lewisohn sisters at The Neighborhood Playhouse. He was recruited for seventy-five dollars a week by Schwartz, but only if he could perform a literary play of his choice. “He was adamant about this point. Schwartz was afraid it might have a negative effect on the theatre. The plan was to perform a literary play every Wednesday. Ben-Ami called it Literary Wednesday. Schwartz countered that because he would lose money on the deal every week, Ben-Ami must also agree to take five dollars off his salary”  (Adler 434).

                        This statement is of course in direct opposition to Schwartz’s stated and published principles. It would on the surface indicate that despite the flowery rhetoric about theatre being a holy place, where literature would be worshipped, Schwartz was doing business as usual the old way, as Kessler had run his playhouse and disgusted Morris to the point where he simply had to get out.

                        Most likely, the truth will never be known. Celia Adler had her axe to grind with Schwartz for both obvious and unstated reasons, and Ben-Ami had his troubles with the supremely pragmatic Morris, who practiced as well a different kind of idealism. Schwartz claimed that he’d been completely boxed in by Wilner, that the choice of plays was taken out of his hands, regardless of what he’d proclaimed in the Forward and the Day. Wilner, who would rather read a healthy profit-and-loss statement than a beautiful piece of playwriting, had in effect clipped his partner’s wings. Schwartz’s wonderful impulses, at least initially, had to be put on hold, perhaps until he’d gotten a firmer grip at the Irving Place. If and when Ben-Ami had traded a five-dollar cut in pay for the assurance of Literary Wednesdays, it had to have been after Morris read the fine print in his contract with Max and had to swallow the humiliation.

                       Making the best of a bad situation, Schwartz abandoned himself to the new season. As did Celia. She sincerely believed that if Morris kept his word, they would indeed begin a second Golden Age of Yiddish Theatre, just as her father and Gordin had been responsible for the first. “I sensed the same feeling coming from every member of the company when we all went onstage for the first time. In everyone’s eyes, in their shining faces, you could see the joyous anticipation”  (Adler 433).

                        To a great degree, the season of 1918 was the best of times to introduce something extraordinary. War-generated money was flowing freely, filtering through every layer and division of American society, even trickling to Second Avenue. Moreover, Yiddish Theatre was mired in mediocrity and trash, ready to be rescued and overhauled.

                        By early August, nothing theatrically newsworthy had happened, except that Boris Thomashevsky would open the National with some cheap melodrama, and that the high and mighty Mr. Schwartz, after much fanfare, would set Yiddish Theatre on fire at the Irving Place Theatre (which he all but stole from the Germans with space at such a premium). Things were falling into place by mid-August, only two weeks from the official opening of the new season. Joe Schoengold would be playing the Liberty Theatre in Brooklyn. Jacob Adler at the Second Avenue would be doing Zolatarevsky’s The Governor. Max Gabel was to premier his knock-off version of the Broadway hit Common Clay. At the Lenox in Harlem was Willie Siegel’s new musical comedy Orphans of the World would be the curtain-raiser at the Lyric in Brooklyn. Not to be left behind, Kessler would attempt A Woman’s Duty at the People’s.

                        The real guessing game that turbulent preseason was what Morris Schwartz would do to live up to his advanced billing. A delicious rumor circulated that even before the start of the season, there was trouble in Paradise. Celia and Satz, it was said, was feuding with the boy wonder and were considering leaving, going out on their own. The details of the supposed dispute were never aired by Celia or Morris. Maybe the troupe was in rebellion over the first selection, that it was hardly the way to kick off the Second Golden Age.Or just maybe the rumor was one of those trifles newspaper people regularly send out to liven a dull news day. Nothing came of it however, although internal dissension did rock the brave band of brothers and sisters later on, nearly sinking the entire enterprise.

                         Much has been written about the first production by this greatly anticipated company, some of it contradictory, some of it maliciously slanted to make Schwartz the heavy, most of it simply untrue. The logical starting place for answers is the advertisement appearing in the Forward on August 15^th. “Morris Schwartz opens his Irving Place Theatre with David Pinski’s new drama that will be an honor for the Jewish people. Look for the coming announcements. Groups, lodges, societies, unions, Workmen’s Circle branches—if you want a moral and financial success, buy your benefit tickets at the Irving Place Theatre.”

                        The name of the Pinski piece was not given, reflecting perhaps an uncertainty in choice, but not direction. He was clearly trying to fulfill his promise of quality theatre. Wilner hadn’t as yet lowered the beam on him over the season’s opener. Schwartz indicated that the starter he’d selected was not a Pinski work, but Peretz Hirshbein’s The Blacksmith’s Daughters. In terms of artistry, the two playwrights were on the same high level, among the finest Yiddish dramatists ever, though Hirshbein’s works were seldom produced, while Pinski enjoyed relatively greater success. Set in an Eastern European shtetl, The Blacksmith’s Daughters “is a picture that needs neither plot nor climax. Its joy lies in its refreshingly ecstatic naturalism, its delightful characterizations, human point of view, charming episodes [and] snatches of folk and religious song”  (Lifson 100).

                       It appears that Schwartz was honoring his commitment, whether it was Hirshbein or Pinski served up that opening night. But then Max Wilner stepped in, exerted his authority, demanding instead a standard drama or operetta to jumpstart the season. Stella Wilner, Max’s wife and an astute businessperson, agreed with her husband, stating as gospel that if they bombed the first time at bat, all was lost. Between Max and Stella only, this vital decision was made.

                       Morris was mortified. He responded with a loud and long objection. Wilner suggested that the two men talk it over like gentlemen and took Schwartz for a ride through Central Park, far from the hectic, demanding pace of the theatre, in the serenity of this Manhattan oasis.

                        Max Wilner began with a short lecture. “A theatre piece is like a machine with a small screw and a large screw. In The Blacksmith’s Daughters, the big screw, the climax, is missing. We have to choose a play with a climax”  (Schwartz  29 Nov. 1941). The production with all its screws in place selected by the Wilners was Libin’s Man and His Shadow, which was far below the standards originally set in the manifesto. Morris knew of the work and told Max, in the spirit of harmony, that he’d do the play for the second or third offering. Max refused the compromise, reminding Morris about the clause in their contract giving Wilner the final say in the matter.

                        What was Schwartz to do? Call the whole thing off? Give Celia Adler and the others their notices? Walk away from all his dreams and hard work, not to mention the $4000, half of which wasn’t even his?

                          The play itself was serviceable as standard melodrama. It concerns a musician with a wife and child, and the younger woman he falls hopelessly in love with. Not the most original of premises, the subject of many a woeful letter to the Forward’s ‘Bintel Brief ‘ column. Torn between passion and obligation, the musician falls asleep one night and dreams that the lovers unite. In due time, he grows old. But the younger woman he’s forsaken wife and child for leaves him. He suffers, becomes sick and stumbles toward the grave. Then he wakens, rethinks his dalliance, and returns to home and hearth. The moral is all too obvious: family responsibility before personal happiness.

                       Schwartz assigned himself the part of the musician. Celia was his wife, Bertha Gersten played the young girl and Satz took the role of a comic waiter. Despite the lesser material and his vows to the public, Schwartz thoroughly enjoyed working with his carefully chosen crew.

                       Man and His Shadow received disappointing reviews. the Forward’s drama critic, Hillel Rogoff, whom Morris had met in Cahan’s office the day that unusual audition had taken place, ignored the play entirely even if commenting favorably on the actors, the director and the sets. Alter Epstein of the Day, who wrote under the pseudonym of Uriel Mazik, singled out Morris for special abuse: “He was too stiff, too formal, and superficial”  (28 Sept 1918). Another keen observer of the Yiddish Theatre scene indicated that the play failed because with so much melodrama opening that season, there was little purpose in hiking over to see yet another one.  (Zohn 140).

                         Their knives sharpened, the Yiddish press slashed and cut at this parvenu who’d promised much and delivered little. Schwartz had gulled them, was the opinion of those parched and weary wanderers in the arid desert of shund. Never mind why Morris hadn’t been able to deliver the goods. From this first misstep, the Yiddish purists would view anything Schwartz did and said with skepticism and a readiness to find fault.

                        Man and His Shadow ran for about a month, mainly due to the curiosity of those attracted to the advanced publicity and caustic press. Schwartz knew at once that he had a flop on his hands. His many adversaries at the Café Royale (the in place for theatre people and buffs) were overjoyed, predicting a quick death for the Irving Place Theatre. Max invited his junior partner to dinner the day after the opening, and over steak and potatoes, dished out a few words of consolation. “Don’t take it too hard. A play is a blind object; nobody can predict its success or failure—not the author, not the actors. We won’t give up. Get ready to do another one”  (Schwartz 29 Nov. 1941).

                        Without recriminations about the past, Schwartz asserted himself, demanding the right to determine the plays from now on. Could he do any worse than the Wilners had? Max consented but cautioned Morris to hold down the costs. Schwartz recorded this moment of concession as the true start of the Yiddish Art Theatre, though he didn’t call it that, not until sometime later. As if to memorialize the occasion, Schwartz assumed a more befitting identity. From that day forward he listed himself as Maurice Schwartz, the way Abram of the Bible was transformed into Abraham, after his covenant with God.

                       At about the same time, even more profound events were taking place in the world at large. The war was at last lurching toward its bloody conclusion in the trenches of France. In July, in the tiny Ural Mountains village of Ekaterinburg, the local branch of Lenin’s proletarian dictatorship executed Czar Nicholas and his entire family. And while Man and His Shadow was in rehearsal, the scourge of influenza was mercifully abating, after having killed over 20 million worldwide, more than double those lost in the war to end all wars. But to the Yiddish Theatre devotee, the opening of the new season obliterated every other concern, large and small.

Chapter Ten: “Our Policy: The Best Plays and Players.”

                         For the next five productions, Schwartz appeared to be stumbling around in the dark, rudderless and without a clear idea where he was heading. He boasted the finest aggregate of performers on the current Yiddish stage, perhaps on any Yiddish stage ever. He wanted the best plays for them. The season would run for nine months and his Irving Place company wouldn’t last much longer if he kept producing box office flops.

                        On September 25^th, he gave Anna Appel a ‘benefit evening,’ permitting the worthy actress to demonstrate her abilities in Mrs. Warren’s Profession, a doubly daring bit of bravado on Schwartz’s part: introducing the clever George Bernard Shaw to the Yiddish Theatre patron, offering a most unusual view of prostitution. When first presented on the Broadway stage in 1905, the work was shut down after an avalanche of protest.

                        The very next evening, Schwartz put on Baylke the Marionette by Berl Botwinick, who edited the “Theatre News” column of the Forward from 1914 to 1922, then later its entire theatre page. The play had been a smash in 1913 at the Royal Theatre on the Bowery, starring Malvina Lobel and featuring Schwartz. But it drew few favorable notices from the Yiddish press as the second offering at the Irving Place.

                        A week later, the sure-fire Gordin/Adler hit Sappho was played, again without enticing the critics or the audience. Floundering, it seemed, and probably straining the tenuous relationship between himself and Wilner, Maurice presented Uriel Acosta by the Christian German playwright Karl Gutzkov. Written in 1846 by a member of the very liberal Young Germany clique, the work concerns the vicious religious intolerance by the authorities against a 17^th Century marano. The piece soon found its way to the very core of Yiddish Theatre literature. But a tepid response was generated by this powerful yet overused workhorse. Next came Schiller’s The Robbers, played with great verve and brilliance by the game troupe, but with little reciprocal interest by the public.

                        The circumstances surrounding the next play, A Secluded Nook, Schwartz’s first huge triumph at the Irving Place, is crusted over in controversy and conflicting claims as to who was responsible. Maurice’s version, vague at best, is the first considered, as he is the subject of this study. “I notified Jehiel Goldschmidt that our next play would be The Blacksmith’s Daughters (the piece Wilner had scotched back in August), but he suggested A Secluded Nook by Peretz Hirshbein. [. . .] My decision to do it was clear. If Wilner won’t agree then our partnership is ended”  (Schwartz  29 Nov. 1918).

                       But in all truth, Schwartz himself had serious doubts about the entire magnificent enterprise he’d undertaken, especially after the early handful of failures. Attendance had declined sharply and he wasn’t sure if the public would understand so delicate a play as A Secluded Nook. The play that opened on Wednesday evening, October 16^th, had as its locale, the home of a Jewish gravedigger in a tiny Lithuanian shtetl. Life is hard for the gravedigger, his wife, and his beautiful young daughter. Also living in town is a prosperous miller, his wife and son. The two youngsters fall in love though their fathers hate each other, in true Romeo and Juliet fashion. The love affair is complicated by a second but wealthy suitor. The gravedigger, with pretensions of getting rich, will accept the second suitor, but only if he agrees to finance his new father-in-law in building another, unnecessary, mill in town owned by the gravedigger. This serves only to intensify the feud between fathers, and they engage in mortal combat, nearly destroying one another and their families. There is however a final happy resolution to the conflict.

                       The opening was attended by a minimal group of about 200, mostly hard- core devotees and friends of Hirshbein. After the final curtain fell, the audience buzzed with excitement. “The effect was so powerful that no one rushed to leave the theatre [. . .] . The actors were called out on stage one at a time, with loud ‘bravos.’ I received special recognition as an actor and as the director. I got to say a few words of thanks to the audience and to praise the actors”  (Schwartz 3 Dec. 1941).

                        That the play was introduced on a Wednesday evening, when little-known works were inauspiciously presented, demonstrated how poorly Schwartz considered its chances. As much as he may have loved the Hirshbein opus, he wasn’t about to risk another gutting disappointment by scheduling it during the prime- time weekend. In truth, he was probably fulfilling his obligation to Jacob Ben-Ami: the concession to devote Wednesday evenings to literary works, even if Schwartz’s writings mention not a single word about Ben-Ami’s imput.

                        But quick to capitalize on the surprising success of A Secluded Nook, Maurice stood before the cheering first-nighters and implored them to spread the word throughout the Jewish community. He promised them that to accommodate the expected box office stampede, he’d run the work every weekday evening until further notice. Because of the large demand for seats that materialized, he also ran it on weekends and for the following 14 weeks.

                        The first to greet Maurice in the wings after he left the stage was his partner Max. He seized Schwartz’s hand and began pumping it, effusive with praise. Other admirers were just as congratulatory. It was a happy time for him, basking in the warmth of his first solid hit, even if A Secluded Nook wasn’t a ‘serious’ piece of drama, only popular in the various amateur clubs.

                        Jacob Ben-Ami told the story differently. His recollection was entirely consistent with his original claim that he’d forced Schwartz to grant him every Wednesday evening for works of literature as a condition of employment. But when the moment arrive to honor the clause by presenting A Secluded Nook, Schwartz balked. “A literary book cannot (or should not) be presented on stage” is how Ben-Ami quoted Maurice in a conversation he had with David Lifson.  (334). Of course, later on Schwartz often adapted novels by Asch, I.J.Singer and others for the Yiddish Art Theatre. Said Ben-Ami, “Schwartz reneged on an agreement with me [. . .] and I threatened to leave. Then he agreed [but] after hearing an act that ended without a spectacular curtain speech or situation, he declared that Hirshbein was a playwright for amateurs”  (Lifson 335).

                        Celia Adler, whose love/hate relationship with Maurice spanned most of her professional life, backed Ben-Ami’s take. She stated that Schwartz dragged his feet during the play’s preparation, and had to be coaxed into joining the cast. “Old seats salvaged from the Second Avenue Theatre were used. Schwartz refused to pay the $30 needed to repaint the sets, as he doubted they’d take in thirty dollars at the box office. Ben-Ami did the painting”  (Adler 443).

                        But to Jacob Ben-Ami’s credit, he had to admit that “at the time Schwartz hired me, no one else in Yiddish Theatre would dare to agree to my demand for at least one night a week to do a literary piece”  (Lifson 361).

                         The critics were unanimous in their praise. They adored the work and quickly dubbed it the beginning of the long-desired Second Golden Age, regardless of whether Schwartz alone was the originator, after months of coming up empty, or had to be dragged backwards into the new era by Jacob Ben-Ami. One critic, Joel Antin, declared A Secluded Nook to be “the noblest for which the public and artists have aspired”  (17 Nov. 1918).

                        However, Schwartz would not continue to win favor with them after presenting strictly high-class Yiddish fare. He’d sworn to follow his own dictates, stated it boldly (if not rashly) in that splashy manifesto, though with the welcomed outpouring of hosannas from the Yiddish press and the rush at the box office, he could well stand up to Max Wilner. Armed as never before, he plunged with dazzling speed into twenty-seven more plays, thrilled to his marrow with each new undertaking. On October 18^th, alternating with A Secluded Nook, he offered The Haunted House by Nakum Meir Shaykevitz, who wrote under the pen name Shomer, and was also a political activist, translator and a screenwriter of Yiddish films. A week later, came Ossip Dymov’s The Awakening of a People, a box office lightweight, though Rogoff deemed the play “worthy to be seen by all intelligent people”  (12 Nov. 1918).

                       On the final two days of October in that seminal, exciting opening season, the company presented first Ibsen’s Ghosts, then Gordin’s The Kreutzer Sonata, based on Tolstoy’s 1889 novella of the same name, a cautionary tale about the effects of jealousy on a marriage. A week after the Great War ended on November 11, 1918, another Ibsen classic, A Doll’s House (retitled Nora) was presented for the first time on the Yiddish stage. Contrary to the often-repeated statement by critics and fellow-actors that Schwartz set aside the best roles for himself, the part of Helmer went to Boris Rosenthal. Bertha Gersten took the title role. The two other main characters were acted by Anna Appel and Jacob Ben-Ami. Maurice limited himself to directing. On the playbill for that production, the theatre-goer could see, in full face, a likeness of the thirty-year-old Maurice Schwartz’s intense and thoughtful expression. Irving Howe described him as “having the dark, fleshy features and soulful eyes of the mythical Arab potentate”  (22). Even more defining was Maurice’s  theme on the cover: “Our policy-the best plays and players.” He didn’t promise the best Yiddish plays, nor the most literary, nor the most popular.

                        Early in December, moving at a speed that belied his own tenet about giving actors sufficient time to learn and understand their characters, Schwartz dipped once more into the world repertoire with Karl Schoener’s The Devil Woman. The piece, centering on peasant life as a subject for modern drama, depicted a love triangle in which a desperate woman of  lowly birth goads another man into murdering her husband. Three days later, Tolstoy’s long novel Resurrection, reworked by Gordin, was given. Sarah Adler performed wonderfully as Katusha, the lusty peasant girl seduced by a prince in Czarist Russia. On December 11^th, the literary set was again impressed, with Love’s Byways, a charming, bucolic piece by Pinski, the dramatist with whom Schwartz had intended to open his theatre.

                        In January, 1919, Maurice treated himself to his first ‘benefit evening,’ one of the privileges of rank. He selected Arthur Schnitzler’s Professor Bernardi. The dramatist, an Austrian Jew and favorite on the world stage, had never before been produced in Yiddish. His play deals with the scandal stirred up by a conflict between a Jewish physician and a Catholic priest. Certainly confusing to a Schwartz-watcher, in the post-war year of directional changes and liberation in all the arts, Maurice’s next five plays, from January 17^th to February 21^st, were by Yiddish playwrights, each a work of superior quality. None however created a stir at the almighty box office or with the press. It seemed as if  Schwartz was stuck in neutral once more, waiting for lightning to strike a second time.

                        It did, on February 18^th, with The Treasure by Pinski, enthralling everyone. It would be the first of this great dramatist’s work to attract mainstream attention and “deserves wider recognition and a place in the history of drama alongside the best of Moliere [. . . ]” declared one theatre historian.  (Lifson 86). The plot begins with a rumor that some poor gravedigger in a Russian shtetl has discovered a large vein of gold in the local cemetery. The entire town is then transformed into a madhouse, with villagers of all means and status, desecrating the cemetery with pick and shovel, though no gold is ever found. It is a darkly humorous even if pessimistic view of the human race, as well as a study in greed.

                         Even greater kudos were tendered by the critics and the playgoers a few days later on February 21^st with the staging of The Blacksmith’s Daughters, the piece Maurice intended to open the season with, but was talked out of by Max Wilner, who found it missing ‘the big screw.’

                          As in many pivotal incidences in Schwartz’s history, there is his account and that of others. Esther Hirshbein, in an interview with David Lifson, related that while  A Secluded Nook was been hailed in Manhattan, she and Peretz were on their honeymoon in Canada. Despite a frantic telegram from Maurice to return ASAP to New York to discuss future plays, the suddenly hot playwright was in no particular hurry, matters of the heart taking priority over everything else. When the Hirshbeins returned, so Esther claimed, they came unannounced to the Irving Place Theatre and viewed A Secluded Nook. Delighted—how could they not be?--, Peretz and Esther  went backstage to congratulate the players. Schwartz took them to his office and spoke grandiloquently to Peretz: “How do you like the success I made for you?”  Without waiting for a reply, he said, “I want the sole rights to all your written and future plays.”

                       Nonplussed, Hirshbein refused out-of-hand. “If a man borrows a pail to fetch water, does it mean he has all future rights to the pail?”

                       A few days later, narrowing his objectives, Schwartz asked the couple to his office and locked the door behind them. For the next three hours, he badgered the Hirshbeins ceaselessly for the rights to The Blacksmith’s Daughters, but was refused again, for reasons Mrs. Hirshbein never stated, even though Maurice had proven himself a wonderful interpreter of the play.  (Lifson 344). In Cleveland, on his way to the West Coast, Peretz learned that his refusal notwithstanding, Schwartz had put The Blacksmith’s Daughters into production.

                       Hirshbein immediately phoned friends in New York to halt Maurice’s illegal actions, only to be told that if rehearsals were called off, the actors and everyone involved would be thrown out of work. A kind and considerate man, Hirshbein backed off and let Schwartz have his way. The latter told a different though not conflicting story. At the Irving Place, the returning pair was invited by Maurice to view A Secluded Nook, and the play was presented in their honor, a truly festive happening. “My admiration for Hirshbein was such that I wanted to present his plays for the entire season. My troupe had second thoughts about another play of his, but I was so impressed with his talented style that without asking anyone, I decided to do The Blacksmith’s Daughters. [. . .] I had a strong yen to get drunk on Hirshbein’s charm. I wanted to take a walk in his flowering garden”  (Schwartz 6 Dec. 1941).

                        It is understandable though not condoned that given Schwartz’s total immersion in his work, he might harass even a pair of newlyweds. Even more comprehensible is that fire in his soul pushing Maurice to cross the line and present Hirshbein with a fait accompli , rather than waste precious time trying to wear him down and win him over. In the hurly-burly, gray morality of Yiddish Theatre, much worse had happened before, and his ethical lapse—if true—was a relatively minor one.

                        The Blacksmith’s Daughters did very well, confirming the critics general consensus that indeed something extraordinary had sprung to life at the Irving Place Theatre. In the play, set in a bucolic Jewish town in the Pale, there’s a romantic mix-up between two young sisters and their simple-minded swains. Celia Adler and Bertha Gersten played the sisters to a fine turn, while Elihu Tenenholtz and Maurice were the suitors. The blacksmith’s role went to reliable Boris Rosenthal.

                        With typical recalcitrance, Schwartz completed the balance of the season with an assortment of works from the world repertoire, and a few superior Yiddish plays. He followed Hirshbein with Leonid Andreyev’s Believe Your Wife, introducing the bitter, sardonic anti-Bolshevik Russian to the Yiddish audience. Schwartz would display Andreyev in three other stunning pieces of first-class theatre, each concerning the multiple cruelties of modern existence.

                       In early April, Schwartz held his second ‘benefit evening’ with Oscar Wilde’s The Ideal Husband, treating his fans to the much-maligned but brilliant Irish man of letters, who was scandalizing the entire British Empire with his antics. For Celia’s ‘evening,’ Maurice directed her in Suderman’s four act German comedy The Battle of the Butterflies, first produced in 1894. For his ‘night,’ Ben-Ami went far afield, selecting Samson and Delilah by Danish dramatist Sven Lange. This was no Biblical epic, but a modern love story with a theatrical background. The play also provided the springboard for Ben-Ami’s American stage debut in 1920, at the Greenwich Village Theatre. The production also introduced two newcomers, Sam Jaffe and Edward G. Robinson in supporting roles.

                        In the spring of 1919, two of Schwartz’s favorite  playwrights were presented—Stanislaw Przybyszewski with The Truth and Leo Tolstoy with The Power of Darkness, based on an actual case about a series of crimes in a peasant household. On May 1^st, Schwartz made perhaps his boldest effort, Strindberg’s The Father, the starkly bitter, anti-feminist treatise that oddly enough was staged for the first time in England, in Yiddish, at the Pavilion Theatre in Whitechapel. The year was 1911. In like turn, Schwartz introduced the play in America eight years later.

                        Among the Yiddish pieces Schwartz worked into his crowded schedule to end off the season were Pinski’s Gabri and His Wives and Isaac Sheftel. The very last number was Sholem Aleichem’s, People,Maurice’s first excursion into the works of Yiddish Literature’s most beloved figure. Over the years, Sholem Aleichem would become one of Schwartz’s prime playwrights, returning again and again to capture his greatest moments in Yiddish Theatre.

                       The first season of the Irving Place Theatre was over by June 1^st, the most remarkable season in the medium’s entire history. Schwartz had managed to produce, direct and act in about 30 plays over 39 weeks. Thirty collections of sets and scenery and costumes. Thirty casts to assemble and whip into shape. Thirty problems of lighting, and a large number of scores to wrest from composers. Some performances, the actors’ special ‘evenings’ ran by design for only a single show. As far as the sumptuous banquet presented to the public, precisely half came from the better Yiddish dramatists. The other half was a smattering of the world’s best plays. Maurice had acquainted his patrons with artists they’d never heard of before. He’d expanded their limited horizons, trying to remove the shtetl-oriented Jew from his self-imposed cultural isolation, so that he might experience and appreciate the untasted riches around him.

                        Celia Adler, one of his severest critics, who never missed the chance to berate him for what he didn’t accomplish, had to admit that most of the cast had satisfied their professional yearnings that season “through the fine literary plays that each of them chose for their benefit performance.[. . .] Most actors on the American stage live their entire lives and never perform more than seven roles like these”  ((490-491).

                        Yet in spite of her gratitude towards Schwartz, relations between them were rapidly deteriorating. Often, they wouldn’t speak to one another for days. The reason (or reasons) pointed to Ludwig Satz’s position in the billing hierarchy , that he was never placed on a par with Gersten or Schwartz, who’d promised each a place at the top, disregarding the law of physics that states the impossibility of two objects occupying  the same place at the same time. The fragile egos of many of the players were crushed, as very quickly it was apparent that Schwartz was going to continue the hated star system. Tensions mounted and found release in an attempted putsch by certain members of the troupe.  They approached Max Wilner with a proposal to dump Schwartz for the next season and draw up a new contract with them. But no matter the ongoing problems with his maverick junior partner, Wilner refused them. He was not enticed by the prospect of having five partners instead of one.

                        It doesn’t require many clues to identify the cabalists, as the following season saw the birth of the competing Jewish Art Theatre, composed of Celia Adler, Jacob Ben-Ami, Anna Appel, and Jehiel Goldschmidt. The fifth likely conspirator, Ludwig Satz, left to pursue other ventures. With the bulk of his players gone, no one would dare predict the Irving Place Theatre’s future, except Schwartz, who never doubted it. The pessimists would only scoff at Schwartz, the Icarus who’d flown too high, too fast, on the hot air of his own making. They would be dead wrong about Schwartz’s return for the 1919-1920 season, as they would be wrong so often about his survival each year over the next three decades.                 

Chapter Eleven: “Mr. Schwartz, You Are Killing Me.”

                       “I send you, through my friend Jacob Saperstein, a play which I have composed  from several works written by me twenty years ago,” wrote Sholem Aleichem to Jacob Adler. “You will find only a simple Jew, the father of five daughters, an honest, clean, wholesome and greatly suffering character who, with all his misfortunes, will make the public laugh from beginning to end”  (Rosenfeld 322-323).

                        Of course, the playwright was describing his Teyve the Milkman, offering it to Adler around the turn of the century. But The Eagle declined the gift, as it had no romantic part for him. The play with which Maurice Schwartz opened the 1919-1920 season at the Irving Place Theatre was the one Adler had refused. With Sholem Aleichem dead for three years, Schwartz bought the production rights from his widow. A condition imposed by her was that Isaac Dov Berkowitz, married to her daughter, work on the stage adaptation. Berkowitz, a highly regarded writer in his own right, had come to New York with the Sholem Aleichems, remaining there until 1928, then settling in Palestine.

                        The play worked on by Berkowitz and Schwartz, opened to superb reviews in the Yiddish press on August 29^th, and enchanted packed houses for 16 straight weeks. Schwartz felt redeemed, his artistic yearnings justified. He’d survived the profound loss of Jacob Ben-Ami, idol of the intellectuals, and the other less-worshipped defectors. And for once in many months, Max and Stella weren’t on his back with their prating lectures about money—the lack of it, the loss of it, the absolute need to show a profit. More important to Schwartz, “Mrs. Sholem Aleichem was very happy. She’d been afraid that Tevye, Sholem Aleichem’s favorite work, wouldn’t make a glorious impression. [When it did] she exclaimed, ‘Thank you so much. You’ve removed a stone from my heart, from my family’s hearts’ ”  (Schwartz 10 Dec. 1941).

                         More gratifying still, she’d granted Maurice permission to produce her late husband’s other works. He didn’t have to lock her in his office and badger her for hours, as he was accused of doing with the Hirshbeins. The play also provided the debut vehicle for a 23-year-old comic actor Schwartz had been observing for some time. His name was Muni Weisenfreund and had been in Yiddish Theatre since birth, part of a family of vaudeville performers in Chicago.

                        Early in 1919, Weisenfreund came to New York to work for Joe Edelstein, who’d wrested the Second Avenue Theatre from Wilner. Edelstein was cleverly dispensing trashy musicals on the main floor where once David Kessler had shaken the rafters, and better plays in a more intimate setting upstairs at the Roof Garden. The kid had been hired to work in shund, singing, dancing and playing the fiddle. Muni was unhappy with his vapid roles, and in the fall he returned to Philadelphia. But to both their good fortunes, Schwartz happened to sorely need a comic to replace Ludwig Satz, who’d been snapped up by none other than Joe Edelstein, and for more money. This was how the game was played in Yiddish Theatre by everyone, to overcome its vicissitudes, a give and take by actors, composers, playwrights and theatre owners. In the taking mode, Maurice dispatched his friend Leon Berger to bring Weisenfreund back to New York.

                         Berger met the young man (later to be known to all the world as Paul Muni) and found him to be overly modest and self-effacing for a Yiddish actor. Muni couldn’t believe that the vaunted proponent of literary theatre on Irving Place was interested in him. If indeed it was true and not some nasty hoax; he had to hear it from Mr. Schwartz himself. “Weisenfreund came to see me. He looked [. . . ] like a shy Yeshiva boy, frightened and helpless. I told him I wanted him to take over Satz’s roles”  (Schwartz. 10 Dec. 1941). Muni was even more astounded when Schwartz promised him dramatic parts as well. He managed two rather ingenuous questions: where had Schwartz heard of him?, and was he really serious? Maurice assured the youngster (he was older than Muni by eight years) that he wasn’t joshing, offering him forty dollars a week for the first year. He buttressed the deal with the prediction that in the right hands, playing the right roles, Muni would become a great star, exactly as Kessler had promised his own frightened and insecure protégé.

                        Weisenfreund’s response startled Maurice, who’d assumed that every actor, good and bad, was driven by healthy ambition, and considered himself star material. “I’m honored by your offer, but I’m not ready for competition. I’d be willing to play the minor roles—if you’ll offer them to me”  (Schwartz 10 Dec. 1941). Over his 20 years in Yiddish Theatre, Schwartz had met all kinds of characters and oddballs, but never one as inscrutable as Weisenfreund. He’d been ready to cast Muni in a major role in Tevye, but had to settle for casting him as Zazulye, the village scribe, hardly more than a walk-on role. Muni had but a few lines, but took hours to get into makeup and costume, an even greater stickler for detail than Schwartz himself. The transformation to Zazulye had been amazing, and Maurice must have recalled how he’d disguised himself so artfully as an old man in The Twentieth Century that his own father couldn’t recognize him.

                         In Paul Muni’s biography by Jerome Lawrence, the other side of the story is told. The terrified young actor had been reading reports in the Yiddish press—probably planted there by Schwartz—of Maurice boasting about his new find, the quite adequate replacement for Satz. A future acting genius, was the prediction. “The word for ‘genius’ in Yiddish leaped out of the newsprint at Muni, and it frightened him. He rushed to confront Schwartz in person. ‘Mr. Schwartz,’ blurted Muni. ‘You’re killing me. What do you mean telling the newspapers that I’ll be a sensation in New York? What happens if I’m not? They’ll toss me back to Milwaukee, or the dung heap in Philadelphia. Please, I want only small parts’ “ (74-75).

                         Before many years would elapse, the two consummate actors would have a falling out over principles and actions, precisely as Schwartz and Kessler had gone head to head. Starting with the conflict that emerged with Ben-Ami, a pattern had been established of disputes between Schwartz and the unknowns he hired, who, under his aegis, would grow to outstanding performers. They were bound to clash, as—according to his detractors—there could be only one sun in his solar system. They’d part with bruised feelings on either side, only to reunite a season or two later, mutual respect intact, when Schwartz needed that particular persona for a play. His ego was not so monumental and blinding that he couldn’t suppress it for the greater good of better theatre.

                       The bountiful revenues generated by Teyve the Milkman carried the Irving Place Theatre for a goodly part of the 1919-1920 season, which was otherwise graced by only a handful of commercial successes. Though his parts at first were minimal, Weisenfreund made the most of them, delicious cameos that quickly gained him a loyal and vociferous following, like the patriotten of the generation before. To a lesser degree, the other replacements filled the void left by the extraordinary quintet who’d deserted him. At first, Schwartz must have been decimated by these losses. A weaker, less tenacious producer might have chucked the entire concept of quality theatre and taken the sure and easy path to solvency with shund. As Boris Thomashevsky  was still doing at his National Theatre on Second and Houston. As Kessler had done, though it killed first his soul then the rest of him. But Maurice had slaved too hard, too long in the service of his ideals. He’d been battered his entire existence by fortune’s cruelty and mankind’s treachery and each time came up tougher and stronger, his goals fixed even if now and then rerouted. And if the past had always been a constant attempt to keep his head above water, the future would prove no different, except the stakes would be higher, the defeats more bitter, but the rewards sweeter.

                        The latest threat to his goals was the Jewish Art Theatre. Long before he’d made his exit from the Irving Place, Jacob Ben-Ami must have been negotiating with Louis Schnitzer, a wealthy business he’d met at the Progressive Dramatic Club, the most prestigious amateur group in the City. Schnitzer’s wife Henrietta was a member, hell-bent on learning the actor’s trade. Abe Cahan would describe her as having a good figure but little talent. Schnitzer negotiated a lease for the Garden Theatre in Madison Square Garden, which was owned by Tex Rickard, the boxing promoter best known for arranging the Dempsey-Carpentier bout. Louis would also handle business matters, while Ben-Ami gathered the cast. Besides the three other former Irving Place players, he hired Lazar Freed (who was unavailable to Schwartz the season before and Celia’s husband of short duration), Gershon Rubin from the Progressive Dramatic Club, Bima Abramowitz (steady as the Rock of Gibraltar in her type-casting as a mother), Joe Schoengold, and a half dozen like-minded, better theatre advocates. Along with Schnitzer’s money came, came Schnitzer’s wife, who would be as great a thorn in Ben-Ami’s side as Ben-Ami had been in Schwartz’s.

                         In a spirit of magnanimity , Maurice sent the Jewish Art Theatre a congratulatory telegram. “I also recommended theatre patrons to go there. No matter what, another good theatre is an asset [. . .]”  (Schwartz 6 Dec. 1941). Such generosity toward so able a competitor must be taken with a mountain of salt, given the jungle-like conditions of Yiddish Theatre and the intensity of Schwartz. He’d probably fumed at how both the Yiddish and the mainstream press treated the arrival of the Jewish Art Theatre on the scene, as if it were the Second Coming, instead of merely the second art theatre in as many years. Schwartz’s chief tormentors, the Yiddish drama critics, never really trusted Maurice, most likely because of his schizoid blend of high art and personal ego, how he’d attempted a marriage between superior repertory theatre and the star system, with himself the topmost star.

                        To those critics far removed from the nitty-gritty of making a profit, Schwartz had certainly paved the way, had given a few daring plays, but hadn’t gone far enough. What Schwartz knew instinctively, they would never learn: that American Jews, like all Americans, needed heroes—leaders in politics, sports and industry. For the theatre, this translated into superstars. Audiences of all cultural backgrounds went to theatre usually because a star, some magnetic personality, had drawn them there. By war’s end, America was the center of the capitalist world, and what was capitalism without its outstanding strivers who fought their way to the top and reaped the benefits? And so, the press stood on the dock and cheered as the Jewish Art Theatre, captained by a committee of idealists, set sail on the roiling ocean of Yiddish Theatre. Ostensibly, Maurice wished them well, but knew better.

                       Of the handful of plays presented for its maiden voyage by the Jewish Art Theatre, the large majority were by Peretz Hirshbein, David Pinski, Sholem Asch and Sholem Aleichem. The balance included works by Tolstoy, Sven Lange and Gerhart Hauptman. It is interesting to note that The New York Times discovered Ben-Ami’s company before it noticed the Irving Place Theatre, though the latter had been functioning for a full year, pumping out fine play after fine play at the unheard of rate of about one a week. On November 17, 1919, the Times’s critic favorably  reviewed the Jewish Art Theatre’s production of The Dumb Messiah by Pinski, finding it hard to believe that "an art of the theatre so robust, so sensational, so veteran and mellowed [. . .] should have to find its expression in what is, after all, off the beaten track”  (Block).Not until April of the following year is mention made of Schwartz’s theatre, only a seven-line note tacked on to a much longer, more positive review of the Jewish Art Theatre’s The Mute, about the days after the abortive 1905 revolution in Russia.

                           The profits from Tevye allowed Schwartz to produce The Dancer by Melchior Lengyl, the clever and funny Hungarian, who went on to write Ninotchka for Greta Garbo. The English-speaking version of The Dancer had been presented a few months earlier at the Sam Harris Theatre on Broadway and received mixed reviews. The Schwartz essay faired poorly, but was great fun to do, to experiment with.

                        In November, with Tevye continuing to do immensely profitable business on weekends, Schwartz filled the weekdays with two Gordin standards, God, Man and Devil and The Truth. On Christmas Day, he played Gorki’s classic The Lower Depths (retitled Night Lodging), translated into Yiddish by Mark Schweid, another fine replacement at the Irving Place. “Our audiences were Yiddish theatre-goers, but we were also honored with the English-speaking press [. . .] The actors of my troupe played extremely well”  (Schwartz 13 Dec. 1941).

                        The new year opened with Leon Kobrin’s After the Wedding. It was Schwartz’s first attempt at a Kobrin piece, though he’d done the colorful playwright’s first work Yankel Boila for Kessler. Kobrin was one of those accidental Yiddish playwrights without formal training, having held a variety of jobs prior. Arriving in America in 1892, in his twenties, he tried farming in Pennsylvania, factory work in New Jersey, even slaving in a laundry,until Yankel Boila and Other Tales was published. His play The East Side Ghetto was the first true portrait of American tenement life. Later in January, the Irving Place did The White Flower, an easily-forgettable musical, noteworthy only because Abe Cahan refused to see it, furious over Schwartz’s apparent move into shund.

                        Before his next well-received production, Schwartz would suffer a string of flops—a few by Gordin, a play by Theodore Herzl (The New Ghetto), one of a dozen or so penned by the father of Zionism before finding his true vocation, and The Son of Two Nations, by Mark Arnstein, the Polish writer, who would perish in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising. On April 2^nd, Maurice made yet another excursion into musicals with an adaptation of Sigmund Romberg’s Maytime, reborn as Once in May, In it, Weisenfreund played the part of a womanizer who, by the last act, is over 100 years old and still chasing young girls. Evidently, there was a Yiddish audience for this sort of lighthearted material, as Schwartz presented Zaza, the Sardeau comedy. Decades before, it had been translated into English for David Belasco, and into Yiddish by Zolatarevsky for Kessler at his Thalia Theatre.

                         One of the final presentations of the season, on April 8^th, was Thieves by Fishel Bimko, a dramatist heretofore unknown in America. At the age of 15, he’d been sent to Siberia for revolutionary activity. First a prompter, he wrote over 20 plays with strong, earthy characters, some of them criminals. Thieves was first produced by the Vilna Troupe in 1919, then by Schwartz, who fashioned it into another badly-needed hit for the Irving Place.

                         Overall, the actor/director/producer wasn’t disappointed with his second season, even though the few operettas presented weren’t up to his own original standards. But if he was content in general with his accomplishments, the Wilners were not, “I groaned heavily under the yoke of [. . .] having Max Wilner as a partner and his wife the bookkeeper. She had authorization over the finances and demanded that the flops be taken immediately off the boards. Max had little sympathy for my artistic feelings and would disappear, leaving me with Mrs. Wilner [. . .]”  (Schwartz 13 Dec. 1941).

                        As if his running war with the Wilners wasn’t heartache enough, David Kessler died suddenly on May 15^th. After Tevye the Milkman had opened the previous August to rave reviews and the certainty of a long run, Maurice contacted his former mentor and begged him to come see the play. Despite Kessler’s understandable anger over the Wilner/Schwartz partnership, Maurice knew that his former employer held no grudges and was proud of his attempt to raise the level of Yiddish Theatre. Like a son anxious to please his father, Maurice yearned for Kessler to come as his special guest. “I sent numerous invitations [. . .], but he never came. He was still carrying a grudge against my partner and refused to face him ever again. Whenever he mentioned my name in front of other, he wished me well professionally, but not financially. I wrote his wife Rachel, but to no avail”  (Schwartz 13 Dec. 1941).

                         Was Kessler’s fate to be his as well, wondered Maurice? He began questioning his entire relationship with Max. Would Wilner soon evict him from the Irving Place if principles stood in the way of making money?

                         With the long season at last over, Schwartz and company were anxious to quit the City and go on tour. They did the well-worn Yiddish Theatre circuit, as far west as Chicago, as northerly as Montreal. The natives were waiting for them, eager to see whatever Maurice would present to them, starved for first-rate productions. Tevye the Milkman was far and away their favorite. Audiences would form long lines at box offices . Patrons would often delay vacations until after they’d seen the Irving Place players. If Schwartz had often been disheartened by poor attendance during the regular season, he was restored by the enthusiasm of the crowds coming to empathize over the Job-like woes of lovable Tevye. For the entire troupe, spirits were lifted, batteries recharged.

                         Late in the summer of 1920, Schwartz returned to New York, rejuvenated by the large, appreciative audiences in city after city during the two whirlwind months. He was more than ever dedicated to continue along the same path he’d begun, improving as he went, always learning. There were so many plays he wanted to do, playwrights to be introduced, techniques to be explored, new things to try. He’d hardly scratched the surface of what he was capable of, and what those in the know had declared unworkable. It all now seemed within his grasp. Inevitable.