hochstein/jacob

Lives in the Yiddish Theatre
SHORT BIOGRAPHIES OF THOSE INVOLVED IN THE Yiddish THEATRE
aS DESCRIBED IN zALMEN zYLBERCWEIG'S "lEKSIKON FUN YIDISHN TEATER"
1931-1969

Jacob Hochstein

Born in 1875 in the village of Kitershike, Bessarabia. Father -- a tenant farmer in the village, where H.'s father died when he was six months, when H. became thereby until age six raised by his grandfather, and later until age fifteen on his grandfather's account, with his mother in Atikamalits.

When the troupe with Karp and Finkel performed in the village "Chaim shaya kuter", H. was so excited by them, that he took together several youths [to the theatre], and they copied the actors.

After his grandfather's death, in order to have a means of living, H. went in a year out to his older brother in New York, where he became a fur-coat worker. Here he joined a dramatic club, and when his countrymen saw him act in the role of an old knight in Theodore Kerner's play, "Der zee-kenig", then H. also acted in other plays, until he became together with Gabel engaged to A. Abramson in Philadelphia's Columbia Theatre.

As the business turned bad there, H. may have gone to New York, and he began to perform together with Nathan Rosenthal in Singer Hall in Brooklyn. Later H. was, together with a troupe, arranged industriously in Pittsburgh, where he came to act there with the guest-starring Thomashefsky, Adler and Kessler, and the last brought him to act in New York. However, due to a conflict

with the union, he had to go to Chicago to act. Here he acted for three years, and when the theatre burned down, he went into the troupe of Lipzin, with whom he acted in the Gordin repertoire.

Joseph Edelstein arranged then for him to become an actor and stage manager in the Peoples Theatre. In 1913, H. went together with Thomashefsky to Europe, and guest-starred in London, Lodz and Warsaw. Later he went on his own to guest-star for a short time in Romania, and during the outbreak of the war, he have have returned to America, where he became a member in the union, acting in various troupes in New York and in the province, and since 1927 with Gabel. Due to illness, since 1929, he only acted from time to time.

On 6 January 1931, H. passed away in New York and was buried in the society plot of the Yiddish Theatrical Alliance (Mt. Hebron Cemetery -- ed.)

Sh. E.

Adapted from the original Yiddish text found within the "Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre" by Zalmen Zylbercweig, Volume 1, page 576.