The last years he sang arias and songs composed by himself in the Yiddish vaudeville houses, he also tried to stage in the province, but without material success.

In 1922 Thomashefsky heard him singing in a Jewish hotel, still in a full voice.

S. reported to Z. Zylbercweig that he also used to write couplets, the words with the music, and he used to characterize the the songs, while singing in his make-up. There was also a time when people wanted to engage him at the opera.

Boris Thomashefsky writes about S. as actor and singer:

"A huge tragedy happened to the second brother, Zanvil Shenkman. Nature had blessed young Shenkman with a wonderful tenor voice. You could say with certainty, that as a singer he was the very best Yiddish tenor that the Jews possessed. If the young Zanvil Shenkman had studied, today he maybe would have been the greatest tenor in the world. He has a quiet nature, and he cannot push him to the front, you cannot flatter him, you cannot beg him, and this had put a halt to his great career, which he had lost."

Zalmen Zylbercweig characterizes him this way:

.".. Shenkman played a role several years ago in New York, but more so 'on the road.' where he created the first theatre audience, because Shenkman started to play in Yiddish Theatre in America in cities where Yiddish Theatre had never been seen before. There Shenkman sang for the first time Goldfaden’s original Yiddish songs and melodies. He was the heroic "Bar kokhba," the enamored "Absalom," and with his sweet heroic tenor voice he enthused the first Yiddish theatre attendees and bound them as steady and frequent visitors of the Yiddish theatre. And when later on he went over from lover roles to comedic roles, when he joined the variety theatres, people truly did not let him leave the stage because of his comic couplets... There have surely been and there are surely nowadays greater actors than Shenkman. However I doubt that there have ever been greater comedians than Shenkman, among the Yiddish actors, pranksters, brats. Shenkman used to play jokes that made people gasp with laughter, very often on actors or theatre managers. [Several of this jokes describes Z. in his book "Teater-Figurn"]. He was an odd clown, prankster and many Vaudeville-jokes, that are told by comedians on stage, were created by him. He was the one who played jokes. From this point of view he was a kind of "Hershele Ostropolier," or "Motke the Swine." The latter played jokes on the Jewish community, the Rabbi or in the next place the bathhouse attendant, that means, people from his surroundings, people he came into contact with. Shenkman came into contact with actors. His environment was the world of the Yiddish theatre, so he played his jokes on them.

In his last years, when Shenkman was already lined up to live from so-called concerts or from loans, he could be met very often for entire days, but especially at night, hanging around in the Café Royal or at the Second Avenue, several blocks around the coffeehouse. He seldom used to go inside the café, except for this one time, when his situation was very bad, and he went in and stood singing between the tables. Several actors collected for him a small amount [of money] and handed it out to him. When Boris Thomashefsky returned from Europe and met Shenkman, with whom he had performed with in the first years of the Yiddish theatre in America, he supported him, but Shenkman could not calm down. Quite often he stood there with a pack of documents in his hands, arguing. This was a pack of copies of letters and telegrams, sent from "HIAS," with his demand, that were sent to the town where his son, the English vaudeville actor [Al Shenk], had been, that he should send financial support to his father. Due to the course of fate the letters and telegrams never reached the wanted. Shenkman fell into a terrible melancholy. He desperately walked around, melancholic, and he cried very often. Occasionally he fell ill and in his tight room, on 12th Street, where I used to come very often, he used to lie lonely in his bed and asking for his death. In several cases he threatened to commit suicide... and finally he... found his son and the son sent him to a summer place to improve his health."

At the summer place there was a benefit for the older actor Abraham Fishkind, who was introduced as the oldest still-living comedian. S. succeeded in his persuasion, that people should allow him to go onto the stage and show that he was still alive. This was his last "performance." A bit later, on 18 September, 1932, he died in New York.

M.E.