Born in 1881 in Bucharest, Romania.

He was the eldest son of the first Yiddish actors Aba and Chaya Sura Shoengold. At the age of six he came to America with his parents where he graduated from high school. For a half-year he studied to be a doctor, not expecting to become an actor. On the advice of Thomashefsky he became a cigar maker and at night begin to act in the Yiddish theatre, having the opportunity to act with Berta Kalich.

Sigmund Feinman brought him to play with him in London's "Pavilion Theatre."

In 1908, he acted in Argentina, afterwards in Paris and then back in America, where he became a director of a provincial troupe, with which he traveled until California.

In May 1914 he again came to London. However he acted only for one week because of the outbreak of the First World War, transferred the production and brought it back home. On the way, out of fear for the submarines and out of his mind, he saw soldiers everywhere and "heard" shouts and cries.

He was taken into a house for the mentally ill.