Jacob Pavlovitch Adler (Odessa, Russia, February 12, 1855 - April 1, 1926 , New York, New York), [1] born Yankev P. Adler,[2] was a ( Russian-born) Jewish actor and a star in Yiddish theater, first in Odessa, and later in London and New York City. [1]

Nicknamed "nesher hagodl",[3] [4] ("the Great Eagle"), Adler being the German word for "eagle", [1][4] he achieved his first theatrical success in Odessa, but his career there was rapidly cut short when Yiddish theater was banned in Russia in 1883.[5] [4] He became a star in Yiddish theater in London, and in 1889, on his second voyage to the United States, he settled in New York City.[6] [4] Adler soon started a company of his own, ushering in a new, more serious Yiddish theater, most notably by recruiting the Yiddish theater's first realistic playwright, Jacob Gordin. Adler scored a great triumph in the title role of Gordin's Der Yiddisher King Lear ( The Yiddish King Lear), set in 19th-century Russia, which along with his portrayal of Shakespeare's Shylock would form the core of the persona he defined as the "Grand Jew". [7][4]

Nearly all his family went into theater; probably the most famous was his daughter Stella, who taught method acting to, among others, Marlon Brando. [8]
Childhood and youth

Adler's father Feivel (Pavel) Abramovitch Adler was a (rather unsuccessful) grain merchant. His mother, née Hessye Halperin, was a tall, beautiful woman, originally from a wealthy family in Berdichev. She became estranged from her family after divorcing her first husband (and leaving behind a son) to marry Adler's father. The marriage to a divorcée cost Feivel Adler him (and therefore Jacob Adler) his status as a Kohen. His paternal grandfather lived with them for some eight years; a pious man, the family was much more observant of Jewish religious practices during the time he lived with them. However, according to Adler, the real patriarch of the family was his wealthy uncle Aaron "Arke" Trachtenberg, who would later be the model for his portrayal of roles such as Gordin's Yiddish King Lear. [9]

Adler grew up with one foot in a traditional Jewish world and one in a more modern, European one. His granddaughter Lulla Rosenfeld writes, "Of the haskala [Jewish Enlightenment] as an organized system of ideas, he probably knew little or nothing."[10] His education was irregular: as the family fortunes rose and fell, he would be sent to cheder (Jewish religious school) or to a Russian language county school, pulled out of school entirely, or have a private tutor for a few months. He wrote that "the sum of my learning was a little arithmetic, some Russian grammar, and a few French phrases." [11]

He grew up with both Jewish and Christian playmates, but also survived a full-fledged pogrom around 1862. [12] He played hooky; as a 12-year-old he started going to witness public floggings, brandings, and executions of criminals; later he would develop more of an interest in attending courtroom trials. [13] At 14 he began working in a textile factory, and soon rose to a white collar job there at a salary of 10 rubles a month, which would have been decent even for an adult.[14] Still living at home, he began to frequent the disreputable district of Moldovanka. His first brush with stardom was that he briefly became a boxer, known as Yankele Kulachnik, "Jake the Fist". He soon got bored with boxing, but not with his new connections to the "sons of rich fathers, attorneys without diplomas", etc. A good dancer, he became part of a crowd of young toughs who regularly crashed wedding parties. His local celebrity continued, with a reputation as Odessa's best can-can dancer.[15]

He left the factory, becoming a raznoschik, a peddler; his memoir hints at back-door assignations with "servant girls and chambermaids"; by his own description, his life at this point was just a step from a life of crime. Through his uncle Arke, "a hot theater lover", he became interested in the theater, at first in the beauty of Olga Glebova and the cut of Ivan Kozelsky's clothes, but he had the good fortune to be in one of the great theater cities of his time. [16]

At 17 he became the leader of Glebova's claque, was working as a copyist for lawyers, and going out to a theater, a tavern, or a party every night. [17] He would later draw on his own life at this time for his portrayal of Protosov in Tolstoy's The Living Corpse. [18] Over the next few years he had numerous love affairs, and was prevented from a love marriage with one Esther Raizel because his own dubious reputation compounded the taint of his mother's divorce. He survived another pogrom, but his family was financially ruined by the destruction of their possessions and the theft of their money. [19]

In writing about this period in his memoir, Adler mentions attending and admiring performances by Israel Grodner, a Brody singer and improvisational actor who would soon become one of the founders of professional Yiddish theater. A song of Grodner's about an old father turned away by his children would later be the germ of the idea for The Yiddish King Lear. He writes that he would have become a Brody singer, like Grodner, except "I had no voice". [20] This lack of a singing voice would be a major factor in the direction of his acting career: according to Rosenfeld, although Yiddish theater was long dominated by vaudevilles and operettas, "He was the only Yiddish actor to rely entirely on classics and translations of modern European plays." [21]

[edit] Sanitar and Inspector

The outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War brought on universal conscription of young men. At his family's urging, Adler bribed his way into becoming a sanitar, an assistant in the Red Cross Medical Corps. He was selected (apparently on little more than his appearance) by Prince Vladimir Petrovich Meshersky to work at a German hospital in Bender, now Tighina, Moldova, dealing mainly with typhus patients. In his four months there, he became a favorite with the established Jewish families there, and earned a Gold Medal for Outstanding Achievement for his brief service to the Tsar. [22]

Returning to Odessa, he got a job distributing newspapers. This respectable work required getting up at 6 a.m., not good for a carouser. Still, newspaper connection meant that he soon heard of one of the war's other effects: the many Jewish merchants and middlemen war brought to Bucharest were a boon to Abraham Goldfaden's nascent Yiddish theater there. Two of his Odessa acquaintances— Israel Rosenberg, a personable con-man, and Jacob Spivakofsky , scion of a wealthy Jewish family—had become actors there, then had left Goldfaden to found their own company, touring in Moldavia. Adler wrote them to urge them to bring their troupe to Odessa. [23]

Adler managed to leverage a recommendation from Prince Meshersky and another from Avrom Markovich Brodsky—a businessman so successful as to have earned the nickname "the Jewish Tsar"—to get a job as a marketplace inspector for the Department of Weights and Measures, rather unusual for a Jew at that time. His mildly corrupt tenure there gave him good contacts with the police. These would soon come in handy for smoothing over certain problems of a young and unlicensed theater troupe when Rosenberg and Spivakofsky returned from Romania, penniless because the end of the war had meant the collapse of Yiddish theater in the provinces, and ready to start a troupe in Odessa. [24]

Adler aspired to be an actor, but found himself at first serving the troupe more as critic and theoretician, making use of his now-vast knowledge of Russian theater. The first productions (Goldfaden's Grandmother and Granddaugter and Shmendrick) were popular successes, but Adler's own account suggests that they were basically mediocre, and his Uncle Arke was appalled: "Is this theater? No my child, this is a circus." [25]

[edit] Acting career

Lulla Rosenfeld's remark that Adler "…rel[ied] entirely on classics and translations of modern European plays" [21] does not quite tell the whole story. On one hand, he was also responsible for recruiting the Yiddish theater's first naturalistic playwright, Jacob Gordin, and he scored a great triumph in the title role of Gordin's Der Yiddisher King Lear (The Yiddish King Lear), set in 19th-century Russia.[26] On the other, until his 50s, he was not hesitant to take advantage of his prowess as a dancer, and even occasionally took on roles that called for some singing, although by all accounts (including his own) this was not his forte. [27]

[edit] Russia

Adler wrote in his memoir that the passion of his future wife Sonya Oberlander (and of her family) for theater, and their vision of what Yiddish theater could become, kept him in the profession despite his uncle's view. When she was cast by Rosenberg opposite Jacob Spivakovsky in the title role of Abraham Goldfaden 's darkly comic operetta Breindele Cossack, she pulled strings so that the role of Guberman would be reassigned to Adler. [28]

His success in the role was cut short by the news that Goldfaden, whose plays they were using without permission, was coming with his troupe to Odessa. Goldfaden's own account says he came there at the urging of his father; Adler attributes it to Rosenberg and Spivakovsky's "enemies". Rosenberg, never the most ethical of men, withdrew his troupe from Odessa to tour the hinterland. (Soon, though, he would come to an accommodation by which his troupe would be an officially recognized touring company attached to Goldfaden's own troupe.) [29] (For greater detail on Adler's time with Rosenberg's company, see Israel Rosenberg.)

By his own account, Adler took a leave of absence from his job to travel with Rosenberg's troupe to Kherson, where he made a successful acting debut in as the lover Marcus in The Witch of Botoşani. He overstayed his leave, lost his government post, and the decision to become a full-time actor was effectively made for him. [30] Adler was unhappy that under Tulya Goldfaden there were "No more communistic shares, no more idealistic comradeship". Still, under this same Goldfaden regime he had his first taste of real stardom when people in Chişinău camped in the courtyards awaiting performances. Even the police seemed to have "fallen in love" with the troupe, dressing up the actors in their uniforms at riotous parties after shows, while trying on the troupe's costumes themselves. [31]

Unsatisfied with the low pay, in Kremenchuk Adler led an unsuccessful actors' strike. A series of intrigues almost led the a breakup with Sonya, but ultimately led both back into Rosenberg's troupe and led to their marriage in Poltova. When this particular troupe broke up, the Adlers were among the few players to remain with Rosenberg to form a new one that included the actress who later became famous under the name of Keni Liptzin.[32] In Chernigov, Adler turned down the opportunity to act in a Russian-language production of Boris Gudonov. Around this time Goldfaden appeared again and, after using an elaborate intrigue to demonstrate to the Adlers that Rosenberg had no loyalty to them, recruited them to his own troupe, which at the time appeared to be headed for a triumphant entry into Saint Petersburg.[33]

All that changed with the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. The mourning for the tsar meant there would be no performances in the capital; in addition the political climate of Russia turned sharply against the Jews. Goldfaden's troupe soldiered on for a time—to Minsk, to Bobruisk where they played mainly to Russian soldiers, and to Vitebsk, where he and Sonya ended up having to sue Goldfaden for their pay, and left to rejoin Rosenberg, who was playing in a tent theater in Nezhin. However, matters there proved even worse: Nezhin soon fell prey to a pogrom. The troupe managed to avoid bodily harm, partly by convincing the rioters that they were a French theater troupe and partly by making judicious use of the money the Adlers had won in court from Goldfaden. [34]

In Å?ódź, Adler triumphantly played the title role in Karl Gutzkow 's Uriel Acosta, the first of a series of roles through which he developed a persona he would later call "the Grand Jew". [35] After Å?ódź, they landed in Zhytomyr, under an incompetent investor/director named Hartenstein. They thought they had found "a quiet corner" of the Russian Empire in which "to make a bit of a livelihood", but in fact Hartenstein was simply running through his money. [36]

The financial consequences of the collapse of their company were mitigated be a series of three benefit performances, in coordination with the local Russian-language theater company. Sonya returned to Odessa to give birth to their daughter Rivka; Adler stayed on six weeks in Zhytomyr and had sort of a belated apprenticeship with two Russian character actors of national fame, Borisov and Philipovsky. However, he returned to Odessa thinking that he would most likely leave theater behind. [37]

Late in life, when he looked back at his years acting in Adler and Goldfaden's companies, Adler saw it as merely the "childhood" of his career. He describes his thoughts toward the end of this period, "For three years I had wandered in the cave of the Witch in the clown's rags of Shmendrick and what did I really know of my trade?... If someday I return to the Yiddish theater, let me at least not be so ignorant." [38]

Returning to Odessa, where he discovered that no one would employ him in any job other than as an actor. In 1882, he put together a troupe of his own with Keni Liptzin, and brought Rosenberg in as a partner. This troupe toured to Rostov, Taganrog, around Lithuania, to Dünaburg (now Daugavpils, Latvia). Aiming to bring the troupe to Saint Petersburg, they brought back their sometime manager Chaikel Bain. They were in Riga in August 1883 when the news arrived that a total ban was about to be placed on Yiddish theater in Russia. [39]

The troupe were left stranded in Riga. Chaikel Bain took ill and died. With some difficulty, passage to London for the troupe was arranged on a cattle ship, in exchange for entertaining the crew. However, about this time the Israel Grodner and his wife Annetta reappeared. Adler wanted to include them in the group headed for London. According to Adler, Rosenberg, who played many of the same roles as Israel Grodner, essentially told Adler "it's him or me". Adler attempted to convince him to change his mind, but insisted on including Grodner in the travel party: Adler considered him one of the best actors in Yiddish theater, a great asset to any performances they would give in London, while he felt Rosenberg lacked depth as an actor. He tried to get Rosenberg to come with them to London, but Rosenberg would not budge. [40]

[ London

Of his time in London, Adler wrote, "... if Yiddish theater was destined to go through its infancy in Russia, and in America grew to manhood and success, then London was its school." [41]

Adler arrived in London with few contacts. In Whitechapel, the center of Jewish London at that time, he encountered extremes of poverty that he describes as exceeding any he had ever seen in Russia or would ever see in New York. The quite distinguished Chief Rabbi of the British Empire at that time, Dr. Nathan Marcus Adler , was a relative. Adler's father had him written a letter of introduction in Hebrew, but nothing could have been farther from the rabbi's desires than to assist Yiddish-language theater. Nathan Marcus Adler viewed Yiddish as a "jargon" that existed at the expense of both liturgical Hebrew and the English necessary for upward mobility, and his Orthodox Judaism "could not endure so much as a blessing given on stage, for such a blessing would be given in vain..."; further, he was afraid that the portrayals of Jews on stage would give aid and comfort to their enemies. [42]

At this time, Yiddish theater in London meant amateur clubs. The arrival of professional Yiddish actors from Russia worked great changes, bringing Yiddish theater in London to a new level and allowing a modest professionalism, though never at much more than a poverty wage. Adler's memoir acknowledges many people who helped him out in various ways. Eventually, with the aid in particular of Sonya's relative Herman Fiedler—a playwright, orchestra leader, and stage manager—the Adlers and the Grodners were able to take over the Prescott Street Club. There they presented generally serious theater to audiences of about 150. Fiedler adapted The Odessa Beggarfrom Felix Pyat's The Ragpicker of Paris, a tragicomic play written on the eve of the Revolutions of 1848. Adler starred in it, in a role he would continue to play throughout his career.[43]

Two months later, he played Uriel Acosta at the Holborn Theatre to an audience of 500, including the "Jewish aristocrats of the West End". The piety of the London Jews was such that they had to use an (unplayable) cardboard ram's horn so as to avoid blasphemy. Chief Rabbi Adler and his son and eventual successor Hermann Adler were present, and both, especially the younger rabbi, were favorably impressed. There were mentions even in the English-language press. [44]

Playing to small audiences, on tiny stages, in communal troupes where all but the stars had day jobs, and playing only Saturday and Sunday (the pious London Jews would never have tolerated Friday performances), Adler focused on serious theater like never before. However, he and Grodner soon fell out: they wrangled over ideology and over parts, and their verbal duels boiled over into improvised stage dialogue. The Grodners ultimately left to do theater in a series of other locations, notably Paris, but eventually came back to London, where Israel Grodner died in 1887. [45]

By November 1885, Adler had together a theatrical club of his own, the Princes Street Club, No. 3 Princes Street (now Princelet Street, E1), purpose-built, financed by a butcher named David Smith. It seated 300; playing every night except Friday, he was earning about £3 s.10 a week, but with a fame well out of proportion to the meagre money. Many of the most prominent figures in Yiddish theater, including Sigmund Mogulesko, David Kessler, Abba and Clara Shoengold , and Sara Heine (the future Sara Adler), gave guest performances when they passed through London. [46]

One of Adler's most famous roles from this period was as the villain Franz Moore in Herman Fiedler's adaptation of Schiller's The Robbers , which introduced Schiller into Yiddish theater. On at least one occasion in 1886, he played both Franz Moore and the play's hero, Franz's brother Karl Moore: in the play they never meet. [47]

1886 was to prove a terrible year for Adler. His daughter Rivka died of croup; Sonya died of an infection contracted while giving birth to their son Abram; meanwhile, he had been carrying on an affair with a young woman, Jenny ("Jennya") Kaiser, who was also pregnant, with his son Charles. Depressed after Sonya's death, he passed up an offer to relocate to the United States, which was taken up instead by Mogulesko and Finkel. In winter 1887, an audience at the Princes Street Club panicked when they thought a simulated stage fire was real; 17 people died in the stampede. While the authorities determined that this was not Adler's fault, and the club was allowed to reopen, the crowds did not return; "the theater," he writes, "was so cold, dark, and empty you could hunt wolves in the gallery." [48]

Adler's affair with Jennya continued; he also took up with a young chorus girl from an Orthodox Jewish family, Dinah Shtettin. His memoir is extremely unclear on the sequence of this, and hints at other affairs at this time. The memoir does make clear that the "hot-blooded" Jennya had little interest in a marriage, while Dinah's father insisted on a marriage, even though he despised Alder and made it clear that he doubted the marriage would last. [49]

 Coming to America

With the aid of a small sum of money from his distant relative the Chief Rabbi, Adler got together the money to travel by steerage to New York, with his infant son Abrom, Alexander Oberlander and his family, Keni and Volodya Liptzin, and Herman Fiedler, among others. Adler did not doubt that the rabbi was glad to see Yiddish actors leaving London. In New York, they promptly discovered that neither Mogulesko and Finkel at the Roumanian Opera House nor Maurice Heine at the Oriental Theater had any use for them. They headed on to Chicago, where, after a brief initial success, the troupe fell apart due to a combination of labor disputes and cutthroat competition. The Oberlanders managed to start a restaurant; he and Keni Liptzin headed to New York that autumn, where she managed to sign on at the Romanian Opera House; failing to find a similar situation for himself, he returned to London, drawn back to the charms of both Dinah and Jennya. [50]

He did not remain long in London. After some major successes in Warsaw, which was under Austrian rule, he returned London in spring of 1889, and then again to New York, this time to play for Heine at Poole's Theater. After an initial failure in The Odessa Beggar (he writes that the New York audience of the time was not ready for "tragicomedy"), he was a success in the melodrama Moishele Soldat, and "a more worthy success" in Uriel Acosta. This gave him the basis to bring Dinah to America. Their marriage didn't last, though the divorce was amicable: she remarried, to Siegmund Feinman. Adler fell out with Heine, initially over business; at this time Heine's marriage was also falling apart, and Sara Heine would eventually become Sara Adler. [51]

Adler went on the road with Boris Thomashefsky, who at the time was pioneering the touring circuit for Yiddish theater in America. They played in Philadelphia and Chicago, where word arrived of an opportunity to take over Poole's, Heine having moved on to the Thalia. Adler returned to New York, were he managed also to win Mogulesko and Kessler away from Heine. [52]

 New York

Renaming Poole's as the Union Theater, Adler attempted to produce the most serious Yiddish-language theater New York had yet seen, with plays such as Scribe's La Juive, Zolotkev's Samson the Great , and Sinckievich's Quo Vadis. However, after Thomashefsky became enormous popular success in Moses Halevy Horowitz's operetta David ben Jesse at Moishe Finkel's National Theater, the Union Theater temporarily to abandon its highbrow programming and competed head on, with operettas Judith and Holofernes, Titus Andronicus, or the Second Destruction of the Temple , and Hymie in America.[53]

Adler was not content to continue long in this mode, and sought a playwright who could create pieces that would appeal to the Jewish public, while still providing a type of theater he could be proud to perform. He recruited Jacob Gordin, already a well-respected novelist and intellectual, recently arrived in New York and eking out a living as a journalist at the Arbeiter Zeiting, precursor to The Forward. Gordin's first two plays, Siberia and Two Worlds were commercial failures—so much so that Mogulesko and Kessler quit the company—but The Yiddish King Lear , starring Adler and his new wife Sara was such a success that the play eventually transferred to Finkel's larger National Theater. This play (based only very loosely on Shakespeare) played well with the popular audience, but also with Jewish intellectuals who until this time had largely ignored Yiddish Theater, ending for a time the commercial dominance of operettas such as those of Horowitz and Joseph Lateiner. The next year, Gordin's The Wild Man solidified this change in the direction of Yiddish theater, [54] which was entering what is retrospectively seen as its first period of greatness.

Over the next decades, Adler would play in (or, in some cases, merely produce) numerous plays by Gordin, but also classics by Shakespeare, Schiller, Lessing; Eugène Scribe's La Juive; dramatizations of George du Maurier's Trilby and Alexandre Dumas, fils' Camille; and the works of modern playwrights such as Gorky, Ibsen, Shaw, Strindberg, Gerhart Hauptmann, Victor Hugo, Victorien Sardou, and Leonid Andreyev. Frequently the works of the great contemporary playwrights—even Shaw, who was writing in English—would be staged in New York in Yiddish years, even decades, before they were ever staged there in English. [55]

Having already famously played Shylock in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice on the Yiddish stage at the People's Theater, he played the role again in a 1903 Broadway production, directed by Arthur Hopkins. In this production, Adler spoke his lines in Yiddish while the rest of the cast spoke in English. The New York Times review of Adler's performance was not favorable: in particular his naturalistic acting style was not what audiences of the period expected in a production of Shakespeare. [56] Some other reviews (such as that in Theater magazine) were friendlier; [57] in any event the same production was revived two years later. [58]

Lulla Rosenfeld writes that Henry Irving, the great Shylock before that time, played Shylock as "morally superior to the Christians around him... driven to cruelty only by their more cruel persecutions." In contrast, "Adler scorned justification. Total vindication was his aim." In Adler's own words, "Shylock from the first was governed by pride rather than revenge. He wishes to humble and terrify Antonio for the insult and humiliation he has suffered at his hands. This is why he goes so far as to bring his knife and scales into the court. For Shylock, however, the desired climax was to refuse the pound of flesh with a gesture of divine compassion. When the verdict goes against him, he is crushed because he has been robbed of this opportunity, not becauser he lusts for Antonio's death. This was my interpretation. This is the Shylock I have tried to show." [59] The road from this to method acting is clear.

After his two Broadway triumphs, Adler returned to Yiddish theater.

In the wake of the Kishinev pogrom, Adler went back briefly to Eastern Europe in summer 1903, where he tried to convince various family members to come to America. Although he was greeted as a hero, he was only partially successful in convincing people to leave; his mother, in particular, was determined to finish out her life where she was. (His father had died some years earlier.) He persuaded his sister Sarah Adler to follow him to America as her husband had died of heart disease in Verdun in 1897 and she was raising seven children on her own. She emigrated in 1905. [60]

Returning to New York, he and Thomashefsky jointly leased The People's Theater, intending to use it on different nights of the week. Adler, exhausted from his Russian trip, was often leaving his nights unused, and Thomashefsky offered to buy him out for $10,000 on the condition that he would not return to performing in New York. Adler was so insulted that the two did not speak for months, even though at the time they were living across a courtyard from one another, and could see into each other's St. Mark's Place apartments. Adler decided to perform Tolstoy 's The Power of Darkness, and decided that he would do his own translation from Russian to Yiddish. The play was a great success, the first successful production of a Tolstoy play in the U.S., and Thomashefsky was so obviously happy for Adler that their friendship was renewed. Adler followed with equally successful productions of Gordin's dramatization of Tolstoy's Resurrection and the Gordin original The Homeless.[61]

In 1904 Adler had the Grand Theater built at the corner of Bowery and Canal Street, the first purpose-built Yiddish theater in New York. His wife Sara had branched out to do her own plays at the Novelty Theater in Brooklyn, and the family had taken up residence in a four-story brownstone, with an elevator, in the East Seventies. (They would later move one more time, to Riverside Drive.) Around this time Lincoln Steffens wrote a piece saying that Yiddish theater in New York had eclipsed English-language theater in quality. [62]

This golden age was not to last. The years 1905–1908 saw half a million new Jewish immigrants to New York, and once again the largest audience for Yiddish theater was for lighter fare. Adler hung on, but the Thomashefskys were making a fortune at the Thalia; plays with titles like Minke the Servant Girl were far outdrawing fare like Gordin's Dementia Americana (1909). It would be 1911 before Adler scored another major success, this time with Tolstoy's The Living Corpse (also known as Redemption), translated into Yiddish by Leon Kobrin. [63]

In 1919-1920, Adler, despite his own socialist politics, found himself in a labor dispute with the Hebrew Actors' Union ; he played that season in London rather than New York. A stroke in 1920 while vacationing in upstate New York nearly ended his acting career, although he continued to appear occasionally, usually as part of a benefit performance for himself, often playing Act I of The Yiddish King Lear: the title character remains seated throughout the entire act. In 1924, he was well enough to perform in the title role of a revival of Gordin's The Stranger, inspired by Tennyson's " Enoch Arden": the character is "a sick and broken man", so the Adler was able to integrate his own physical weakness into the portrayal. However, March 31, 1926, he collapsed suddenly, dying almost instantly. [64]

 Family

Adler was married three times, first to Sophia (Sonya) Oberlander, then to Dinah Shtettin (later Dinah Feinman) and finally to Sara Adler, who survived him by over 25 years. [65]

His and Sonya's daughter Rivkah (Rebecca) died at the age of 3. Sonya died from an infection contracted while giving birth to their son Abram in 1886.[66] Abram's son Allen Adler was, among other things, the screenwriter of Forbidden Planet. [67]

While still married to Sonya, he began an affair with Jenny "Jennya" Kaiser, with whom he had a son, stage actor Charles Adler, born 1886.[68]

He had a daughter, Celia Adler with Dinah. [69]

His six children by his third wife, actress Sara Adler, included the well-known actors Luther and Stella Adler and the lesser-known Jay, Frances, Julia, and Florence.[70]

His sister Sarah/Soore Adler and seven children emigrated to New York in 1905. His niece, Francine Larrimore , Sarah's daughter, became a Broadway actress, who also appeared in films.[71]

 Memoir

Adler's memoirs were published in the New York socialist Yiddish-language newspaper Die Varheit in 1916–1919, and briefly resumed in 1925 in an unsuccessful revival of that paper; [72] his granddaughter Lulla Rosenfeld's English translation was published only in 1999. The 1916-1919 portion of the memoir gives a detailed picture of his Russian years. The 1925 portion gives a comparably detailed picture of his time in London, [73] although with some evasions around the relative timing of his relationships with his wife Sonya and with Jennya Kaiser and Dinah Shtettin. [74] It contains only a relatively fragmentary description of his New York career. In the English-language book of these memoirs, Rosenfeld attempts to fill the gaps with her own commentary. [75] [76]

Adler writes vividly and with humor. He describes the director Hartenstein as "a young man from Galicia with long hair and short brains, half educated in Vienna, and half an actor", and refers to the poor of Whitechapel as looking as if they "had come out of their mothers already gray and old." Of his early London years, he writes, "We played for a tiny audience, on a stage the size of a cadaver, but we played well, with a drunkenness of happiness." [77]

In a small essay, "Shmendrick, My Mephistopheles", one of the last passages he wrote, Alder describes the last time he saw Shmendrick played, at a memorial for Goldfaden in 1912. Lamenting the choice of play for the memorial—"Goldfaden has written better things"—he nonetheless acknowledges, "that same bitter Shmendrick was our livelihood... I gritted my teeth. I called on the ghosts of Aristophanes, of Shakespeare, of Lope de Vega. I wept and swallowed my own tears… And I cursed the fate that bound me to him… Yet even as I cursed and condemned, the tears rose. For my whole life, my whole past, was before me on that stage… Poor weak first step of our Yiddish theater… I thank you for the happiness you gave us… I thank you Shmendrick—my beloved—my own." [78]

[ See also
• Solomon the Wise, 1906 play starring Adler

[ Notes
1 ^ a b c IMDB biography
2 ^ [Adler 1999] p.xxiii, [Prager 1997]
3 ^ Nahshon 2001
4 ^ a b c d e [Rosenfeld 1977]
5 ^ [Adler 1999] p.98–102, 108, 114 et. seq. 222-225.
6 ^ [Adler 1999] p.232–321.
7 ^ [Adler 1999] p.200–209, 321–325
8 ^ Stella Adler biography, Stella Adler Studio of Acting (official site). Accessed 29 September 2006.
9 ^ [Adler 1999] p.5, 7, 9–10; ibid. p. 33 for status as Kohen.
10 ^ [Adler 1999] p.xxiv
11 ^ [Adler 1999] p.11–13, 18
12 ^ [Adler 1999] p.6–7
13 ^ [Adler 1999] p.13–14, 30
14 ^ [Adler 1999] p.19
15 ^ [Adler 1999] p.19–22; ibid., p.29 for Yankele Kulachnik.
16 ^ [Adler 1999] p.22–24
17 ^ [Adler 1999] p.25, 29, 31
18 ^ [Adler 1999] p.32
19 ^ [Adler 1999] p.32–35
20 ^ [Adler 1999] p.36
21 ^ a b Lulla Rosenfeld, "The Yiddish", New York Times, June 12, 1977. p. 205. (The quotation is in a continuation on p. 36.)
22 ^ [Adler 1999] p.43–53
23 ^ [Adler 1999] p.54–55, 59–61
24 ^ [Adler 1999] p.71–73 et.seq., 84–85
25 ^ [Adler 1999] p.76–97, esp. 82, 96
26 ^ [Adler 1999] p.321–325
27 ^ Besides the abovementioned "I had no voice" remark, see Stefan Kanfer, The Yiddish Theater's Triumph, City Journal, Spring 2004, which quotes Adler, "I was weak as a singer. I had not a good voice nor, I confess it, a very good ear. But is this why I turned from the operetta to purely dramatic plays? I think not. From my earliest years I leaned toward those plays where the actor works not with jests and comic antics, but with the principles of art; not to amuse the public with tumbling, but to awaken in them and in himself the deepest and most powerful emotions." Accessed online 21 February 2007.
28 ^ [Adler 1999] p.98–102
29 ^ [Adler 1999] p. 104, 118]
30 ^ [Adler 1999] p.107, 111
31 ^ [Adler 1999] p.124
32 ^ [Adler 1999] p.138–157
33 ^ [Adler 1999] p.168–170
34 ^ [Adler 1999] p. 172, –179, 189, 192–197
35 ^ [Adler 1999] p.200–209
36 ^ [Adler 1999] p.215–216
37 ^ [Adler 1999] p.218–220
38 ^ [Adler 1999] p.218
39 ^ [Adler 1999] p.222-225
40 ^ [Adler 1999] p.93, 225-229
41 ^ [Adler 1999] p.256
42 ^ [Adler 1999] p.232–236
43 ^ [Adler 1999] p.239–246
44 ^ [Adler 1999] p.246–247, 257
45 ^ [Adler 1999] p.248–251
46 ^ [Adler 1999] p.265–266, 268
47 ^ [Adler 1999] p.282–283
48 ^ [Adler 1999] p.284–299. Adler does not refer to "Jennya" by name, but translator/commentator Rosenfeld does.
49 ^ [Adler 1999] p.292–293, 300-304
50 ^ [Adler 1999] p.299–301, 305-309
51 ^ [Adler 1999] p.309–313
52 ^ [Adler 1999] p.313–315
53 ^ [Adler 1999] p.316–321
54 ^ [Adler 1999] p.321–325
55 ^ [Adler 1999] p.329–331
56 ^ "Yiddish Shylock Viewed…" 1903
57 ^ [Adler 1999] p.349 quotes this review: "A striking anor original conception, wrought out not only of careful study, but above all from a racial sympathy, an instinctive appreciation of the deeper motives of this profound and complex character." Several other reviews, favorable and unfavorable, are quoted.
58 ^ [Adler 1999] p.350
59 ^ [Rosenfeld 1977]
60 ^ [Adler 1999] p.350
61 ^ [Adler 1999] p.353–355, 359
62 ^ [Adler 1999] p.359, 361
63 ^ [Adler 1999] p.361–364, 367
64 ^ [Adler 1999] p.230 (commentary), 372–378 (commentary)
65 ^ [Adler 1999], passim., but esp. p.152–154, 261, 294–295, 314, 323
66 ^ [Adler 1999] p.284–286
67 ^ [Adler 1999] p.386
68 ^ [Adler 1999] p. 291 et. seq.. Adler does not refer to "Jennya" by name, but translator/commentator Rosenfeld does.
69 ^ [Adler 1999] p.312
70 ^ [Adler 1999] mentions all these children except Florence at least in passing (they are listed in the index, and their relation to him is identified there), but except for Frances and Stella, mentioned in a note on p.230, the book is not explicit that they are Sara's children. The entries for Sara Adler ( Jacob Pavlovitch Adler at the Internet Broadway Database at IBDb and on Find-a-grave) list her as the mother of these six, but also incorrectly list her as Charles Adler's mother. Her New York Times obituary ("Sarah Adler Dies; Yiddish Stage Star", NYT, April 29, 1953, p.29), mentions Luther, Stella, Frances, Julia, and "Jack" (presumably Jay) as surviving children by Adler; plus stepsons "Adolph" (presumably Abe) and Charles and stepdaughter Celia; plus her sons Joseph and Max Heine by a former marriage.
71 ^ (1) Francine Larrimore, Internet Broadway Data Base, accessed 21 February 2007. (2) Francine Larrimore, Internet Movie Data Base, accessed 21 February 2007.
72 ^ [Adler 1999] p.xxiv
73 ^ [Adler 1999] passim.
74 ^ [Adler 1999] p.309 (commentary)
75 ^ [Adler 1999] passim.
76 ^ Nahshon 2001
77 ^ [Adler 1999] p.214, 233, 248
78 ^ [Adler 1999] p.365–367

 References
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

 External links
• Jacob Adler on the Internet Broadway Database Accessed 29 September 2006.
• Jacob Adler at the Internet Movie Database Accessed 29 September 2006.
• —, "Yiddish Shylock Viewed From Ghetto Standpoint", New York Times, May 31, 1903, p. 10.
• Adler, Jacob, A Life on the Stage: A Memoir, translated and with commentary by Lulla Rosenfeld, Knopf, New York, 1999, ISBN 0-679-41351-0.
? Reviewed by Nahshon, Gad "The Great Eagle: great Yiddish actor-legend, Jacob Adler", October 2001, The Jewish Post of New York. Accessed online at Jewish-theatre.com, 1 October 2006.
• Berkowitz, Joel. Shakespeare on the American Yiddish Stage (Iowa City, 2002).
• Prager, Leonard, "Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice in Yiddish" in Mendele: Yiddish literature and language, Vol. 07.098, November 6, 1997. Accessed online 29 September 2006.
• Rosenfeld, Lulla, "The Yiddish", New York Times, June 12, 1977, p. 205, 32 et. seq.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Luther Adler

Luther Adler as Arthur Castle, whose wish for power is granted, but with a twist—he is Hitler and it is the end of World War II.
Birth name
Lutha Adler
Born
4 May 1903
New York, New York USA
Died
December 8, 1984 (aged 81)
Kutztown, Pennsylvania USA
Spouse(s)
Silvia Sidney (1938-1946)
Julia Roche (?-?)
[show]Awards

Luther Adler (May 4, 1903 - December 8, 1984) was an American actor best known for his work in theatre, but who also worked in film and television. He also directed plays on Broadway.

Born Lutha Adler in New York, New York, Adler was one of six children born to Russian Jewish actors Sara and Jacob P. Adler. His siblings also worked in theatre; his sister Stella Adler achieved fame as an actress and drama teacher.

Adler made his first acting appearance on Broadway in 1921 and appeared in several productions before joining The Group Theatre in 1931. He played opposite Katharine Cornell in Alien Corn (1933), his sister Stella in Gold Eagle Guy (1934), Awake and Sing! and Paradise Lost (both 1935), and Frances Farmer in Golden Boy (1937). He also appeared in the anti-war musical Johnny Johnson (1936). By the early 1940s he was also directing but his first production They Should Have Stood in Bed closed after only eleven performances in 1942. His next directorial venture, A Flag is Born , ran for 120 performances in 1946 and featured newcomer Marlon Brando in one of the major roles.

From 1937 Adler appeared also in films, though they were never his highest priority. His credits include D.O.A. (1950) M (1951), Voyage of the Damned (1976) and Absence of Malice (1981). He also acted frequently on television, in such series as General Electric Theater, Kraft Television Theater Robert Montgomery Presents, The Twilight Zone, The Untouchables, Ben Casey, 77 Sunset Strip, Mission: Impossible , Hawaii Five-O and The Streets of San Francisco.

Adler was married to actress Sylvia Sidney from 1938 until 1947, and father of Sidney's only child, her son Jacob, who predeceased her.

He died in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, and was buried in Mount Carmel Cemetery, Glendale, New York, next to several of his relatives, including his older sister Stella.
 

 Filmography

[As an actor
• Lancer Spy (1937) ... Schratt
• Cornered (1945) ... Marcel Jarnac
• Saigon (1948) ... Lt. Keon
• The Loves of Carmen (1948) ... Dancaire
• Wake of the Red Witch (1948) ... Mayrant Ruysdaal Sidneye
• House of Strangers (1949) ... Joe Monetti
• Under My Skin (1950) ... Louis Bork
• D.O.A. (1950) ... Majak
• Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950) ... Keith 'Cherokee' Mandon
• South Sea Sinner (1950) ... Cognac
• Somerset Maugham TV Theatre (1951) (TV Series)
• Faith Baldwin Romance Theatre (1951) (TV Series)
• M (1951) ... Dan Langley
• The Magic Face (1951) ... Rudi Janus/Adolf Hitler
• The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel (1951) ... Adolf Hitler
• Hoodlum Empire (1952) ... Nick Mansani
• The Tall Texan (1953) ... John Tinnen
• The Mask (1954) (TV Series)
• The Motorola Television Hour (1954) (TV Series) ... General Fox
• The Miami Story (1954) ... Tony Brill
• Center Stage (1954) (TV Series) ... Jubal Banks
• The United States Steel Hour (1954) (TV Series) (1954, 1956) ... Judge Brock (1954), Sidney West (1956)
• Studio One (1954) (TV Series) (1954, 1956) ... Joe Rundle
• General Electric Theater (1954) (TV Series) (1954-1955) ... Warner Johnson
• Kraft Television Theatre (1955) (TV Series)
• Crashout (1955) ... Pete Mendoza
• Robert Montgomery Presents (1955) (TV Series)
• The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955) ... Delphin Delmas
• Crossroads (1955) (TV Series)
• Hot Blood (1956) ... Marco Torino
• Playhouse 90 (1958) (TV Series) (1958-1959) ... Garvin (1958), Molotov (1958), Irving Werner (1959)
• The Last Angry Man (1959) ... Dr. Max Vogel
• A Month in the Country (1959) (TV) ... Ignaty Illyich Shpichelsky
• Play of the Week (1959) (TV Series) ... Ignaty Illyich
• Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse (1960) (TV Series) ... Sal Raimondi
• The Twilight Zone (1960) (TV Series) ... Arthur Castle
• The Untouchables (1960) (TV Series) (1960-1962) ... Gus Marco (1960), Emile Bouchard (1961), Charlie Zenko (1962)
• Naked City (1960) (TV Series) (1960-1962) ... Sean Wicklow (1960), Willard Manson (1961), Henri Tourelle (1961), Mr. Kovar (1962)
• The Islanders (1961) (TV Series) ... Frank Fellino
• The DuPont Show of the Month (1961) (TV Series)
• Straightaway (1961) (TV Series)
• Target: The Corruptors (1961) (TV Series) (1961-1962) ... Victor Cobalt (1961), Jonathan (1962)
• Ben Casey (1961) (TV Series) (1961, 1963) ... Dr. Michael Waldman (1961), Dr. Bowersox (1963)
• Route 66 (1962) (TV Series) ... Harry Wender
• 77 Sunset Strip (1963) (TV Series) ... Thomas Allen
• The Three Sisters (1966/I) ... Chebutykin
• Cast a Giant Shadow (1966) ... Jacob Zion
• The Sunshine Patriot (1968) (TV) ... Imre Hyneck
• The Brotherhood (1968) ... Dominick Bertolo
• Mission: Impossible (1970) (TV Series) ... Leo Vorka
• The Name of the Game (1970) (TV Series) ... Marc Osborne
• The Psychiatrist: God Bless the Children]] (1970) (TV) ... Dr. Bernard Altman
• The Psychiatrist (1971) (TV Series) ... Dr. Bernard Altman
• Hawaii Five-O (1972) (TV Series) (1972, 1974) ... Dominick Vashon (1972), Charles Ogden (1974)
• Search (1973) (TV Series) ... Vollmar
• Chelsea D.H.O. (1973) (TV) ... Dr. Levine, M.E.
• Hec Ramsey (1973) (TV Series) ... Victor Bordon
• Crazy Joe (1974) ... Falco
• The Streets of San Francisco (1974) (TV Series) ... Victor
• The Man in the Glass Booth (1975) ... Presiding Judge
• Murph the Surf (1975) ... Max 'The Eye'
• Mean Johnny Barrows (1976)
• Voyage of the Damned (1976) ... Prof. Weiler
• Absence of Malice (1981) ... Uncle Santos Malderone

[ As himself
• The Making of 'Absence of Malice (1982) (TV)

 External links
• Luther Adler at the Internet Movie Database
• Luther Adler at the Internet Broadway Database
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Adler"

--
Eilat Gordin Levitan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Stella Adler

from the trailer for
Shadow of the Thin Man (1941)
Born
February 10, 1901
New York City, New York, USA
Died
December 21, 1992 (aged 91)
Los Angeles, California, USA

Stella Adler (February 10, 1901 – December 21, 1992) was an American actress, and for decades was regarded as America's foremost acting teacher.

Born in New York City, Adler was a member of the Jewish-American Adler acting dynasty, the daughter of Sara and Jacob P. Adler, the sister of Luther and Jay Adler, and half-sister of Charles Adler. She was the only American actor to be instructed in the art of acting by Constantin Stanislavski. She was a prominent member of the Group Theatre, but differences of opinion with Lee Strasberg over the correct teaching of Stanislavki's System (later developed into Method acting) contributed to the ultimate break-up of the group.

Adler's biggest issue with Strasberg concerned whether an actor should use the technique of substitution, recalling personal experience for a believable result, or living in the moment, using your partner to create a believable result. It's been said that after Strasberg died, Adler asked for a moment of silence in her class for the famous actor. Afterwards she allegedly claimed that it will take a hundred years to repair what Strasberg did to acting.

The fundamental difference between Strasberg and Adler is in how each approaches the problem of accessing emotion. Strasberg was always a strong advocate of emotional memory, i.e. using the five senses to evoke a past private emotion, whereas Adler thought that if you studied the text and truly believed in the imaginary circumstances all the emotions in the script would surface organically.

Adler was Marlon Brando's first influential acting teacher. Brando met her through his sister, Jocelyn, who was studying drama with Adler, and he decided to take drama as well. Brando had been considered unsuitable for the army and had been expelled from the military school that his father had sent him to. Adler believed when she met Brando that he would be the best American actor in theater before the end of the year.

From 1926 until 1952 Adler appeared regularly on Broadway. She appeared in only three films, including Shadow of the Thin Man (1941).

She was three times married, first to Horace Eliascheff, the father of her only child, Ellen, then to Harold Clurman, the famous director and critic, and one of the founders of the legendary Group Theater, and last to Mitchell A. Wilson, the physicist and novelist who died in 1973.

She died in Los Angeles, California, from heart failure at the age of 91 in 1992, and was interred in the Mount Carmel Cemetery, Glendale, New York.

The acting studios Adler founded still operate in New York City and Los Angeles today. Her method, based on use of the actor's imagination, has been studied by many renowned actors, such as Robert De Niro, Martin Sheen, Roy Scheider, Vincent D'Onofrio, Mark Ruffalo and Benicio del Toro , in addition to Brando, who served as the studio's Honorary Chairman until his death. Adler's legacy continues with the work of the Stella Adler Studio of Acting
 

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/ adler_s.htmlFrom 1905, at the age of four, until her death eighty-seven years later, Stella Adler dedicated herself to understanding the theater. The child of actors Sarah and Jacob Adler, Stella began her career in the Yiddish theater. At the age of eighteen, she went to London, where she worked for a year before returning to New York. She spent the next ten years travelling throughout the United States, Europe and South America, performing in vaudeville and the Yiddish theater. She received a great deal of acclaim among Yiddish-speaking audiences as the leading lady of Maurice Schwartz, yet she longed for wider recognition and the opportunity to play more varied roles.