Molly Picon, 1898-1992

Molly Picon (1898-1992)

An entertainer for over 70 years, Molly Picon was one of the most celebrated and beloved actresses of Yiddish theater and film. At once an all-American girl and a Yidishe meydel, her engaging performances earned her world-wide appeal.

Picon was born Margaret Pyekoon on February 28, 1898, on the Lower East Side of New York, the first of two daughters of Clara Ostrovsky and Louis Pyekoon (later Picon). After Louis left the family, Clara moved with her daughters and her mother to Philadelphia and supported them by working as a seamstress at Kessler's Yiddish theater. At age five, Molly entered and won a local theater contest, and her career in the spotlight thus commenced. She continued performing while growing up, appearing both in Michael Thomashefsky's Yiddish repertory troupe at the Arch Street Theater and in cabaret.

In 1918 Picon joined a touring English-language vaudeville show. The tour led her to Boston in 1919, where she was cast in a production by the manager of the Boston Grand Opera House, Jacob Kalich. Picon and Kalich married on June 29 of that same year in Philadelphia. In keeping with the theme of their relationship, Picon wore a dress fashioned by her mother from a theater curtain, and thus draped in drapery, Picon began a lifelong partnership with her Yonkel.

Picon and Kalich's partnership proved to be an extremely productive and successful one. Following their wedding, they traveled through Europe for two years, allowing Picon to improve her Yiddish and gain experience. Forced to leave Romania because of anti-Semitism, Picon and Kalich returned to New York and proceeded to create some of the most memorable shows ever to appear on the Yiddish stage. While Kalich scripted and directed, Picon starred and often wrote lyrics. Picon and Kalich's 1920s collaborations included "Yankele," "Mamele," "Circus Girl," "Molly Dolly," and "Shmendrik." Her performances in these roles established Picon's reputation as a leading actress of the Yiddish stage and propelled her to national stardom. Dangling by one leg or suspended by a pole, Picon displayed a seemingly boundless energy as she somersaulted, sparred, and swung her way through role after role, an acrobatic approach that gave her performances a distinctive physical edge. Attesting to her popularity on the Yiddish stage, during the 1920s the Second Avenue Theater in New York, one of the premier Yiddish theaters in America, was renamed the Molly Picon Theater.

In addition to her stage performances, Picon appeared in Yiddish films. Her first film was Das Judenmadel, filmed in Austria in 1921. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, despite growing anti-Semitism in Europe, Picon traveled there to star in several other Yiddish films, including Ost und West, also known as Mezrach un Maarev (1923). In 1937, in Warsaw, Poland, she filmed Idl Mitn Fidl, one of her best-known films. Picon returned to Poland even as late as 1938 to film Mamele --the last Jewish film made in Poland before the Nazis obliterated European Yiddish culture.

While Picon's roots were in Yiddish theater and film, she demonstrated her versatility by taking on a wide variety of roles in many different venues, including radio, television, Hollywood films, and Broadway theater. For many years beginning in 1936, Picon hosted a regular radio program, known as the Maxwell House Coffee program for its sponsor. Picon's Broadway debut came in 1940, and she was still somersaulting in 1964 in the Broadway production of Milk and Honey . In 1981, she was inducted into the Broadway Hall of Fame. Her Hollywood film roles included the Italian mother in Come Blow Your Horn (1963), for which she received an Oscar nomination, and Yente the matchmaker in Fiddler on the Roof (1971).

Throughout her career, Picon devoted much of her time to patriotic and humanitarian work. During World War II, she visited refugee camps in Canada and toured army bases across the United States to entertain the troops. As soon as World War II ended, Picon returned with Kalich to Europe in order to visit camps and orphanages with the Jewish Labor Committee. In fact, Picon and Kalich were the first entertainers to visit the Displaced Persons camps after the war. Back in the United States, Picon continued her active support of both Jewish and non-Jewish causes by working for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, selling Israel bonds, and making numerous benefit appearances. During the Korean War, Picon was again entertaining troops, this time participating in USO tours in Korea.

Whether delivering one of her uncanny imitations or kicking up her heels, Molly Picon infused her performances with vivacity and charm. Beyond the pure entertainment value of her performances, however, Picon played an important role in preserving Yiddish culture and bringing it to mainstream American audiences. Her performances typically blended Yiddish sensibility with American show business style, a combination that allowed her to reach beyond the immigrant generation and appeal to second-generation, assimilated American Jews as well as non-Jews. In addition, her Yiddish films, with their depictions of shtetl life in pre-World War II Europe, became invaluable records of a vanishing culture.

A celebrity throughout her life, Picon won widespread recognition for her talents and received many honors. In 1955 she sang for the Knesset in Israel, and in 1975 she appeared at Carnegie Hall. By the time of her death, on April 6, 1992, Molly Picon had performed all over the world, from the Lower East Side to Eastern Europe, South Africa to South America. She was truly a vibrant and treasured figure in the world of entertainment.

For more biographical information, see: ¤ American Jewish Yearbook , v. 94, 1994, p. 578. ¤ Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia . Paula E. Hyman and Deborah Dash Moore, eds. Vol. 2, p.1064. Routledge: New York, London, 1997. ¤Picon, Molly, with Jean Bergantini Grillo. Molly!: An Autobiography . New York: Simon and Schuster, c.1980. ¤Picon, Molly, as told to Eth Clifford Rosenberg. So Laugh a Little . New York: Messner, 1962.

From the guide to the Molly Picon, papers, undated, 1877-1971, (American Jewish Historical Society)