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| Milken Archive > Articles > "My Name is Esta" |
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"My Name is Esta"
Yiddish theater actress Esta Salzman
Born in Boston in 1914, Salzman appeared in the silent film Salome of the Tenements in 1923, at the age of eight. She went on to play roles in a number of Yiddish-American films,
including George Roland's Libe un laydnshaft (Love and Sacrifice [Passion], 1936), with Annie Thomashefsky and Leibele Waldman; Ikh vill zeyn a mame (I Want to Be a Mother,1937); Yidisher nign (Jewish Melody, 1940); Joseph Seiden's Mazl tov yidn (Mazel Tov, Jews, 1941), with Leo Fuchs, Yetta Zwerling, Hanna Hollander, Lili Liliana, and Seymour Rechtzeit, with music by Sholom Secunda; and Got, mentsh un tayvl (God, Man and Devil, 1949), with Michal Michalesko, Berta Gersten, Max Bozyk, and Shifra Lehrer.
Esta Salzman (circa 1930s)
The Milken Archive caught up with Esta for a three-hour oral history interview in May 2005. During this interview, Miss Salzman recounted her life and work over more than eight decades, spanning nearly the entire arc of the golden years of the Yiddish theater.
VIDEO
Following is an edited excerpt from the interview.
MILKEN ARCHIVE: Esta, how did you get into the Yiddish theater? ESTA SALZMAN: There was a company rehearsing at the Liberty Theater in Brooklyn. The company consisted of some of the Adlers — Frances Adler [the sister of the famous actress and acting teacher Stella Adler] and her husband, Joe Scheingold. And my father had five brothers who were all in the theater, on the technical end. He was backstage while the rehearsal was going on, painting a set or something, and the company suddenly stopped rehearsal and said, "Okay, now what are we going to do? We have to have a child for the next scene. The child is of utmost importance to this play. Where will we find a child?" So my father came out and said, "Ikh hob" [I have]. The next day he brought me to the theater, and I never left — for seventy-five years after that!
My second experience at the Liberty Theater was with the actress Bessie Thomashefsky, the wife of Boris Thomashefsky. She was scheduled for a change of costume, and they didn't know how to work it. So she sang the song as she continued offstage. While she was offstage changing her costume, I sang, from the box above, the same chorus she had been singing, which gave her adequate time to change. When I was young, I worked with the biggest stars, including Bertha Kalich — she was really the most talented, I think. Her throat was like an orchestra. She was absolutely fantastic. I worked with Malvina Loebel [sister of Betty Jacobs], Jennie Goldstein, Menasha Skulnik, Molly Picon — I could go on and on. MA: And you were just a little girl. You had no training? ES: None whatsoever. Most of the people in the Yiddish theater didn't have school training. It was on-the-job training. I remember very distinctly, they said to me, "Can you sing?" I didn't have the vaguest idea of whether I could sing or not. So I sang. From then on, I was singing. They said, "Can you dance?" I didn't become a dancer until a little bit later on. But the singing — apparently they said I had a very good voice. I was sent to do shows for charity work at orphanages and all kinds of fund-raising … and that's how I kept going and going. MA: You were born in New York? ES: I was born in Boston. MA: Your father and mother came from Europe? ES: They came from Pinsk. My father studied in Moscow, and he wound up being on the technical end of the theater. My father and his brothers did a lot of sets for Radio City Music Hall. One of my uncles was particularly talented. He built an electric panel for the lights in the Yiddish Theater. It was such a miraculous thing that lighting people came from the Broadway theaters to have a look at it, and they built the same thing, but ten times bigger of course. MA: Yiddish was the language at home? ES: At home is where I learned Yiddish. I could read and write it. My father wrote out the alefbet, and that's how I studied, so I could get speaking parts in Yiddish shows. Luckily I had a fantastic memory and could memorize my lines overnight. MA: Tell us about some of the shows that you were in as a young adult. ES: It got to a point where I became too adult for children's parts and not old enough for an adult part. So I joined the chorus for a few years. I believe it was the Siegel or the Lyric Theater in Williamsburg, which is where I learned how to really dance. At some point I took the tests to join the union. And I passed, with honors. And then they put me right into a show. I worked with Michal Michalesko, Annie Thomashefsky, Rebecca Weinfeld — these were legends, really. I was back onstage with these stars. And it kept going. I gravitated toward musical comedy mostly.
MA: What would you say were a couple of your favorite parts? ES: Well, actually, the comedy roles. I loved the part I did with Molly Picon in Farblondzshete Honeymoon. It was very successful. I did a duet with another actor, and I was playing a pregnant woman. I didn't put on a pillow or anything, but my posture showed the audience that I was pregnant. And then we sang a song and did an easy little dance. But that was not like my character in the play, so I started to dance, crazy, crazy, crazy, and it just tore the house down. I did a lot of shows with Molly. In addition to Farblondzshete Honeymoon, I did Circus Girl with her, Kosher Widow, and so many others. MA: And with Menasha Skulnik?
MA: Was Skulnik funny offstage too? ES: No, not at all. He was totally different — a dual personality. MA: Do you recall performing the song that was mistranslated in the published version as "Velvet and Satin"? ES: "Samet un Zayd." I think it's silk and satin. Yes, I was in that show, but I was a very young girl then. [Esta starred in Hayntike Meydlekh (The Girls of Today), a show by William Siegel, with music by Herman Wohl and Alexander Olshanetsky. As a young actress, she played the role of Fayfke, the son, in the 1924 production at the Gebils People's Theater. The show featured the song "Samet un Zayd"]. MA: Because of the story, they advertised that people should bring their daughters to see the show so they would know what happens to a girl who's gone bad. ES: I remember vividly, the girl has a scene with William Epstein. She tries to hit him with a bottle. It was a big, big thing for Yiddish theater. She strikes the mirror instead. And in every performance, they had to replace the mirror. And the audience, oh, they gasped! We had never seen such a thing happen onstage. That was quite a show. MA: What happens to the girl in the story? ES: She comes under the spell of a "no goodster." MA: He dumps her? ES: Yes, but first he gets her into drugs. And they have to rush her to a hospital in the middle of the night. And she sings the lyrics "Don't sell yourself for satin and silk."
ES: I didn't care as much about singing. To my way of thinking, dancing was the best of whatever talent I possessed. Dancing, of course, but I also loved drama. I had worked with Bertha Kalich when I was a little girl. She went blind toward the very end of her life. They were giving her a benefit performance at the Parkway Theater. And she was doing Akeyes yitskhok, and they asked her, "Who do you want to do this with you, Madame Kalich?" And they told me that she said, "Bring me the Salzman girl." I was grown up already, but I played the little boy, Yitskhok, with her. I believe it was the last performance she ever did. Bertha Kalish had a fine instrument in her throat. What a voice! MA: How much did you improvise onstage? ES: Well, anytime somebody missed a cue! MA: Often? ES: You always had to improvise. There was one incident I remember very well. I had a scene with a man who was going to try to kill me, and I'm supposed to receive a phone call. And the phone never rang! Now, how do you go into this? So I got on the phone. I said, "Oh my god, I was just calling you!" (laughs) MA: And you did that on the spot? ES: All the time. People often couldn't remember their lines, unfortunately. (laughs) In fact, we used to have prompters during the week because we had a different show every night. One day I was a fourteen-year-old, the next day I was a grandmother, you know. But I could not stand the prompting. It would annoy me. So I had to show the prompter that I knew my part by heart. Every prompter I worked with, I asked, "Please, don't prompt me, because it will only confuse everything." And in order for them to actually stop doing it, I had to have sort of a running contest. I'll get there before you finish the sentence! It was bad for my performance, but once they realized I knew all my lines, they finally stopped trying to prompt me. I could ingest ten pages into memory like nothing. But don't ask me to do it today! MA: Did you ever see deliberate improvising, perhaps based on what the actors saw in the news that day? ES: To bring it up to date, you mean? You know who had a flair for that? Jacob Jacobs. He really was incredible in his way of adding timely dialogue. He's the only one that I remember who did that. He would mention something in the show that always fit the situation. He also did duets with Yetta Zwerling, where he took all the popular English songs and translated them into Yiddish, with their own story line. It was always the funniest part, and it always tore the house down. Jacobs had an incredible way of doing it; it was innate with him. We had a little Yiddish world of our own. Nathan Goldberg was Jacob Jacobs's partner at the Parkway Theater. And his wife Rosie Goldberg was an actress. And her sister Hannah Hollander was also a Yiddish actress. Jacobs also did a big duet with his wife, Betty Jacobs, of course — "Yenta." MA: And there was Uptown, Downtown... ES: A couple of those things are even before my time! You're really digging it out of the trunk! Way, way at the bottom of the trunk! MA: Okay, how was it being in the Yiddish theater in the early days? How did you live? Did you live in the Second Avenue area? ES: No. I lived in Brooklyn. I remember coming home from New York after playing on Second Avenue, and going home to Brooklyn, walking six blocks from the train to where we lived, at two or three in the morning. I thought nothing of it. Lights were on, lights were off, doors were left open, nobody bothered you — totally different world than we're living in now. MA: Do you remember the show Chiks and Boychiks by Joseph Rumshinsky?
MA: How much rehearsal time was given for the big shows? ES: Oh, two, two and a half weeks, three weeks, tops. That was it. In latter years, I did a one-woman show, written by Murray Rumshinsky, the son of the composer Joseph. Murray wrote six or eight numbers for me, and I did a show for about an hour or an hour and a half onstage. MA: In New York? ES: Mostly in the Borscht Belt, Catskills. Murray was a very funny fellow. I did very well with that show. I made a living for myself. I was raising my son by myself. It all worked. I also worked in a nightclub in Philadelphia, doing songs in both English and Yiddish. I went there for one weekend and stayed seven. We also did the show for a few weeks in Montreal. MA: Did you perform in Los Angeles? ES: Not the one-woman show, but we did Farblondzshete Honeymoon with Molly Picon in Los Angeles. MA: The whole production? ES: The whole thing, to standing room only — also in San Francisco. MA: Were you in The Dishwasher? ES: Yes. It was Herman Yablakov's show — about the old man as he's washing dishes. MA: The Milken Archive recently made a new recording of the song featuring Robert Abelson.
MA: Do you remember the last show you did? ES: Majority of One. Not in Yiddish, in English. Molly Picon did it originally in London, and later with Martin Greene in the States. And we did it with several different male leads. But the one that was most interesting — who's the fellow that did The Pirates of Penzance? MA: Martin Greene, the one who lost his leg? ES: Yes, he was with us. Oh, I have a funny story — MA: He lost his leg in an elevator accident. ES: Yes, in an elevator, in a garage. We traveled on the road frequently, so in the train or whatever, I'd sit with him. He silently handed me a note card one day. I read it. It was very funny. The card said, "I would like to make love to you tonight. If you refuse me, please return the card, because they're very expensive." (laughs) That was Martin Greene! MA: I'm not going to ask if you returned the card or not. ES: (laughs) I did. I said, "You're very chintzy. Here's your card back." (laughs) MA: Did you also do English plays? ES: Not too many. I did Come Blow Your Horn, and I did — MA: With Hal March? These are big plays! In summer stock? ES: Regional theaters, yes, more or less. I worked with Molly Picon for many years, and we became very close friends. I worked with Herman Yablakov, I worked with Aaron Lebedeff, you name them, as we called them, the (speaks in Yiddish) big shots of the theater. And I worked with all of them — I was very privileged. MA: You were a big shot too! Your name is on all kinds of cast lists. ES: Oh, I don't recall the names of all the plays. MA: How many shows do you suppose you were in during your lifetime? ES: Oh my goodness, must be hundreds. I remember working in a Chicago Yiddish theater for a season. We had started rehearsals, and there was an English actor scheduled to appear, but he never made it, because during rehearsals he received a telegram from a producer in Hollywood. I can't think of his name right now — oh, it was Tony Curtis. He was gorgeous, he really was. And he got a letter, so he left the company before he even started! MA: His name was Schwartz. ES: Schwartz, originally, yes, yes. MA: He was playing in the Yiddish theater? ES: He was supposed to, or he started out there. MA: That was in Douglas Park, probably. ES: Exactly, the Douglas Park Theater in Lawndale. MA: When you first started, were there songs in English in the shows? ES: No, only Yiddish. In fact, Maurice Schwartz used the heavy, serious Yiddish, which I didn't understand very well. His Yiddish was the real literary kind, not Second Avenue Yiddish. MA: "YIVO" Yiddish, they would call it today. ES: Yes, YIVO. We used a certain dialect of the Yiddish language in the theater shows. It was different from the serious, what they call YIVO today, and it was different from what my parents spoke at home. Many times I would go from rehearsing onstage to speaking with my father if he was working backstage. I would be speaking theater Yiddish on the stage, and as soon as I walked off, I spoke a different Yiddish to my father, with a Litvak accent. My parents were Litvak, so that's what I spoke at home. Everyone thought it was the funniest thing they ever heard, me going back and forth like that all the time. MA: Git becomes gut, which is the correct way. ES: Exactly, exactly. But then if there was a part with a Galician accent, I could do that too — same language but several different dialects. My other experience with Maurice Schwartz is that he always liked tall women, and I'm certainly not tall. At that time, I was about five two and a half. He was very disappointed at my audition that I was so short, because he wanted me in the play. So we were doing a dress rehearsal of Kidesh Hashem — a different show, and his wife came running up to him and said, "Maurice, Maurice, she actually looks very tall." When I'm onstage with a long gown, I can look taller. So she convinced him that I could do the part!
ES: Oh, that goes back a long way. I was doing a silent movie. They had called the Hebrew Actors Union to hire all the children that they could find for a scene. It's a crowded car — packed like a Keystone comedy. We were about ten children in one car. By that time I had done several shows, and my mother had bought me a white rabbit coat. And it so happens that I had to sit on Seymour's lap in the car scene. And my coat shed. He wanted to kill me, 'cause he had the white fur all over his navy blue suit! I believe [New York playwright and Yiddish translator] Caraid O'Brien found that movie recently — it was called Salome of the Tenements (1925), a silent film directed by Sidney Olcott, with Jetta Goudal and Godfrey Tearle. I mean, we found the name, but the actual films are lost. MA: What do you mean, lost? ES: Well, it was so old, it just disintegrated or something. It's got to be eighty-some odd years. MA: These were silent movies done by whom? ES: They were all done at the Lasky Studios in Astoria. The films had English subtitles, but they were silent. Jetta Goudal was the star and the leading man — there were two brothers, either Conway or Godfrey Tearle. My mother was an extra player in some of the films. She got paid too, because they needed people in the background. So my mother was purchasing tomatoes, or whatever. And the director came to us after a day's work and said, "It's Friday. I know we generally don't work on Saturday, but we need the child to work this Saturday." So my mother, in her broken English, said to him that I couldn't do it. He said, "What do you mean, she can't do it?" "Well," she said, "my daughter has another commitment." "What do you mean?" "Well, she has a matinee to do tomorrow afternoon with Malvina Loebel. We have a contract." You didn't break contracts. He said to my mother, "What are you trying to tell me, that I have to cancel everything here because she has a matinee?" My mother said, "A contract's a contract — a commitment's a commitment." So he said, "We'll manage somehow." I went to work Saturday morning for this director, and then he arranged for a police escort for me to rush up to the Lenox Theater on Lenox and 110th Street for the matinee. Those are little memories that remain with me, you know. They're indelibly in my mind. MA: So you were in big demand. ES: I wish I made as much money now as I did then! And because of that movie, my family bought a seven-passenger Studebaker sedan, with the money that I had earned. Everything is relative, you know. MA: Do you remember any of the songs that you particularly loved? ES: There was a song that Alexander Olshanetsky wrote. My husband Dave Lubritsky and I performed it in the Catskills. We had a lot of wonderful music. In fact, Danny Kaye's agent said to my late husband, "If you can translate these songs that you do here into English, I will sign you to a contract." Well, you can't translate those things. I also remember a song by, I think, Isidore Lillian. A great song — from way, way back when. There's a man who asks a woman to marry him for years and years. She keeps refusing, refusing. She finally agres, and she marries him. But now they are both really old! And there was this poignant song about how "I got married, and what do I see now, that impressed me so?" I never forgot those lines.… Part of her is in the bed, and part of her is on the dresser. Her glasses — the false teeth were on the dresser (laughs), an eye was in the case or something.... I thought it was hilarious. MA: Do you remember when they recorded songs like "It Shouldn't Happen to a Dog"? ES: That was a number that Menasha Skulnik did in a play, not from a specific show that I recall.
ES: Yes, he had two sisters — Fanny and Golda Lubritsky. MA: So you were all onstage together. ES: For many years. Many, many shows, yes. It was interesting, and we had a lot of fun, and we had a lot of heartache. MA: You found a whole life in the Yiddish theater. ES: Yes, absolutely. I had no other profession. I had very little education. In those years, going to high school or college was a luxury item. We couldn't afford that. MA: Was it that way for most people in the theater? ES: I can't speak for the others. We had some very, very talented people in the Yiddish theater — extremely so. And some were not that great, but they got along. And so be it. MA: What about vaudeville? ES: I did some vaudeville too. It was the Clinton Theater and the National Theater where most of the vaudeville shows ran. Richard Tucker and Robert Merrill started with us. We were all in the Yiddish vaudeville shows. MA: How did Esther become Esta? ES: Should I say too Jewish? I shouldn't say that. MA: Sure you can.
MA: And it became the trademark? ES: Yes, I had it legalized, so I don't have any problem. And I say it very distinctly for people to know. "My name is Esta." Then they know.
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