Today, Molly Picon is one of the most well-known Yiddish theater and film performers. She is known most for her comedy performances. Picon’s career, as was the case for many Yiddish actors, began in vaudeville until she reached the Second Avenue theater in the Jewish Rialto of New York’s Lower East Side. Perhaps the reason that Molly Picon became so well-known was because she went on to perform not only on stage, but also in Hollywood films that were viewed by Jewish and non-Jewish audiences alike. Some of the films she acted in even became world-renown. She eventually played Yente in the Hollywood classic “Fiddler on the Roof.”

Her exposure to the yiddish theater scene was because her mother, Clara Picon, worked as a seamstress in the Kessler Yiddish Theater.

At the young age of six, Picon began playing children’s parts in Tomashefsky’s company.

 

It was in the early 1920’s  when Picon’s career truly blossomed . Because she was a mere 4’11”, and weighed less than 100 pounds, Molly was almost exclusively cast as  young girls who either dressed or behaved like young boys. This became a trademark character for Picon.

In 1919, Picon toured with a vaudeville act called “The Four Seasons”. When “The Four Seasons” traveled to  Boston, they found the theaters closed due to an outbreak of influenza. Out of work , Picon went to the local Yiddish theater to find work and eventually  Jacob Kalich, manager of the Grand Opera House, gave her some. The two got married on July 29, 1919.

Kalich believed his wife had the talent to become a star. Therefore,  he took her to Europe so that she could perfect her Yiddish. She came to star in his operetta Yankele, in which Picon played the role of a small boy. The tour was extreme  successful.  When they brought the show to the United States in 1923, the theater quicklu sold out because many Europeans had written to their American relatives about the talent of Picon in Yankele.

Between the years 1921 and 1925, Picon created some of her most famous characters in such plays as: Yonkele (Little Yonkel), Tzipke, Shmendrik (Loser), Gypsy Girl, Molly Dolly, Little Devil, Mamale (Mommy), Raizele, Oy is Dus A Madel (What a Girl), and The Circus Girl.

During the Great Depression, Kalich bought the Folks Theater at 12th Street and 2nd Avenue and renamed it the “Molly Picon Theater” in honor of his wife. Picon is a prime example of a Yiddish child star making it in American theater and film.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Picon

http://jwa.org/womenofvalor/picon