BORN ON THIS DAY, JANUARY 14 (1888): MOSHE OSHEROWITZ from my translation of V. 1, of the Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre (1931) O. was born on 14 January 1888 in Trostyanets. Podolsk, Ukraine. His father was but a poor owner of a single store. Until the age of thirteen he learned in a cheder, then as an extern. At the age of seventeen he began to become interested in the theatre, and there came with the itinerant Yiddish troupes the opportunity to perform in roles when an actor from the troupe could not go on. After traveling with the actors, he founded with the intelligentsia of a town an amateur group, and staged Z. Libins Gebrokhene hertser (Broken Hearts.) Then he left to wander about some foreign lands. He traveled across Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, and then he returned home, traveling to AY [?], and then he came back to Russia where he served for a year in the military. At the beginning of 1910 he arrived in America with the idea of becoming a Yiddish actor, but due to his family situation, he could not realize it. He worked in a shop. In 1909 he debuted with a song in Baders collection book Shtraln, and then he began to publish his literary work in various periodicals. Since 1914 he has been a constant contributor to the Forward, where he published (also in the Veker) an entire series of articles, biographies, character portraits and monographs of Yiddish and non-Yiddish actors. In 1918 he debuted with the comedy Yo farheyrat -- nit farheyrat, a comedy of Jewish-Bohemian life, from him and Chona Gottesfeld and staged by Schildkraut and Shnitzer. Then he wrote the dramatic operetta Tsarevitsh fyodor (staged with music by Rumshinsky in the Second Avenue Theatre), a translated Yevreaynovs Hoyptzar (staged in the Irving Place Theatre), Alexei Tolstoy and Pavel Shtsheglovs drama Rasputin un di tsaritsa (staged by the Vilna Troupe in the Lipzin Theatre), Yuri Yurins drama Der kenig in shmates (staged by Thomashefsky), and the two translations that werent performed, A kush durkh radio by Yevreynov, and Dantons Death by Alexei Tolstoy. On 23 January 1928 in the National Theatre, there was staged by Samuel Goldenburg O.s drama Elchasnador Pushkins Libes. O. wrote a large monographic work about David Kessler as an actor and human being for Archive of the History of Yiddish Theatre, issued by YIVO (edited by Dr. Y. Shatzky.) The same work with additional chapters, together with a monograph about Muni Weisenfreund, was prepared by himfor publishing in a separate book. --- The URL for this translation is museumoffamilyhistory/yt/lex/O/osherowitz-m.htm. As a side note, Moshe Osherowitz wrote the screenplay for the 1938 Yiddish-language film, A brivele der mamen.
Posted on: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 16:27:49 +0000
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