To know her is to love her. She who is the bearer of that divine gift of joy and laughter, has made people laugh all over the world. Laughter, she describes as the spark which ignites both performer and audience; the common bond of theatre-goers the world over. Impersonator, author, librettist, she is in herself a complete symphony of entertainment.

Molly Picon is one of the rara avis species, a born New Yorker. She learned Yiddish in Warsaw in order to play in New York, and in New York she acquired French in order to play at the Alhambra in Paris. Moscow liked her Negro spirituals, and Johannesburg was delighted with her songs on Afrikaans, the native tongue of the Boers. In London where she played repeated performances at both the Palladium and the Colosseum, they were charmed with her Piccadilly accent. She is counted the first artist to have given a television broadcast in England. She made a hit with the Yiddish Gauchos in Moses-ville, Argentina, and got along very nicely with a smattering of German, Spanish, Hebrew, Russian, Polish, and a Italian in Antwerp, Vienna, Prague, Bucharest, Tel-Aviv, and Rio de Janeiro. One of the big moments of her life was when her name was a blazoned head-liner at the Palace Theatre, New York.

Although born on Broome Street, she made her debut in Philadelphia -- on a trolley car, of all places, at the age of five singing for the passengers. But while still a mite of a girl, she embarked upon a real stage career, at the Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia, where she appeared in her first legitimate role.

At fourteen she was the ingénue in a Philadelphia stock production of George M. Cohan's comedy "Broadway Jones." After this came coast-to-coast trouping in stock companies and vaudeville units.

Stranded in Boston with a vaudeville unit, "The Four Seasons" (Molly played Winter), she met Jacob Kalich, manager of a Yiddish stock company. He persuaded her that she could be a greater success as a first-string Yiddish comedienne than as a second-string stock actress. So she married him and they went abroad to perfect her Yiddish.

Currently she is starring at the Molly Picon Theatre in a play written for her by Jacob Kalich, "Oy is dus a leben."

Molly Picon has that matchless talent for giving herself. Her warmth and generosity are never so moving as when she is giving her talent for the benefit of the members of the profession who need her most. Her sincerity and sympathy surrounds them. For this fine humane spirit, and her loveableness, she is adored. May her bright star continue to light the theatre firmament for all time to come.