Photographers
Rappoport Studio
33 Second Avenue
New York, New York

Sitter
Molly Picon, February 28, 1898 - April 5, 1992

Date
unknown

Type
Portrait

Medium
Gelatin silver print

Credit Line
Museum of the City of New York

Accession Number
F2012.63.501

Testimony
"At each rehearsal for "Yankele," I used to ask: "Tell me, Molly, who knows anything else? She used to tell me she wanted this and that musical number or a dance, and we used to put it into the play, and this is how it went at every rehearsal: some new chatchke, number, dance, and one time, almost at the last rehearsal, Molly asked us if she can do something, maybe someone that can be put it into the new offering of "Yankele." I became curious, and I asked her: "Molly, what is it?" She told me about her little Molly Picon dance and said: "I can make a good borscht" ...

There are actors who never play theatre badly, but never well. They do their piece of work perfectly, just like a worker in a shop or factory. There is no first idea and no last for this kind of actor. Such a person is not nervous at the premiere and does not complain or longs for the play (perhaps after the wages) when its last night is played. Molly Picon had a very good understanding of what it meant to be a success, and she remains a star of the American-Yiddish theatre, and if she wasn't, she'd have to return to play in the province, and perhaps even return to Europe. This all had an effect on her first performance in America. She did not find any place, nor the right tenor ...

That night she did not act but uttered the words. She did not dance, but danced over the top; she did not sing but under-sang. The first performance felt as if that she did not want it to succeed. The success of that night was Jacob Kalich, who played the heymishe soldier. They joked with me after the performance that I did not advertise the right star. Instead of Molly Picon, Jacob Kalich should have been advertised as the star. This happiness was, that there was not one just one performance, but five performances, one after the other, and indeed immediately the next morning, Saturday afternoon, to an oversold house, Molly became Molly Picon. She caught on with the public, and the public with her, like an old acquaintance."

Source of Testimony
Joseph Rumshinsky -- "Joseph Rumshinsky Tells About Fifty Years of Yiddish Theatre," Forward, March 12, 1953.