Bessie Thomashefsky - Early Life, Coming To America and Meeting Her Husband

Early Life, Coming To America and Meeting Her Husband

She was born in Kiev, Ukraine. Her family emmigrated to American in 1883. They settled near Baltimore. She attended school until she was 12 and then went to work in a sweatshop.

In 1887, she met her future husband when she went backstage at a Baltimore production by a Yiddish touring company to meet the beautiful young "actress" she had seen on stage, only to discover that "she" was the 19-year-old Boris, and that he was also manager of the company. Bessie soon ran away from home to join him as a performer, and soon took over the ingenue roles, as Boris moved on to romantic male leads; they were married in 1891.

With her husband, actor Boris Thomashefsky, she had 3 sons and a daughter, born when Bessie was just 16 and who died when Esther was 6. The third son Theodore, changed his name to Ted Thomas and became a stage manager; one of Ted Thomas's sons is the noted conductor Michael Tilson Thomas. The first son, Harry, went on to direct his father in the film The Bar Mitzvah Boy and The Jewish King Lear and later moved with his mother to California. The second son, known as Mickey, took after his father's romancing ways and romanced 2 women at the same time which led to a dramatic murder-attempt/suicide in 1931, reminiscent of his Aunt Emma Thomashefsky Finkel's notorious 1904 affair. Both Mickey and his Aunt Emma were left paralysed by the attempted murders by jealous mates and both later died of complications related to their wounds; Emma, many years later, in 1929, and Mickey, 5 years after in 1936.

It was the success of Boris' Greenhorn scripts and Bessie's feature acting in them that led to Bessie being overworked and Boris taking the money and philandering. Bessie wanted an accounting of the money and couldn't find it. Boris Thomashefsky began and carried on a longterm affair with Yiddish actress Regina Zuckerberg, who modeled herself on Bessie in dress, speech, style and acting—except that she was 20 years younger. This, and the financial mismanagement, caused a separation between Boris and Bessie during 1910-1911, who both went on to successful but separate careers, until Boris became a pauper in the 1930s. Bessie, however, went on to found her own theatre troupe and, in 1916, took over the management of The People's Theatre. She focused on serious social issues of the day, particularly those affecting women, like suffrage and birth-control. She never did divorce Boris, though, as she could never find another to take his place.

Both Thomashefskys did much to shape the world of modern theatre from the follies to Broadway and gave a start to many actors, composers and producers who went on to start and own theaters and movie studios. Even the Gershwin brothers had their start with the Thomashefkys. The Thomashefskys were also prominent in addressing controversial social issues of the day and in teaching the Greenhorns how to be Americans. They not only founded theaters and production companies, but had publishing houses and many other successful business adventures.

She is buried with her husband in the Yiddish theater section of the Mount Hebron Cemetery.

In 2011 Michael Tilson Thomas hosted a concert stage show celebrating his grandparents and the music of American Yiddish theatre The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater, which aired in 2012 on the PBS series Great Performances. Bessie Thomashefsky was portrayed by Judy Blazer.

Read more about this topic:  Bessie Thomashefsky

Famous quotes containing the words early, coming, america, meeting and/or husband:

    Today’s pressures on middle-class children to grow up fast begin in early childhood. Chief among them is the pressure for early intellectual attainment, deriving from a changed perception of precocity. Several decades ago precocity was looked upon with great suspicion. The child prodigy, it was thought, turned out to be a neurotic adult; thus the phrase “early ripe, early rot!”
    David Elkind (20th century)

    You might think that after thousands of years of coming up too soon and getting frozen, the crocus family would have had a little sense knocked into it.
    Robert Benchley (1889–1945)

    The unreal is natural, so natural that it makes of unreality the most natural of anything natural. That is what America does, and that is what America is.
    Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)

    I have seen some who did not know when to turn aside their eyes in meeting yours. A truly confident and magnanimous spirit is wiser than to contend for the mastery in such encounters. Serpents alone conquer by the steadiness of their gaze. My friend looks me in the face and sees me, that is all.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Life begins to happen.
    My hoppped up husband drops his home disputes,
    and hits the streets to cruise for prostitutes,
    Robert Lowell (1917–1977)