SHIRLEY SCHACHTER KATZ ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY: This is Christa Whitney and today is March 3rd, 2015. I'm here at the Museum of Jewish Heritage with Shirley Schachter Katz. Is that how you pronounce it?

SHIRLEY SCHACHTER KATZ: Yes.

CW:And we're going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Do I have your permission to record?

SSK:Yes, you do.

CW:Thank you. So, first of all, can you tell me what you know about your family background?

SSK:My family background. Well, my father's family came from Galicia at the turn of the last century, in 1903, somewhere around there. And they lived on the 1:00Lower East Side, of course. It's where all the Jews were living, were down there. And my father went to school down there, in New York.

CW:Do you know anything about their lives in Europe?

SSK:Actually, my grandmother was a toll taker on a bridge in Skała. Name of the town was Skała. My grandfather studied. I don't know what -- I must have had a job, and I never knew much about it. When they came here, my grandfather was a pants presser. (laughs) And that's really basically all I know about them. Oh, I 2:00shouldn't say that. They came with three sons, subsequently had two other sons, and those five young men became a choir. Went to school, had jobs, but sang together for the High Holy Days with a cousin. They had a cousin who was a cantor, and they would travel with him on the High Holy Days and sing.

CW:Do you know what they were called? The group? What they called themselves?

SSK:No, they were just the choir. And I remember going to my grandmother for Pesach, and at the end of the reading of the Haggadah, you have all these songs. And she would open all the windows in the apartment so her neighbors could hear 3:00her son sing all the songs at the end of the Haggadah. That's it. So, I guess that's where I caught it.

CW:Nice.

SSK:It's like a disease. (laughs)

CW:Do you --

SSK:We love to sing.

CW:Do you have any sense of what Skała was like? Have you heard any stories about Skała?

SSK:Actually, no. We visited Kraków. Skała, it turns out, was not too far from Kraków. Small town. My mother came from a town called Tarło, which was northeast of Kraków. So, when we were, my husband and I, were in Poland, we drove up a highway and did visit a number of the towns -- his parents came from 4:00and my parents came from. Now, the story is that my mother and my husband's family lived in the same town. They were neighbors, and that's how we met in New York, because I was singing at a dinner or at a wedding -- I think it was a wedding, where the Tarło were all getting together. And his mother decided she liked me. And so, she took my phone number, and his response was, "If you like her, take her out. Not me." (laughs) That was sixty-two years ago. [BREAK IN RECORDING]

CW:So, can you explain what the landsmanshaft was?

SSK:Well, they were organiz---(whispers) stop saying well. {laughs) They were 5:00organizations, basically. I know the ones in New York. I'm sure there were others all over -- that were formed from each of the towns that the groups came from. They were burial societies. That's what they were. They were burial societies. But before everybody died, they had dinners and they had get-togethers, and they got to see other people from their own town. And that's what they were. They were burial societies.

CW:And so, where in New York did you grow up?

SSK:I grew up in the Bronx. Pelham Parkway, in the Bronx.

CW:Can you describe the neighborhood at that time?

SSK:The neighborhood at that time was just about totally Jewish. All apartment 6:00buildings, and one of the best public schools in the city. And so, I went to the public school on the corner, P.S. 105. And that's where we lived.

CW:So, can you describe a little more about the Jewish community? Who were your neighbors?

SSK:Who were my neighbors? Funny, I haven't thought about them for so many years, I can barely remember. As I said, it was totally Jewish. So, we had all Jewish families. Our friends lived near us. We played with the kids from across the street of our building. And that's all I can remember.

CW:And what did your home look like?

SSK:In the Bronx?

CW:Yeah.

SSK:It was what we called a three-and-a-half room apartment. Now they call it a junior four, because it was a white brick building on the corner. We had a doorman who greeted us. When we moved in, my brother and I shared a room, and then my grandmother came to live with us. So, the three of us shared the larger bedroom, and the small room became my parents' bedroom. Other than that, there was a dropped living room. A dropped living room was a living room that had two steps to go down, with an archway over the top. Very glamorous. And the tiniest 8:00kitchen in the world, from which my mother made a hundred pounds of gefilte fish for my brothers' pidyen-aben [redemption ceremony of a first-born son at the age of 30 days]. And that's all I can tell you of interest, really. Was just there.

CW:And -- on a Friday night in your home, what was it like?

SSK:Friday night in my home. Interesting you should ask. My father was in his own business from the time he was sixteen years old. So, my father worked late hours. Worked on Saturday. Friday night, candles were lit. There was always a special dinner. But we didn't really sit around the table and have Friday night 9:00dinner then, which is why, now, my family all -- we're different now from then. During the Depression, I was born in 1932, the depths of the Depression. My father sometimes slept on the cutting table in his factory, and you didn't take a day off. So, life was very different at that time.

CW:And what was his business?

SSK:He was in the dress business. Party dress business, which is why, when I was entertaining, they would make my gowns for me. And it was very nice. The 10:00designer designed the gowns and the sample hand made them for me. So, I had a whole trousseau of gowns when I was seven, eight, nine years old. It's very handy.

CW:Did you ever visit the factory?

SSK:All the time.

CW:What was it like?

SSK:All the time. Very interesting for me. There were people making accordion pleating in one corner. There was a line-up of different machines doing hand-stitching or ruching and tucking. I don't know who knows what I'm talking about, but that's what they did. And then in the other part -- it was rather large. There was sorting and there was a woman in the corner doing hand 11:00embroidery. And there's a lot going on.

CW:Wow. Did you go to shul growing up? Go to synagogue growing up?

SSK:Go to shul? Yes. I went to this tiny little shul down the block, with my grandmother. Was a little Orthodox shul, until a number of years later, my father and a group of his friends decided that they wanted to sit with their wives. It's the only way they're going to (laughs) get the families to come. So, they formed their own synagogue, their own shul, in a larger place, of course. Same area, where you could walk back and forth. And we would now call it a 12:00Conservative synagogue, because although they davened in the same prayer book, they could sit next to their wives doing it. So, it was a big revolution at the time.

CW:Wow. What was your grandmother's reaction to that?

SSK:My grandmother was shocked to see her children going to shul. (laughs) That was her reaction, yes.

CW:And what languages did you hear growing up?

SSK:Other than English, Yiddish. Sam Levenson had a line. He was speaking about Yiddish, but I'm not. There were a few words of Polish, and so, "we would learn in Polish what we shouldn't know in any language." That's a direct quote from 13:00Sam Levenson. But we all spoke not only English, of course, but Yiddish. It was spoken in the street, it was spoken in the house by everybody. So, it was very easy to get along.

CW:Was there any political atmosphere in your home growing up?

SSK:Not at all.

CW:Can you say more about the music that you were surrounded with when you were growing up?

SSK:Okay. As I said, my father and his four brothers, when they were young men, were a choir. We used to sing at the High Holidays. They loved music. My father was a tenor. I think he made better dresses than he was a singer, but even so, they loved to sing. And my parents decided that I was going to sing, as well. 14:00And so, I was given lessons by anybody who would listen to me. First, it was my mother, and the way I learned my songs, which she would play -- what you would call a disk now, but it was a 78 record. And I would learn the songs off the 78 records. And that became my repertoire. And then, I started taking lessons much later on.

CW:What were the disks, do you remember any of them?

SSK:Judy Garland singing the lullaby -- I can sing it in Yiddish. Let me see if 15:00I can --

CW:Could sing it in Yiddish, that's great.

SSK:Okay. (sings) "In dem beys-ha-migdash, in a vinkl kheyder, zitst di almone bas-tsiyon aleyn. Ir ben-yokhedl yingele vigt zi keseyder, zingt zi im a lidele shlufn tsu geyn. [In the little synagogue, in a corner, the Jewish widow sits alone. She constantly rocks only baby son, singing him a song to put him to sleep.] Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay --"

CW:"Shlof mayn kind [Sleep my child]"?

SSK:"Rozhinkes mit mandlen [Almonds and raisins]" --

CW:"Mandlen [almonds]."

SSK:-- oh, my God.

CW:Yeah.

SSK:It was "Rozhinkes mit mandlen," and Judy Garland sang it in English, which was very nice, 'cause that gave me a whole big thing. I could sing it in Yiddish and English. So, that was one of them, of course. And then, I used to go to a teacher who was -- we lived near the elevated, near the train, and we'd go down. 16:00Her name was Mrs. Brickel, and she taught me. She played the piano and she taught me all kinds of Jewish songs that were typed out on a little piece of paper with holes, and we kept a little book. And that was my repertoire. So, that's it. I learned all my songs from that.

CW:And do you remember your first performance?

SSK:Do I remember my first performance? My first performance, you're talking about, like, when I sang in front of people for no reason whatsoever? I was two. I know that because my mother told me. I do not remember. But I will have to 17:00believe my mother. She told me that I used to sing Molly Picon songs. "A bisl zin, a bisl regn [A bit of sunshine, a bit of rain]," that was one of them. So, yeah, that was my first performance. (laughs) Being put up on a table, probably in a casino somewhere, in a bungalow colony. And that's how I started my career, quote, end quote.

CW:Can you describe the bungalow colonies in the Catskills?

SSK:Can I describe the bungalow colonies in the Catskills? Actually, I can, from this point of view. They were -- some were individual, small wooden homes with 18:00little porches. You would walk up a few steps and then walk into a kind of a sitting room. Small kitchen and bedroom. Bathroom. I don't know what you call those tanks that had the gas that we use to feed the kitchen. Some were individual ones and some were -- there were two attached to each other. It was usually summer when we were up there. So, everything was green. Lots of trees. And the first bungalow colony I remember going to was on a lake. Now, when we 19:00visited in Poland and we went up into the hinterlands to see where our parents came from and our grandparents came from, it looked like a bungalow colony. And we then realized, at least I did, that that's why the Jews ran up to the mountains in the summertime, even though they said to you, it's because they want a lot of fresh air, there was this frishe luft [fresh air] thing, whatever. The fact is that when they got together up in the bungalow colony, it looked like their shtetl [small town in Eastern Europe with a Jewish community] in Poland. And they felt at home.

CW:When did you go to Poland?

SSK:I don't remember how many years ago it was. Probably, what are we now -- probably around ten years ago.

CW:So, what was the scene in the Catskills? What were you doing on a typical day 20:00up there?

SSK:When?

CW:Well, when --

SSK:At what point in my life?

CW:Oh, well, let's start with when you were a kid.

SSK:There were no day camps. There was nothing organized for us to do. I still remember, when my brother was there, when we were younger -- I have an older brother, and he and the boys would go fishing on the lake. And I would dig worms for bait and scare my mother with them. That was my greatest joy. And that's what we did. We went swimming and we went fishing, and we picked huckleberries. Now, I don't know what they call them now. But those blueberries you buy? They're huckleberries. (laughs) And the women all baked all kinds of wonderful 21:00things with those huckleberries.

CW:And would your grandmother go with you?

SSK:No, my grandmother would go off on her own. She went upstate to a small hotel that she liked to go to. Very independent.

CW:So, you obviously were singing for your family and friends. Were you exposed to Yiddish performers when you were a kid?

SSK:Yes. When we graduated from the bungalow colonies, we started going to this hotel in Loch Sheldrake, the Brookside Hotel. Now, in the Brookside Hotel, there 22:00were -- by that time, I was about seven or eight years old. Over the hill. I was all grown up. At that point, rather than travel around the mountains doing different hotels and whatever, this group lived at the hotel, like a repertory group, and they were from Second Avenue. And so, we got to know each other very well. The bandleader at this hotel was Abe Schwartz. You smiled. You know who that is?

CW:Can you explain who he is?

SSK:Of course. Abe Schwartz wrote "My Little Cousin," "My grine kuzine [My greenhorn cousin]." That was a very popular song. Now, he played the violin and 23:00there was a six or seven -- maybe six-piece band, and his daughter, Sylvia, was on the piano. And she was the one who rehearsed everybody for the evening's performances. Again, there were no camps and there was no real activity for the kids. So, my activity each afternoon was to sit with Abe Schwartz and be taught Yiddish songs. And he would write lead sheets in my key for the pianist to be able to play. And the other thing I used to do is I used to hang out with the salad makers and the bakers, but that's another story. And that's what I would do with my time, for the entire summer. And I loved it. I couldn't wait to get up to the hotel. Okay, now the group that was there, I can read or tell you the 24:00names, okay? There was Hymie Jacobson, Irving Jacobson. Two brothers who owned the Jewish National Theatre on Second Avenue and Houston Street. May Schoenfeld was Irving's wife. And there was a Mr. Schoenfeld. Now, he was obviously May Schoenfeld's father. Nobody ever called him anything but Mr. Schoenfeld. I don't know if the man had a first name, 'cause nobody ever used it. Then, there was Dina Goldberg, whose mother used to come up and brought their Pekinese dog. Now, the three of them looked alike: Dina, her mother, and the Pekinese dog. 25:00(laughter) Her husband, Irving Grossman, they did a -- whatever, an act, the singing and dancing, the usual hotske-potske [hop and skip] thing. There were the Feder sisters, Sylvia and Miriam. Sylvia was a soprano, Miriam was a contralto, and they did their singing things. And there was Fyvush Finkel. They were all part of that group. And I was a little kid. And I have to tell you, they treated me wonderfully. I was always treated, whether it was in the hotel or in the theater, like you treat a little kid. I mean, when I hear stories of what comes out of Hollywood, the pedophilia that comes out of Hollywood, I can't 26:00believe it. The Jewish theater was very different. They were families, husbands, wives, children. And it was a job, and you did your job, and you went home, and usually lived in the area. If you're working on Second Avenue, they lived in the area. I would go down with my mother for vacation times -- Christmas and Easter. I would go to regular public school, and then I would do this bit at the Jewish National Theater. And we would go down and we'd walk from the train, and we would walk past the Café Royal. And there was an open window and we'd wave, at 27:00which point usually about six men or so were there for coffee, and we'd all just walk through the theater to start rehearsals at about noontime.

CW:Now, before we get to Second Avenue, can you just describe, what was a show like up in the Catskills?

SSK:Well, it was a vaudeville show. It was a combination of musical performances, like from Peysakhke Burstein and Lillian Lux, who would come and do their bit. There was a harmonica player. What was his name? I can't remember. But he was subsequently blacklisted by McCarthy's group. I could never 28:00understand what a harmonica player (laughs) -- what kind of harm he could do. But anyway, he was. And so, was a combination of musical performances and skits. Comedy skits, usually very cute, very clean, very -- and, of course, there was the emcee. Later on, we called him "the tumbler [the comic entertainer or social director at a Jewish resort]." And he would bring everything together. And we would start the evening with dancing to Abe Schwartz's music and end the evening by dancing again. And that's what it was like.

CW:And when would you come up in the show?

SSK:That depended upon what I was going to do, and how would I -- depended upon 29:00what I was singing that night. They would fit me in between what was going on and what was appropriate.

CW:And did you have a favorite song that you loved to perform back then?

SSK:No. I loved all of it. It was all the same to me. The only thing I never wanted to sing, now that you bring it up, was "My yidishe mame [My Jewish mother]." Never sang it. Will not sing it, ever. (laughs)

CW:Why?

SSK:It was too soppy -- it wasn't my style.

CW:And can you just sort of paint the picture of the space? Was there a stage, were there people sitting around and eating, or sort of in rows?

SSK:Absolutely not. It was what was known as -- is known as a casino. I wrote the -- (laughs) I wrote it there. It was a wooden cabin-style house, and it had a dance floor as you walked in. During the day -- it was surrounded by these big windows, and the sun came in during the afternoon and baked it so that it was hot and miserable to be in there during the day while you're rehearsing. Chairs were set up, folding chairs were set up for the shows so that after the dancing, the chairs were set up and then they were taken away, and then you could dance 31:00again. The band was in the right-hand corner. And the pianist, who was Sylvia Schwartz at that time, Abe Schwartz's daughter, could see everybody on the stage, 'cause she was -- basically accompanied them, along with whatever else: an occasional clarinet and occasional saxophone or whatever music they brought along. So, that's it.

CW:Great. Now, let's go to Second Avenue. First of all, what was --

SSK:Okay, that should be short enough. (laughs)

CW:What was Second Avenue like?

SSK:Are you talking about the theater or the street or --

CW:The street. What was the street like?

SSK:The street was (laughs) apartment buildings. Normal apartment buildings. 32:00Interestingly, if you bring it up, Second Avenue and Eleventh Street was just a plain old apartment building. I think Ludwig Satz lived there. But anyway, I mention it only because my father and his partners owned that building. But adjacent to that building was something called the 181 Club, which, I think, was like the first gay club in New York. So, we had the distinction of having that in the building next door to us. Other than that, it was just plain apartment buildings and ordinary people.

CW:And the theaters.

SSK:Well, you know, by the time I came along -- yes, you had the Second Avenue Theatre. Was that about Seventh Street?

CW:I think so.

SSK:Thomashefsky's theater was across the street, but the Thomashefskys were long gone by the time I came on. Now, if you went down south to Houston Street, that's where the National Theatre was. Second Avenue and Houston Street. And if you went down a block and to the right, you came to Yonah Schimmel's Knishes, if you wanted a good potato knish with sour milk. There was also -- candy store right downstairs. And I'll tell you about that candy store. It fits in a little bit later.

CW:So, can you describe your -- I interrupted you when you were talking about going down midday for your rehearsal. So, what was that like, what --

SSK:Okay. So, we would get there around noontime. Hymie Jacobson wrote the 34:00orchestrations. He was the musician. Irving Jacobson, the other brother, he did a comedy act. And he was called Schnitzel Putzel. That was his name. He was a baggy pants comedian, old clown kind of baggy pants. Truth is that he was the business head of this whole organization. But he did do this comedy act, and everybody had to learn how to spell Schnitzel Putzel, which was Schni-i-itzel P-u-utzel with a capital Putzel. And that was his -- and what am I describing to you? Yes.

CW:The rehearsal. What was the rehearsal like?

SSK:Oh, the rehearsal. Since I did this very often at New Year's, Christmas, New 35:00Year's, I did something with Mr. Schoenfeld -- if you remember, no first name -- where I was the New Year. I was eight, nine. And I had this little blue, pale blue satin costume with a banner across it with the New Year on it: 1940, 1941, whatever. And he was Father Time. And he was in a big robe and a white beard and a scythe. And we did this two-part recitation. Can't remember a single word of it now, but we did a two-part recitation. So, of course, we had to rehearse all of it -- usually in Yiddish. So, how do you get the script? Another interesting 36:00story. There was a man there named Yankev Kalach. I think in English, he's called Jacob Kalich or something. He was Molly Picon's husband. Yankev Kalach. And he had a Jewish typewriter, and he would write out my things for me. He was a doll. He was the sweetest, nicest man on the planet, and he wrote out whatever I needed to have. He was there. She had to rehearse. But she didn't have anything to do with the rest of the world, and she hated kids. So, (laughs) that's my Molly Picon story. But he was an absolute doll. And that's how I got 37:00my script to go home and learn and whatever, 'cause he would write it out and I would do it.

CW:And was there someone there directing the rehearsal? And who was that?

SSK:Yes. Usually Hymie Jacobson was the one. I realize now that, depending upon who was going to be the performers -- go back. In this vaudeville house, you bought your ticket and you got a full-length movie plus a stage performance by, I don't know, four, five -- depending upon what was there. So, I'm sure that by the time I got there that all of this was organized so that they knew who was 38:00going to be doing what. I didn't. I went, I did my rehearsal, I got my script, my words, whatever it was, and I went home. That's it, so -- but Hymie Jacobson was the one who was the leader, the orchestrater, and the music person.

CW:What was he like?

SSK:Very nice. Sweet.

CW:What did he look like?

SSK:I'm picturing him. It's hard to -- what did he look like? Not that tall. I guess maybe about five-eight was considered tall, I guess, at one time. And he was just, you would say just ordinary. Not heavy, not thin, and very nice. And 39:00very talented. Tremendously talented. I mean, he could -- you hummed something to him and he made an orchestration out of it. He was fantastic. His brother, of course, Irving, was chubby (laughs) and smart. He ran the business. Smart enough so that when they paid me for my big performances there, we would do four on a Friday night, five on a Sunday. I mean, we really worked. Also, on Saturday. He paid me in single dollar bills because it looked like something, like a big thing of money that I was paid. Probably twenty-five dollars, but in single dollar bills. And that's the Jacobson boys. Now, Irving Jacobson later came to 40:00Broadway, and -- Sancho Panza. But then, I never heard of him again.

CW:Yeah, "Man of La Mancha," right? Yeah.

SSK:In "Man of La Mancha," that's right.

CW:Can you describe the theater itself?

SSK:Pretty typical of the time. It had a balcony, and I think it had a second balcony, as well. Other than that, it was not that unique in that it just looked like a big movie house, but with a stage, with a curtain that opened and closed. 41:00And not a movie screen.

CW:Do you remember any of the movies they would show?

SSK:I can't remember any of the movies, but I can tell you one movie that scared me to death. It had Peter Lorre in it. (laughs) And it frightened me enough so that I remember his face on that screen, and I never watched the movie. (laughs) Sorry. That's it.

CW:So, what was it like for you as a kid in the rehearsals with these --

SSK:Okay. As far as that was concerned, I waited my turn. I learned, years before, Sit quietly and they'll let you know when to come and do what you have 42:00to do, which is what I did. And they told me, and I did it, and that was that. And I would take my script, written in English or Yiddish or whatever it is and go home and practice it with my mother. My mother was there, so she knew what had to be done. And that's it. And we showed up the next time when we were supposed to show up.

CW:How did they treat you, these more established older actors?

SSK:They treated me like I was a little girl. That's what I say. The atmosphere, as far as I could see, was quite onshtendik [respectable]. Got an English word for that? I don't know. It was a family atmosphere, and I was a little girl. And you don't mess with little girls. They're sweet, they spoke to my mother, they 43:00spoke to me. But they were just very, very nice. Now, there was another family there. Henrietta Jacobson and her husband. Now, what was his -- oh, yeah, Julius Adler. Now, Henrietta was Hymie and Irving's sister. Her husband was Julius Adler. Now, they did a bit now and then. But, of course, their son was Bruce Adler, and he became very well known all over the place. I remember seeing a play in New Jersey, at the Paper Mill Playhouse. And I hadn't bothered to look at the program. It was New Jersey, and I'm not going to know anybody anyway. But 44:00then, we came -- there was the comedian, in the middle of this play. And I turned to my husband, I said, "There's Irving Jacobson." And he said, "What are you talking about?" I said, "That's Irving Jacobson." But Irving Jacobson was dead. So, I looked at the program and it was Bruce Adler. And as a kid, he had hung out at the theater and he picked up every one of his uncle's moves. And there he was, on the stage. I was swearing that I was going back fifty years and seeing Irving Jacobson on the stage.

CW:Wow. So, are there any sort of funny stories about performances or people at 45:00the theater?

SSK:I don't know about funny. Originally, I shared a dressing room when we -- with Esther Fields, Jennie Goldstein. Anybody else I wrote? Me. And Jennie Goldstein, it was even part of her act. But she was serious about it. We were talking, and she said, "People come up to me and they say, I've seen you since I was a little kid, which would make me a hundred years old." (laughs) And she was serious. People would come up to her and say, I've seen you since I was a little kid. And, of course -- she's very sweet. Esther Fields, she did an act that I 46:00saw later on TV done by Molly Picon, where one ages using dance. You start out young and, I don't know, you do the shag, I guess, at that time, who knows what? And then, you get older and you do the waltz, and then when you're really old, you dance with your head, like this, I mean -- that was Esther Fields. Years and years later, I saw Molly Picon do that bit on TV. (laughs) And I'm sitting there yelling, "That's not your stuff!" (laughter) But it was. I guess it was at that point. But anyway, so I would share this dressing room. And again, I knew that there was another dressing room upstairs, because Molly Picon would not mix with 47:00the riffraff. And one time, I came and they told me, I can't use that dressing room anymore. I have to go upstairs. Okay. I always followed orders. Here I am, eight, nine years old. What am I going to do, argue? So, I went upstairs, there was this tiny little dressing room with a little sink in the corner. Fine. And then, we're doing the stuff, we're doing our show, and between shows, the movie goes on and my mother came over to me and she said, "Come on, let's go get a soda." My mother hated giving me anything with sugar in it. And here she's taking me out for an egg cream. Now, if you want to explain to the Massachusetts crowd what an egg cream is, I'd be happy to do that.

CW:Please.

SSK:It's actually a chocolate soda with milk in it. But the seltzer comes out of 48:00a machine, I don't know what you call it, so that it's all fizzy and really quite delicious. But, as I say, my mother never want-- I was kind of chunky, and she never would take me for ice cream or soda. So, okay, boy, I'm going to go for an egg cream. So, we leave. Then I found out that the Gerry Society had come to inspect. Now, the Gerry Society was a group of people who made sure that underage children were not working without -- you couldn't get working papers unless you were, I think, fourteen or so. And so, they were the group that -- 49:00they had heard that there was a child in the theater, and they came to find me, (laughs) and I wasn't there. I was having an egg cream in the candy store. That's one story. Another one, on the contrary, it had to be a Sunday, 'cause it was daylight and I remember my father was waiting to drive us home. And there's this little lady. To me, she was an old lady, but she couldn't have been that old. And she insists that she saw me on the stage and I must meet her son. She wants to introduce me to her son. And we kept saying, Lady, (laughs) I'm eight years -- or whatever it was, I'm nine years old. I'm eight years -- "No, I saw 50:00you on the stage, and I want to introduce you to my son." Finally, she went home. So, you see, there was both sides of the coin. One said I was very young, the other one said I was all grown up. So, as they say, You paid your money and you takes your choice. That's what it was.

CW:So, between shows, where would you go for a snack or an egg cream?

SSK:Actually, I just stayed back in the dressing room most of the time. My story of the egg cream was the only time -- when we went out as a family, it had -- not when I was doing this. I still got butterflies before going on stage. I don't remember eating a lot when I was there, to tell you the truth. (laughs)

CW:Can you describe Café Royal?

SSK:I know there was a play about it. I can tell you about the play, but it was just a corner bistro kind of thing. And people would gather all times of the day. They came for coffee or they had breakfast or they had lunch. Nothing to write home about. It just happened to be on Second Avenue and very convenient.

CW:And the actors would hang out?

SSK:And they would hang out there. A place to hang, exactly. Nothing special. Anyway.

CW:Well, I wanted to ask you -- I mean, if you have another theater story, but I wanted to ask you about WEVD, also.

SSK:Oh, (laughter) okay, that's way down here. Good.

CW:(laughs) So, how'd you get involved in -- first of all, can you just tell me what WEVD was?

SSK:The station that speaks your language. Basically, at that time, it was Yiddish. The Yiddish station. It was on all kinds of hours, seven days a week. And at that point, well, I guess I have to back up a little bit. Sholom Secunda came to our synagogue, basically to introduce a new cantor to the people there, who unfortunately died young. But anyway, so being my father, the businessman, Sholom Secunda, big name, asked him if he would take me on as his student, which 53:00he did. And so, I would go to his apartment Saturday mornings, and he would teach me basic -- usually, his music and whatever. I have stuff that he's written and whatever, yeah. And I was telling my daughter, he had this big music room. If you know Riverside Plaza in Manhattan, the apartments -- the rooms are huge. It's a big room, huge piano. Baby grand or grand piano in the left-hand corner. Opposite that, he had his filing cabinets with music. Opposite that, there was this mysterious cabinet. With a cover, a wooden cabinet. Now, if you raised the cover and you put the hand on a blank record or disk, as we call them 54:00now, it would actually make a new record of whatever you wanted to hear. It was the first one I had ever seen (laughs) of a machine that could actually produce a record. And that's what he had in his music room. I thought it was the most fabulous thing I'd ever seen in all my life, right? And now, you whip out your little telephone and you do whatever you want. And it was a piece of furniture like that.

CW:What was he like as a teacher?

SSK:He was terrific. He expected you to learn your stuff. He expected you to 55:00know what you were doing. And he was charming. He was intelligent and charming. I got to know his wife. His oldest son, Shelley. I never met his younger son. That's really funny. But I never did. But I knew him and, as I say, his wife and his son fairly well. And I would go to his apartment on Saturday morning and learn whatever I was learning. Often, I would go from his house -- well, I usually went from -- when his house -- to the studio. I had a fifteen-minute program on Saturday afternoon at about -- can't swear what time it was, but one or one-thirty, somewhere in there, for fifteen minutes. Often, I would learn a 56:00new something in the morning and sing it in the afternoon and make my mother crazy, because she didn't know where it came from. But that was the fun of it. So, yes, that was WEVD. So, it was a fifteen-minute program. Then, that's what you had.

CW:Where was the WEVD building?

SSK:I don't remember. I was trying to -- I was taken by the hand.

CW:Right, yeah.

SSK:I didn't remember where it was. My son probably would tell you if he was here.

CW:What did it look like inside the studio?

SSK:Inside, actually, when we took the elevator up -- and there was a small lobby, and then the studio was, where I was, was really a big, empty room, a grand piano, a standing microphone, a glass panel where the engineer sat and did 57:00whatever he does. And he also recorded the program, so that eventually I did have all those records of all the programs, which have now disappeared. However, (laughs) that was then.

CW:So, how did that come about, that you had this show? Did your father arrange that, or --

SSK:No, Sholom Secunda did. Sholom Secunda did. And I don't know, they just said, Show up, sing the song, go home. (laughs)

CW:But there was someone who came after you, right?

SSK:Yes, Aaron Lebedeff. Aaron Lebedeff used to like to listen to me. Why, I 58:00don't know, but he was there anyway, and he was doing his show afterwards. And he was constantly telling me that my Yiddish isn't good, that I'm -- you asked, we spoke about the two dialects, the litvishe [Lithuanian] and the galitsyaner [Galician]. Well, I spoke and sang street Yiddish, Bronx Yiddish. I didn't know whether it was litvish [from Lithuania] or galitsyaner or Polish or varshever [from Warsaw]. All I knew was -- and he was annoyed with me because I wasn't using pure litvish Yiddish. But I thought he was funny, so then -- (laughs) he was funny in his own way. So, we got to know each other. But everybody was always very nice.

CW:So, how long were you doing this for? You started, you said, when you were 59:00about seven or eight?

SSK:Well, what is the "this"? I was doing different -- not the radio.

CW:So, when did you do the theater and then when did you do the radio?

SSK:Okay, now the vaudeville theater and whatever, that was just a few years, from '39 to about -- 1939 to about 1941 or '42. Now, was the Second World War and things became very hairy for a lot of -- the political situation and what was happening to the Jews was really bad. So, although I continued to sing at 60:00various dinners and banquets to earn money, there was an organization called AMPAL, which was an American Palestine, which was raising money to buy land in then-Palestine for the Jews to have a place to come back. That was during World War II. So, I used to do a lot of that, money raisers and things like that. And I did the radio show. I did that until I went into college, really. I was seventeen when I went into college, and that was the end of that. And then, I got married, it was the end of my life. (laughs) No more life. I was twenty when 61:00I got married, had four kids, and here we are.

CW:Looking back on that period, what did you learn from those people in -- the Yiddish performers?

SSK:What I learned from them? They were tremendous talents. Tremendous talents. But they were stuck on the Yiddish stage. My mother had a saying, "Loz zikh nisht arayn in di yidishe gesheftn [You can't get out of the Jewish business]." Okay. Because more than one went out to Hollywood. They were successful in New York. Leo Fuchs was somebody else we knew very well, and the galitsyaner batkhn 62:00[wedding entertainer], and he was handsome and he sang and he did everything. Then, after I was older and he packed up, went out, he was gonna -- you never heard from him again. He disappeared. The only one I saw in a movie was Reizl Bozyk. Now, she and her husband, years before, did a routine, when they first came from Russia, at the National Theatre, where they sang and they did a little hupsy-pupsy dance and whatever. But all of that went by the boards. The only time I remember seeing her was in the movie "Crossing Delancey." She was the grandmother, and I couldn't believe I was seeing Reizl Bozyk in a movie. But generally speaking, Yiddish actors didn't make it out of that milieu. It just 63:00didn't work. And so, off they went into their own little worlds.

CW:Why do you think the crossover didn't work out for them?

SSK:I can tell you about my case, for example. I was not a bad performer, singer, whatever. Of course, you hate the sound of your own voice, but couldn't have been that bad, because I kept getting invited back. So, I guess I was okay, in Yiddish. But somehow, when I started doing English, it didn't have that yidishe tam [Yiddish charm], and I could hear it. I don't know if anybody else 64:00could hear it, but I was not satisfied with the whole -- I didn't think that I -- that it was good enough. There was a world out there of people with tremendous talent, and I really felt I wasn't gonna make it without giving up a life, and it wasn't right. And any of these people that we spoke about, they're -- now when I read about your interviews and whatever, you talk about all these Russian names and Polish names that I've never heard of. People I met in the Yiddish theater were all born in the United States. And it came to the point where they just -- it just didn't -- we just didn't fit in. We didn't make it somehow. And I felt that I was not making it. It just wasn't happening. So, I 65:00went on to become a speech and hearing therapist, the usual. And, as I say, I got married, had four kids. And here we are. (laughter)

CW:How did Yiddish continue to play a role in your life, if at all, once you left the performing?

SSK:Well, we all speak -- I speak Yiddish. I can tell you some st-- my husband did not speak a word of Yiddish until we went to Poland. When we went to Poland, we met people who spoke Polish and Hebrew. We don't speak Polish, we don't speak Hebrew. All of a sudden, my husband, who never spoke a word of Yiddish in his life, (laughs) spoke Yiddish. And naturally, they spoke Yiddish. These Polish 66:00people spoke Yiddish. The Jews from Poland spoke Yid-- so, all of this, all of a sudden came out of his mouth. My children all understand some. Speak it, actually. My youngest son, I think he could actually speak it. I think they could all put a sentence together if they have to. I know that when the youngest was in Germany, for example, and the closeness of the Yiddish and the German -- he was there on business, and he had to tell a -- the cab driver asked him where he's going and how long he's staying, and he answered him in pure Yiddish. And the guy said, "Oh!" Understood everything he said. So, it still comes in handy. I find that, although you would think Yiddish would be all over Israel, it's 67:00not. When you go to Israel, you have to speak Hebrew. When you go to New York, you should speak English. But that's a political statement. And that's it. Even in Israel, if we ever spoke Yiddish to anybody, they'd say, Oh, my grandparents spoke Yiddish. Except for Brooklyn Hasidim or the Hasidim in Israel, I don't see Yiddish as -- it's fun once in a while, but that's it. Finished, done.

CW:What about Yiddish theater today?

SSK:Yiddish theater today. There's very little of it that I see. There's the 68:00Yiddish Book Center that has the summer program. In New York, where there used to be millions of people who would flock to Yiddish, there isn't. You don't really have an audience. And unfortunately, I mean, it's fun, but no. In fact, when I go to the Folksbiene -- I have a friend who calls me whenever she goes to anything Yiddish or Jewish. She calls me. She goes to a regular Broadway show, she doesn't call me. But when she goes to Yiddish show, she calls me. And they're not babies. They're my age. I'm old. I'm eighty-three years old, they're 69:00older than I am. They're eighty-five, eighty-seven. And they don't understand a word of it, but they read -- along with the Russian, they read the English subtitles. So, I don't see the future for the Folksbiene. We've gone to everything there was, and we've seen it just dwindle into the mist, as it were. I really don't see a big future for it.

CW:And thinking -- the change you've seen over your lifetime, why do you think that happened?

SSK:Basically, I think it happened because we have an Israel. We have a country, we have a language, we have a culture. Yiddish was a subculture. In Poland, Jews 70:00spoke Yiddish. They were second-grade citizens. They were never citizens. In Russia, same thing, or Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania. Yiddish was something spoken by the Jews, who were looked down upon. And I think that Hebrew is now our first language. And the reason that the Hasidim speak Yiddish in the street is because Hebrew is God's language, and you don't use God's language in the street. You use Yiddish, which is more profane. But other than that, it's not really our language anymore, I'm glad to say. I'd rather we have a country and a language.

CW:Is there anything else you want people to know about -- for Yiddish vaudeville or any of the things that we've been talking about today? (laughter)

SSK:Did I leave anything out? I don't think so. I think we've done it all.

CW:When people hear the word vaudeville, do you think they understand now what that was and --

SSK:Absolutely not. If I say vaudeville to a younger person, they don't know what it is.

CW:So, can you just explain from that level, someone who doesn't even know what 72:00vaudeville is?

SSK:Can I explain what vaudeville was? All right. As I said, when you came, it started with a full-length movie. And then, just as if you would go to Radio City, you had your movie and then you had the Rockettes. Well, Yiddish vaudeville had the Yiddish stars, and they would do their musical numbers, dance numbers, comedy numbers, and it would start with a definite beginning, as I said. For the New Year, I would do this New Year thing with the old man and I was the New Year. And there was always a big finale at the end where everybody came out and did a big finale number. Onward and upward -- that was it.

Q: I wonder -- I don't want to put you on the spot, but I wonder if you might sing something for us?

SSK:Oh, dear. I doubt it highly. (coughs) Nothing's gonna come out of my throat today. Have a bad, bad cold.

CW:Okay.

SSK:But I decided I was doing this once and for all and getting it out of my system. You want me to sing something for you. I can't even think of anything. She's gonna yell at me, because she'll come up with forty things.

CW:We can take a pause if you want and think about it, you can consult.

SSK:It's funny. You'd think I'd be able to think of something, right?

CW:It's okay. Why don't we -- can we look at these pictures? Can you tell me about them, and then we'll think about the song?

SSK:Okay.

CW:So, I'll just give you these one at a time and you can tell me what you remember about that picture.

SSK:I think I've given it to you, Christa. I was obviously singing, (laughter) in front of a dinner thing. Again, a money raiser. And it's --

CW:Can you just hold it up in front of you so we can see it in the camera? There we go.

SSK:There we go.

CW:That's one of the dresses, you think, probably?

SSK:This is one of the dresses that my father had made for me, yes.

CW:That's great.

SSK:Poor kid. Here, it looks like -- here, also, it looks like it's one of the 75:00hotel ballrooms where there was a dinner. They were always money raisers for Jewish organizations. ZOA was very popular, also, at that time. That was me.

CW:This is a great one. (laughs)

SSK:Okay, this is my little drum majorette thing. I would sometimes start the show at the National Theater by doing my twirling and -- sorry, I shouldn't do that with the camera. And this was it. I would start the show with this. [BREAK IN RECORDING] This is later on, in the hotel. Concord Hotel, where I sang when 76:00they asked me to.

CW:How old do you think you were in that picture?

SSK:Oh, here, probably -- this is later, about fifteen or so. And here, this is the same thing, in the same place.

CW:Who is that with you, do you know?

SSK:That was the emcee for the evening or the master of ceremonies, who was introducing me, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Shirley Schachter. I almost forgot my name. (laughter) And this is -- same thing. Looks like I'm rehearsing with the pianist over there, at that time.

CW:That's great.

SSK:And there was -- I didn't lose it, did I? Oh, you want this one or no?

CW:Yeah, yeah, definitely.

SSK:This is just dressed to go onstage. Here, I was about seventeen, I think.

CW:Wow.

SSK:And that's --

CW:That was in one of the theaters --

SSK:So, I think was in one of the hotels.

CW:Wow.

SSK:One of the defunct hotels that I miss. I really miss them. I loved going to the Catskills, to the hotels. I don't know why they closed up on me.

CW:Yeah.

SSK:Travel came in. But I'm finished traveling. Why aren't they there waiting for me?

CW:You have to go to Miami.

SSK:Bleh. (laughs) Not so bad, actually.

CW:Well, maybe a song that you can think of?

SSK:Can't sing.

CW:Is there any one that you would recommend?

SSK:Well, I'll try this, but I'm telling you, I have the worst cold and I can't sing. (laughs)

F1:Is there a way to have --

SSK:"Mame, her oyf zorgn,/es kimt a nayer morgn,/der shturem vet bald zayn farbay,/bald vet hershn shulem,/mekiem vet der khulem,/a land vi der yid vet zayn fray./Dos land vet zayn yontefdik [Mama, don't worry,/a new tomorrow is on its way,/the storm will soon pass,/peace will soon reign,/our dreams will come true,/and there will be a country where Jews can be free./The country will be festive]" -- oh, dear. (sings without words) "In kimen vet yeder zin,/tsu zayn 79:00mamen aheym tsurik./Mame, hob in zinen,/men miz dem kamf gevinen,/vet keyn milkhomes mer nit zayn. [And each and every son,/will return home to their mothers./Mama, keep in mind,/that we must win this war,/so that no more wars will happen again.]" It's the best I can do off-the-cuff.

CW:That was fantastic. (laughs)

SSK:Forgot a word.

CW:A hartsikn dank [Thank you very much].

SSK:Oh, a hartsikn dank tsu dir [thank you very much].

[END OF INTERVIEW]