Urban Archive

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Show Biz & Entertainment

By the late-19th and early-20th century, Jewish immigrants to the United States were making big waves in the entertainment industries.

Lower Second Avenue in Manhattan was the Broadway of Yiddish theater. Plays, musicals, operettas, avant-garde experimental pieces–all in Yiddish–found a home in a wide range of literary art theaters, political workers theaters, musical companies and more. Some Jewish theater stars crossed over to English-speaking Broadway and Hollywood, including Paul Muni, Edward G. Robinson and Molly Picon.

Jewish artists were making in-roads in other arenas, too, especially in the burgeoning animation industry. As always, The Forward was quick to identify new trends and publish articles celebrating and explaining them to their immigrant audience. Many of the performers that appeared in the newspaper were familiar and even mispokhe (family) to Forward readers who followed them as they crossed over into mainstream English language entertainment.

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Museum at Eldridge Street

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Kessler's Second Avenue Theater

Molly Picon was a darling of the Yiddish theater, and “Hello, Molly” was a star vehicle for her. Here, Molly impersonates a young man to distract a cabaret singer who has captured her father’s attention. In the course of the show, she also played a Hawaiian dancer. Many years later, Picon appeared in Hollywood films, including as Yente the matchmaker in Fiddler on the Roof.

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Mutual Film Company

Bimbo was a dog-like character who, at one point, starred as the boyfriend of Betty Boop (who was originally drawn with long dog ears herself). Betty and Bimbo had many adventures together, but when censorship became a part of the film industry, and as Betty Boop lost her canine features, Bimbo was replaced by a human male named “Fearless Fred.” Bimbo and Betty were both created by Max and Dave Fleischer. Born to a Jewish family in Poland, they came to the United States as children. Displeased with the jerky motion Max saw in early animated films, he invented the Rotoscope, a combination projector and easel that made animation smoother. By 1921, he and Dave had opened their own studio Out of the Inkwell. They produced popular films that combined animation and live action, “follow the bouncing ball” sing-alongs and more. They introduced Betty Boop in 1930, and later animated versions of Popeye and Superman. The Fleischer Studios became known for its “New York” style of animation, which was grittier, edgier and more urban than the sweet princesses and animal characters produced by the Walt Disney Studio on the West Coast. This image, which shows the illustration process needed to animate Bimbo walking, appeared in the Forward as part of an article celebrating the Fleischer brother's success. The printing plates used to create the cartoon images in the article were stored in the Forward archives, too.

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Mutual Film Company

In a cartoon frame typical of the Fleischer brothers' urban style, Brownie Bear, who often appeared as a much friendlier character, gets ready to cut the rope on Bimbo as he hangs from a building’s girders. The realistic-looking city background mimics Max Fleischer’s “Out of the Inkwell” cartoons, which combined live action and animation.

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