Jacob Ben-Ami
Jacob Ben-Ami (November 23[1][2] or December 23,[3] 1890 in Minsk, Russian Empire – July 2, 1977 in New York City, New York, United States) was a noted Belarusian-born Jewish stage actor who performed equally well in Yiddish and English.[4][5][6]
Biography
Ben-Ami was born in 1890 and grew up in Russia, performing in various acting troupes, before emigrating to the United States in 1912.[2][7] He had a long and distinguished international career, including acting in, staging and directing a number of Broadway plays.[1] In 1918, he founded[6][8] or co-founded[3] the Jewish Art Theatre.[5]
Ben-Ami's first English-language production was the 1920 Broadway play Samson and Delilah. According to biographer Alan Gansberg in Little Caesar: A Biography of Edward G. Robinson, Ben-Ami earned Robinson's disdain by allegedly trying to upstage the other actors and overacting.[9] Both the play and Ben-Ami, however, were hits.[9] In her 1921 review of the production, Dorothy Parker proclaimed him "one of the greatest actors on the stage today."[10] He was also lauded by John Barrymore ("inspired"), The New York Times and Alexander Woollcott ("the cocktail question of the year was 'Ben-Ami or not Ben-Ami'"), among others.[11]
He had much less success in Eugene O'Neill's 1924 play Welded, in which he starred. Among other problems, the style of play did not suit Ben-Ami, and he had a thick accent.[12] Welded closed after three weeks and 24 performances. On the other hand, his last Broadway play was The Tenth Man, written by Paddy Chayefsky; it had one of the longer runs on Broadway at 623 performances from November 5, 1959, to May 13, 1961.[13]
As an established star, Ben-Ami helped the then-unknown John Garfield get accepted into the American Laboratory Theater.[14]
He also co-directed the 1937 film Green Fields with Edgar G. Ulmer and appeared in the films The Wandering Jew (1933) and Esperanza (1949), and on television.[15]
His niece is the actress and film director Jennifer Warren.
See also
References
- ^ a b Jacob Ben-Ami at the Internet Broadway Database
- ^ a b "Jacob Ben-Ami scripts: 1927-1967". New York Public Library.
- ^ a b "Jacob Ben-Ami". Museum of Family History.
- ^ "Jacob Ben-ami Dead at 86". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. July 26, 1977.
- ^ a b Quindlen, Anna (July 23, 1977). "Jacob Ben-Ami Actor, Dies at 86; A Founder of Jewish Art Theater; Helped to Make Stage More Realistic and Less Farcical". The New York Times.
- ^ a b Nahshon, Edna (February 2, 2016). New York's Yiddish Theater: From the Bowery to Broadway. Columbia University Press. p. 156. ISBN 9780231541077. Retrieved May 16, 2016.
- ^ "Jacob Ben-Ami". Oxford University Press.
- ^ Nahma Sandrow. "Yiddish Theater in the United States". Jewish Women's Archive.
- ^ a b Gansberg, Alan L. (May 18, 2004). Little Caesar: A Biography of Edward G. Robinson. Scarecrow Press. p. 24. ISBN 9780810849501. Retrieved May 16, 2016.
- ^ Parker, Dorothy; Fitzpatrick, Kevin C. (May 1, 2014). Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923. iUniverse. p. 185. ISBN 9781491722664. Retrieved May 16, 2016.
- ^ Sandrow, Nahma (1996). Vagabond Stars: A World History of Yiddish Theater. Syracuse University Press. p. 274. ISBN 9780815603290. Retrieved May 16, 2016.
- ^ Shafer, Ivonne (November 28, 2011). Eugene O'Neill and American Society. Universitat de València. pp. 97–98. ISBN 9788437083506. Retrieved May 16, 2016.
- ^ The Tenth Man at the Internet Broadway Database
- ^ McGrath, Patrick J. (January 1, 1993). John Garfield: The Illustrated Career in Films and on Stage. McFarland. p. 5. ISBN 9780899508672. Retrieved May 16, 2016.
- ^ Jacob Ben-Ami at IMDb
External links
- January 1, 1922, photograph
- Half-length portrait caricature in the Library of Congress
- Jacob Ben-Ami portrait with Doris Keane, 1924
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| People | |
- 1890 births
- 1977 deaths
- American people of Belarusian-Jewish descent
- Imperial Russian emigrants to the United States
- Belarusian emigrants to the United States
- Jewish American male actors
- Belarusian male stage actors
- Theatre directors
- Yiddish theatre performers
- People from Minsk
- People from Minsky Uyezd
- Belarusian Jews
- Imperial Russian Jews