Jacob Ben-Ami (November 23 or December 23, 1890,

Minsk Minsk ( be, Мінск ; russian: Минск) is the capital and the largest city of Belarus, located on the Svislach and the now subterranean Niamiha rivers. As the capital, Minsk has a special administrative status in Belarus and is the admi ...

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

– July 2, 1977,

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, New York,

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) was a noted Belarusian-born Jewish stage actor who performed equally well in

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ve ...

and English.

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. He had a long and distinguished international career, including acting in, staging and directing a number of

Broadway Broadway may refer to: Theatre * Broadway Theatre (disambiguation) * Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S. ** Broadway (Manhattan), the street **Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...

plays. In 1918, he founded or co-founded the Jewish Art Theatre. 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 fellow cast member

Robinson Robinson may refer to: People and names * Robinson (name) Fictional characters * Robinson Crusoe, the main character, and title of a novel by Daniel Defoe, published in 1719 Geography * Robinson projection, a map projection used since the 1960 ...

's disdain by allegedly trying to upstage the other actors and overacting. Both the play and Ben-Ami, however, were hits. In her 1921 review of the production,

Dorothy Parker Dorothy Parker (née Rothschild; August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967) was an American poet, writer, critic, and satirist based in New York; she was known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th-century urban foibles. From a conflicted and unhap ...

proclaimed him "one of the greatest actors on the stage today." He was also lauded by

John Barrymore John Barrymore (born John Sidney Blyth; February 14 or 15, 1882 – May 29, 1942) was an American actor on stage, screen and radio. A member of the Drew and Barrymore theatrical families, he initially tried to avoid the stage, and briefly att ...

("inspired"), ''

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'' and

Alexander Woollcott Alexander Humphreys Woollcott (January 19, 1887 – January 23, 1943) was an American drama critic and commentator for ''The New Yorker'' magazine, a member of the Algonquin Round Table, an occasional actor and playwright, and a prominent radio ...

("the cocktail question of the year was 'Ben-Ami or not Ben-Ami'"), among others. He had much less success in

Eugene O'Neill Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Nobel Prize in Literature, literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the U.S. the drama tech ...

'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. ''Welded'' closed after three weeks and 24 performances. On March 9, 1943, he starred in a mass memorial service to the 2,000,000 Jews who had, up to that date, been murdered by the Nazis in Europe. The service, staged at Madison Square Garden in New York, was called '' We Will Never Die'' and during the two performances attracted 40,000 people. His last Broadway play was '' The Tenth Man'', written by

Paddy Chayefsky Sidney Aaron "Paddy" Chayefsky (January 29, 1923 – August 1, 1981) was an American playwright, screenwriter and novelist. He is the only person to have won three solo Academy Awards for writing both adapted and original screenplays. He was ...

; it had one of the longer runs on Broadway at 623 performances from November 5, 1959, to May 13, 1961. As an established star, Ben-Ami helped the then-unknown

John Garfield John Garfield (born Jacob Julius Garfinkle, March 4, 1913 – May 21, 1952) was an American actor who played brooding, rebellious, working-class characters. He grew up in poverty in New York City. In the early 1930s, he became a member of ...

get accepted into the American Laboratory Theater. He also co-directed the 1937 film '' Green Fields'' with Edgar G. Ulmer and appeared in the films ''

The Wandering Jew The Wandering Jew is a mythical immortal man whose legend began to spread in Europe in the 13th century. In the original legend, a Jew who taunted Jesus on the way to the Crucifixion was then cursed to walk the Earth until the Second Coming. ...

'' (1933) and ''Esperanza'' (1949), and on television. His niece is the actress and film director Jennifer Warren.

References

External links

January 1, 1922, photograph

Half-length portrait caricature
in the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...

Jacob Ben-Ami
portrait with Doris Keane, 1924 {{DEFAULTSORT:Ben-Ami, Jacob 1890 births 1977 deaths Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States Jewish American male actors American theatre directors Yiddish theatre performers Actors from Minsk People from Minsky Uyezd Jews from the Russian Empire 20th-century American Jews

Biography

See also

References

External links