Paulina Lavitz (March 29, 1879 — September 20, 1959), also seen as Pepi Lavitz, was a Polish-born actress in American

Yiddish theatre Yiddish theatre consists of plays written and performed primarily by Jews in Yiddish, the language of the Central European Ashkenazi Jewish community. The range of Yiddish theatre is broad: operetta, musical comedy, and satiric or nostalgic revues ...

Early life

Pilpel "Pepi" Lavitz was born in Lemberg, Galicia (now

Lviv Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in western Ukraine, and the seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main cultural centres of Ukraine ...

, Ukraine)."Will This Chicago Girl Become the Greatest Actress in America?"
''Chicago Sunday Tribune'' (January 6, 1907): 51. via

Newspapers.com Ancestry.com LLC is an American genealogy company based in Lehi, Utah. The largest for-profit genealogy company in the world, it operates a network of genealogical, historical records, and related genetic genealogy websites. In November 2018, ...

Her parents were in theatre work, and her younger sister Minnie (or Minna) Birnbaum also became an actress. Lavitz started acting as a child in Europe, and trained as a singer too.

Career

Paulina Lavitz was a "leading woman" in Yiddish theatre, in Chicago and New York. In Chicago she starred at International Theater with David Silbert in ''Queen Sabba'' in 1907, and appeared with Regina Prager and

Fernanda Eliscu Fernanda Eliscu (April 24, 1880 – September 27, 1968) was a Romanian-born actress in the United States, in English and Yiddish productions on stage and screen. Early life Fernanda Eliscu was born in Iași, Romania (some sources say Buchares ...

at the Metropolitan Theatre in 1909. She was still acting into her fifties, appearing in the melodrama ''Married Slaves'' (1935) with a Yiddish theatre co-operative in New York. There are folders related to her later career in the Records of the

Hebrew Actors' Union The Hebrew Actors' Union (HAU) was a craft union for actors in Yiddish theater in the United States (primarily in New York City), and was the first actors' union in the United States. The union was affiliated with the Associated Actors and Artiste ...

, archived at

YIVO Institute for Jewish Research YIVO (Yiddish: , ) is an organization that preserves, studies, and teaches the cultural history of Jewish life throughout Eastern Europe, Germany, and Russia as well as orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to Yiddish. (The word '' ...

.''Guide to the Records of the Hebrew Actors' Union 1874-1986'', YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

Personal life

Pauline Lavitz married a physician and concert promoter, Dr. Max Brav. They had four children. She was widowed in 1954 and died in 1959, aged 80 years, in

Flushing, New York Flushing is a neighborhood in the north-central portion of the New York City borough of Queens. The neighborhood is the fourth-largest central business district in New York City. Downtown Flushing is a major commercial and retail area, and the i ...

. Her remains were buried in Mount Hebron Cemetery there.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lavitz, Paulina 1879 births 1959 deaths Burials at Mount Hebron Cemetery (New York City) Actors from Lviv American stage actresses Polish emigrants to the United States 19th-century Polish actresses 19th-century American actresses 20th-century American actresses