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“Folks, I now give you Mr. Boris Thomashefsky,” shouted the coarse-voiced cabaret hostess.

Treading sedately to the center of the dance floor, stepped the once idolized king of the Yiddish stage. That romantic hero, over whose shapely legs in tights, our mothers once sighed with delight, whose dulcet voice thrilled them to their marrow, is now an entertainer in the Old Rumanian Restaurant on Allen street.

While the guests dine and chatter the seventy-year-old man sings to them of his forgotten glory. His once wavy black hair is dyed. Those eyes, whose killing glances ogled many a dreamy housewife, are now a little rheumy. His figure is ponderous and heavy, but his voice is still beautiful. It retains its fascinating quality to sway his audience.

Seated at a table before the performance, he contemplated his memorable past. At the age of thirteen, when he first arrived in America, he acquired a position as choir boy in a synagogue on Henry street. So attractive was his voice and personality, that Frank Wolf, then president of the synagogue, and owner of a saloon on Hester street, took him under his wing.

OPENED JEWISH THEATRE

Through this kind patron’s financial aid, Boris Thomashefsky succeeded in opening the first Jewish theatre in America. The initial production was called “The Witch.”

Fifty years ago, the Jewish immigrants were hungry for a theatre of their own. Two hours before the first performance, the entire house was sold out.

But calamity reared its ugly head and almost doomed the gallant venture. The one and only Yiddish prima donna in America took sick just before the rise of the curtain. Nothing daunted, young Boris hopped into the lady’s regalia, and assumed her part.

He proved such a sensation, that he clung to female roles for three years. Then growing into manhood, and a husky voice, he hired a new leading lady.

His life story reads like a history of the Jewish theatre. Practically every actor once prominent on the Yiddish stage, owes his first appearance to him. Among these are, notably, Rudolph Schildkraut, Maurice Morrison and Jacob Adler.

EAST SIDE BELASCO

Known as the Belasco of the East Side, he was responsible for new lighting effects and more realistic scenery. He was his own stage manager, producer and star. And with it all, he still had time and energy left to write and produce seventy-eight plays.

For one whole year, he acted Hamlet in the Thalia Theatre on the Bowery. This period he counts as the happiest and most auspicious in his whole life.

Then there came into existence the “patrons” of the Jewish theatre. Adler, Kessler and Thomashefsky each had their own coterie of admirers. Many an evening the balcony resonded to bitter wrangling over the individual heroes.

Thomashefsky dates the downfall of his career from an unsuccessful undertaking eight years ago. He gambled and lost every penny he possessed, when he sent for the Vilna troupe and installed them in the Forty-fourth Street Theatre on Broadway. Their failure spelled his financial ruin.

Yet he has no regrets. He feels that life has given him about all it can offer any one man. He has possessed both fame and wealth; lived recklessly and romantically; tasted the potent power of a king; and enjoyed the admiration and love of thousands.

‘DON’T FORGET ME’

All he desires now, is that his old friends come to see him again. He believes he still has something to offer to the world. “I do not want to be forgotten,” he pleads.

With the years sitting heavily upon him, his exceeding charm and energy are remarkable to behold. He dreams of a home in “Eretz Yisroel” when he gets older, he says. By his side sits his staunch friend, companion and devoted wife, the radiantly beautiful, once renowned actress, Regina Zuckerberg.

The music sounded the beginning of his first number. He rose, assumed a pose, closed his tired gray eyes, and sang. The verse written by his son, was called. “What is Life.” Its concluding lines were:

While we are scheming, hoping and dreaming.

The machinery stops, and all is in vain.

A chorus of young, half-dressed girls, were next on the bill. They danced the Carioca.