Sam Rernard, for fifty years a favorite comedian, who worked his way from a Coney Island music hall to the stages of foremost New Yorkand London theaters, died of apoplexy on Tuesday night on board the North German Lloyd steamship Columbus, which had left New york for Plymouth. Cherbourg and Bremen the preceding night. He was on his way to Carlsbad to take the baths for rheumatism.
Sam Bernard, one of the most successful players of German character parts in the last and present generations, was born in Birmingham, Elgland, on June 3, 1963. He was brought to New York by his mother in 1868.
He played slapstick comedy parts at the Grand Duke Theater, at the Five Points. Thence he went to Coney Island and played in Tilyou’s beer garden, then in Henderson’s Music Halls.
His first appearance on the “legitimate” stage was in New York in 1886, in “The Corner Grocery,”.
His fifticth anniversary as an actor was celebrated on March 13 with a dinner at the Commodore Hotel, arranged by the Jewish Theatrical Guild.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
