For over seventy years, Molly Picon, star of Yiddish
theater and film, delighted audiences with her comic
song and dance performances. While her career began in
vaudeville and flourished in the Second Avenue theaters
of New Yorks Lower East Side, Picon later performed on
stage and in Yiddish and Hollywood films for Jewish and
non-Jewish audiences around the world. Her engaging
persona and powerful performances helped keep Yiddish
culture alive by bringing it our of the shtetl and into
mainstream American culture. Aothough Picon always
played assertive characters on stage, for many years she
struggled to be taken seriously as an independent woman
and actress.Ultimately, however, she emerged as an icon
for second generation American Jews and helped her
audiences appreciate their immigrant past and forge new
American Jewish identities.