Mitchell Parish was an American lyricist, notably as a writer of songs for stage and screen.
Jean Schwartz was a Hungarian-born Jewish American composer and pianist. He is best known for his work writing the scores for more than 30 Broadway musicals, and for his creation of more than 1,000 popular songs with the lyricist William Jerome. Schwartz and Jerome also performed together on the vaudeville stage in the United States; sometimes in collaboration with Maude Nugent, Jerome's wife, and the Dolly Sisters. Schwartz was married to Jenny Dolly from 1913 to 1921.
Dorothy Fields was an American librettist and lyricist. She wrote more than 400 songs for Broadway musicals and films. Her best-known pieces include "The Way You Look Tonight" (1936), "A Fine Romance" (1936), "On the Sunny Side of the Street" (1930), "Don't Blame Me" (1948), "Pick Yourself Up" (1936), "I'm in the Mood for Love" (1935), "You Couldn't Be Cuter" (1938) and "Big Spender" (1966). Throughout her career, she collaborated with various influential figures in the American musical theater, including Jerome Kern, Cy Coleman, Irving Berlin, and Jimmy McHugh. Along with Ann Ronell, Dana Suesse, Bernice Petkere, and Kay Swift, she was one of the first successful Tin Pan Alley and Hollywood female songwriters.
Jack Selig Yellen was an American lyricist and screenwriter. He is best remembered for writing the lyrics to the songs "Happy Days Are Here Again", which was used by Franklin Roosevelt as the theme song for his successful 1932 presidential campaign, and "Ain't She Sweet", a Tin Pan Alley standard.
Sholem Asch, also written Shalom Ash, was a Polish-Jewish novelist, dramatist, and essayist in the Yiddish language who settled in the United States.
Abraham Goldfaden, also known as Avram Goldfaden, was a Russian-born Jewish poet, playwright, stage director and actor in Yiddish and Hebrew languages and author of some 40 plays. Goldfaden is considered the father of modern Jewish theatre.
Sigmund Mogulesko — Yiddish: זעליק מאָגולעסקאָZelik Mogulesko, first name also sometimes spelled as Zigmund, Siegmund, Zelig, or Selig, last name sometimes spelled Mogulescu — was a singer, actor, and composer in the Yiddish theater in New York City. He was born in Kalarash, Bessarabia and began singing in the local synagogue choir. Before reaching adolescence, he was paid nearly three times what teachers made, to sing in the synagogue of Chişinău. Soon after moving to Bucharest, Romania, he was paid to sing in churches as well as synagogues, and started acting.
Yiddish song is a general description of several genres of music sung in Yiddish which includes songs of Yiddish theatre, Klezmer songs, and "Yiddish art song" after the model of the German Lied and French mélodie.
Alexander Olshanetsky was an American composer, conductor, and violinist. He was a major figure within the Yiddish theatre scene in New York City from the mid-1920s until his death in 1946.
The Yiddish Theatre District, also called the Jewish Rialto and the Yiddish Realto, was the center of New York City's Yiddish theatre scene in the early 20th century. It was located primarily on Second Avenue, though it extended to Avenue B, between Houston Street and East 14th Street in the East Village in Manhattan. The District hosted performances in Yiddish of Jewish, Shakespearean, classic, and original plays, comedies, operettas, and dramas, as well as vaudeville, burlesque, and musical shows.
Herman Yablokoff, sometimes written Herman Yablokov, Herman Yablokow, etc., was a Belarusian-born Jewish American actor, singer, composer, poet, playwright, director and producer who became one of the biggest stars in Yiddish theatre.
Halsey K. Mohr was an American composer and lyricist.
Louis David Reingold was a Yiddish playwright and journalist.
Joseph Brody was an American Jewish composer who wrote for the Yiddish theatre as well as liturgical Jewish works. He taught George Gershwin and was a friend of Yossele Rosenblatt. His daughter, Estelle Brody, was an actress.
Isidore Lillian was an actor, songwriter, playwright, and composer who was a leading figure in the New York Yiddish Theatre for the first half of the twentieth century. He wrote hundreds of songs for the theatre which were performed by such actors as Boris Thomashefsky, David Kessler, and Jacob Adler, as well as by Lillian himself.
Anshel Schorr, also known by the anglicized name Albert Schorr, was an Austrian-born American playwright, lyricist, theater manager and composer active in the Yiddish Theatre of the early twentieth century. He worked with many of the famous figures of that era including Joseph Rumshinsky, Arnold Perlmutter, Molly Picon, Jacob P. Adler, and David Kessler, and wrote or co-wrote more than fifty plays and operettas which were widely performed in Europe and the Americas. His songs were recorded by contemporary artists such as Pepi Litman, Pesach Burstein, Mordechai Hershman and Simon Paskal. His wife, Dora Weissman, was also a well-known Yiddish theatre actor.
Vera Rozanka, was a Ukrainian Yiddish Theatre actor and manager, soprano, writer, radio performer, and recording artist. During her career, she shared the stage with many notables of the Yiddish Theatre world, including Aaron Lebedeff, Ben Bonus, Fraydele Oysher, Miriam Kressyn and Menasha Skulnik. Among her typical acts were to perform as non-Jewish Russian, Ukrainian or Romani characters in folk costumes, performing under the name "the yiddishe shikse" (Shiksa).
David Meyerowitz was a Latvian-born composer active in the early Yiddish theater. His music was oriented mainly to vaudeville and revue formats.
Clara Gold was an American Yiddish theatre actor and recording artist. She recorded more than twenty Yiddish theatre music and comedy discs between 1917 and 1929, usually with comedic partner Gus Goldstein.
Thomas Mayo Geary was an American songwriter, composer, vaudeville performer, and music publishing executive. He formed a partnership with fellow Brooklyn native Harry Breen with whom he performed on the vaudeville stage in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Simultaneously, the pair worked as a song writing team with recordings of their tunes being made for the Victor Talking Machine Company and Columbia Records during the early years of the 20th century. These works are catalogued in the Discography of American Historical Recordings. Later Geary wrote songs with other lyricists, and notably wrote his own lyrics to the successful 1904 tune "The Man with the Ladder and the Hose" which honored the men of the New York City Fire Department. He worked as an executive for a variety of music publishing companies, first in New York City and later in Chicago.
