Der Payatz: Around the World with Yiddish Theater

Silver Spring, MD: Bartleby Press, 1995. Presumed first edition/first printing. Hardcover. Very good in very good dust jacket. Inscribed by Anita Willens (Step-daughter of Herman Yablokoff). Sewn binding. Paper over boards. viii, 535 p. Illustrations. Index. From an obituary posted on-line: "Herman Yablokoff, an actor, composer, playwright, director and producer in the American Yiddish theater for more than 55 years, died [1981]....He was 77 years old....Mr. Yablokoff was president of the Hebrew Actors Union in New York, a post he had held for numerous terms between 1945 and his death. The union, affiliated with the Associated Actors and Artistes of America, was founded in 1900. He also was president of the Yiddish Theatrical Alliance. Born in Grodno, Poland, in 1903, he began playing children's roles in the Yiddish theater at the age of 12....Mr. Yablokoff came to this country in 1924 and settled in New York. Among the extravaganzas he wrote for the theater on lower Second Avenue in the 1930's and 40's were ''Der Payatz'' (''The Clown''), a role he also popularized on a New York radio program; ''The King of Song, '' ''Goldela Dem Bakers, '' ''Mein Veise Blum'' and ''Der Dishwasher. '' His last musical, written, staged and directed by him and in which he played the role of the father, was ''My Son and I, '' in 1960....Mr. Yablokoff became chairman of the Yiddish National Theater in New York, a nonprofit institution for creativity and expanding awareness of the Yiddish stage. Earlier, he had written and published his two-volume memoirs, ''Around the World With Yiddish Theater, '' which won him the 1970 Zvi Kesel Prize for Yiddish literature.....As he became more prominent in the Yiddish theater, Mr. Yablokoff traveled extensively abroad but no trip meant more to him, according to his family, than a seven-month tour of refugee camps in Germany, Austria and Italy in 1947. He gave 104 performances in 94 camps for 180, 000 Jewish refugees, for which he received the United States Army Certificate of Merit.