Aaron Lebedeff: Yiddish Performer

Aaron Lebedeff: The Maurice Chevallier of the Yiddish Stage

Aaron Lebedeff was born in Hormel White Russia (Belarus) in 1873. Aaron’s parents had a clothing business. As a boy, Aaron sang with the Hormel Cantor, Baruch David. Aaron did not wish to study so he was apprenticed to an artisan at an early age. Aaron soon ran away from town and began to work as an extra in a theater. Later Aaron performed in minor roles in the Russian theater in Bobruisk, Minsk and in other cities. When Aaron returned to Homel, he participated with amateurs in a play. Aaron joined the troupe of Leyzer Bernshteyn came into his city and he also opened a dance class. In this troupe, Aaron was officially in the chorus and unofficially he was a porter, dresser and prompter. In this troupe Aaron made his debut as the “Pipkiner Rav” in Shomer’s “Der ba’al teshuva.”

From then on, Aaron worked as a character actor, mostly in repertoire imported from America. Later, he acted in Operettas, which provided him with a wider scope to display his varied talents. After appearing in additional other troupes and touring all over Russia, Aaron started his career on stage when given a role in Warsaw. Aaron given the moniker “Der Litvisher Komiker” (The Lithuanian Yiddish Comic) both for his stage manner and for the humorous songs he composed and sang. After spending long years on the road with traveling shows, Aaron Lebedeff finally became a star in Warsaw in 1912-1913. This was the start of a lifetime career in the theater, interrupted only by a brief period of military service when he was drafted into Kerensky’s Revolutionary Army in Harbin, Manchuria. Aaron was able to make his life in the army easier by often appearing in concerts for the officers.

Aaron longed to return to the stage and he desperately wanted out of the miliary. Thus, Aaron managed to gather all his savings together to buy his way out of the army. Then began his long and arduous trek to the United States by way of Siberia, Manchuria, China and Japan. All in all, Aaron spent a year brainstorming in the Orient and in that time, Aaron managed to master one dialect of Chinese.

In 1920, when Aaron finally arrived in New York, he achieved an immediate personal success at Borris Thomashefsky’s National Theater starring in a play called Liovka Molodez. Thus began Aaron’s 16 years on Second Avenue, during which time he played a full season each year, never missing even one week. Aaron was viewed as always happy wearing his trademark straw hat as well as faultlessly tailored clothes. Many people began referring to Aaron as the Maurice Chevalier of the Yiddish Stage.

Aaron became famous for roles like the Romanian Litvak and though after a while in most of his shows, he adapted the same typecast character, the audiences loved him. In a New York Times article in 1932, the author commented that Aaron delighted the public in roles in which he typically portrayed “an ingratiating provincial who is always the victim of the misfortune in the first act, only to shine forth resplendent with simoleons and a slick sennet in the closing act.”

Even with the rising popularity of talking pictures that had language accompaniment and the decline of the Yiddish stage, Aaron’s luster dimmed only slightly. Aaron soon began to star in Yiddish Vaudeville at the National and Clinton Theaters where Yiddish talkies (silent movies with live Yiddish-language accompaniment), as well as 8 live acts were both on the bills.

Aaron’s most notable musicals included: My Malkele, Bublitchki (in which he costarred with Molly Picon, Yankele Litvak and Yoshke Chvat), Motke for Slobodke, Money Talks (with Michael Michaelesko), the Magic Melody and My Weekend Bride.

From 1912-1913 Aaron performed in Itzkhok Zandberg’s theater in Lodz. Around the same time, Aaron married Vera Lubow and joined the Aaron Fishzohn troupe. Aaron gave concerts to the American Red Cross troupes in the midst of the Russian Revolution.  Finally, in 1920, Aaron moved to New York, where he became one of the leading actors for Boris Thomashefsky’s National Theater. Aaron was a part of the National Theater for six consecutive seasons at which point, Thomashefsky and Aaron both relocated to the Liberty Theater in Brooklyn.

Aaron produced nearly 80 records in the 1920’s. These records gained widespread popularity which also helped to increase Aaron’s reputation in Jewish Communities throughout the United States. Aaron often chose to sing songs which appealed to his audiences’ nostalgia for old World Europe. Perhaps the best example is Aaron’s hit, “Die Grine Kusine,” which tells the story of a naïve country girl who left for America, where she met a man who led her to her downfall. Aaron also had a penchant for composing and performing songs that romanticized the Provincial villages and towns of Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Romania.

Even while he was performing at the Liberty Theater, Aaron continued to make appearances at the National Theater, under two directors named Natan Goldberg and Jacob Jacobs. Aaron also toured extensively throughout the U.S. Throughout the 1920’s and 30’s, Aaron frequently appeared in Boston, Philadelphia, and Detroit. For the 1929-30 season, Aaron performed at Chicago’s Lawndale Theater. At the end of the season, Aaron made a guest appearance at New York’s National Theater on April 9, 1930, when he staged Motke Fun Slobodke.  Aaron continued to be active in Yiddish Theater well into the 1940’s.

After he was mobilized during the October Revolution, he joined Avraham Fishzon’s troupe, but because of bad business dealings, he often had to support himself by singing in Russian and later in English for members of the American Red Cross. Later, Aaron traveled to Japan where he and his wife Vera organized international concerts. In September 1920, he appeared in Boris Thomashefsky’s National Theater in Wolf Shumansky’s play “Lovke Molodiyett. His success was so great that he became a star overnight and remained on in the American Yiddish Theater.

At the age of 61 when Aaron was still playing romantic leads, he revealed to a reporter at the New York American, his formula for perpetual youth: “Dress well, eat and drink what you like, and remain constantly in love.” Although Aaron was besieged by adoring females everywhere he went, he remained happily married to actress Vera Lebedeff.  In 1936, Variety cited Aaron, at the age of 62 as “the world’s oldest juvenile.”

In 1953, Aaron was recognized as one of the most famous Yiddish stars and was honored at a special anniversary performance for Israel Bonds at the National Theater. Aaron was the only star present at that performance who was called back for several encores. Aaron wrote many of his Yiddish and English lyrics himself. Most of the lines are almost impossible to translate for they are highly idiomatic, with a humor that is difficult to render into English. All the songs are as nostalgic as they are magically evocative of their Russian-Romanian surroundings and the homesickness people remembered of village life in the vanished prewar world. Few performers can match Aaron’s personality which embodied absolute exuberance and uninhibited merry-making.

In 1955, at the age of 82, Aaron was still appearing in Musicals in what then remained of the Yiddish theatre.  On November 8, 1960, when Aaron Lebedeff died, the Yiddish theater lost one of its most enduring and influential comedic stars. Aaron undoubtedly had the longest career as a “Juvenile” song-and-dance-man in the history of the New York Theater in both Yiddish and English. Aaron Lebedeff is buried in Mount Hebron Cemetery in New York.

  ~Blog by Renee Meyers