Tuesday, December 26, 2023 – CELEBRATING YIDDISH THEATRE

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FROM THE ARCHIVES

Leo Fuld: Manhattan’s Star of

Yiddish Song

December 23, 2023 by Jaap Harskamp 

On Christmas Day 1934, just a year after ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment which repealed Prohibition, the refurbished Earl Carroll Theatre on 7th Avenue and 50th Street opened as the French Casino.

It was a glittering Art Deco showpiece with walls draped in black velvet and established a reputation as Manhattan’s most lavish nightclub.

Associated with the club was the name of Clifford Fischer, the producer of grand cabaret-restaurant revues with spectacular novelty acts. His Montmartre-styled shows were both fashionable at the time and a reflection of his background. Born in Belgium in 1882, he was the son of a purveyor of horses to the Belgian Army.

Having spent some time in London, he settled in Manhattan and began his career as a booking agent by joining the William Morris Agency (started in 1898 by the German-Jewish immigrant Zelman Moses). Fischer brought various European acts to America, including Charlie Chaplin, the Scottish singer Harry Lauder and the French actress Sarah Bernhardt.

In 1936 Fischer booked a Dutch Jewish multi-lingual singer who had made a name for himself in The Netherlands and in London to appear at the Casino. It would be the start of an astonishing career.

Yiddish New York

Yiddish is a language once spoken in an area spreading from Alsace to the Urals. The exodus of East European Jews to New York City put the language in the spotlight. At the turn of the twentieth century more than two million Jewish immigrants spoke Yiddish. Newspapers served as vehicles of social emancipation by publishing serialized novels, sketches and essays in the language.

The stage played a crucial role in that process. New York City’s Yiddish theatre began in The Bowery in the early 1880s and later flourished on Manhattan’s Second Avenue, the “Yiddish Broadway.”

As the last great wave of these arrivals landed at Ellis Island in the 1920s, radio was beginning its ascent in American culture. By the early 1930s, Yiddish radio flourished.

In New York City alone, 23 stations broadcast dramas, variety programs, music, interviews and political commentary. The process of Jewish acculturation in New York City was pushed forward through the institutions of the Yiddish language.

Yiddish culture was not confined to Jewish circles. It made an impact on a much wider circle of Anglo-American music lovers and concertgoers. The 1930s saw a rage for Jewish musicians and singers, both in London and New York City.

Such was the popularity of dance band leader Joe Loss that his 1938 wedding at London’s Central Synagogue was covered by Pathe News as crowds thronged the nearby streets to catch a glimpse of proceedings.

One of the world’s best-known Yiddish theatre song “Bei Mir Bist Du Schein” was originally composed by Ukrainian-born Sholem Secunda (with words by Romanian-born songwriter Jacob Jacobs) for a Yiddish musical comedy at the Parkway Theatre, Brooklyn, in 1932.

Broadway lyricist Sammy Cahn bought the rights and rewrote the words in English, whilst preserving the chorus in Yiddish. His version of the song was turned into a smash hit in 1937 by the Andrews Sisters.

When Clifford Fischer signed Leo Fuld to appear in the French Casino in 1936 he was acutely aware of the musical trends of the day. Yiddish was in vogue.

Rotterdam and London

Singer Lazarus “Leo” Fuld was born on October 29, 1912, in Rotterdam into a large and poor Jewish family. His father was a market trader; his mother a very religious person. In the synagogue young Leo stood out as a singer. Having learned the songs of the chazzan, he seemed destined to become a cantor.

After leaving high school he received a scholarship to study at Amsterdam’s Dutch-Israeli Seminary, but he did not complete his studies. He preferred secular dance music and started work as a singing waiter in café De Cool on the Kruiskade in the center of Rotterdam.

In September 1931 he moved to Amsterdam to take up a job at the Tip Top cinema in the city’s Jewish heartland where variety artists performed in between the showing of films. The audience loved his voice.

He made his Dutch radio debut being introduced by the Jewish revue star Louis Davids, Holland’s most famous performer at the time. For a year Fuld could be heard live on radio, sometimes several times a week.

In 1932 he traveled to London to audition for the British Broadcasting Corporation. Contracted for ten sessions, he became the first Dutch singer ever behind a BBC microphone.

He made his stage debut in the capital at the Mile End Empire, Mile End Road. His talent was spotted by bandleader Jack Hylton, the “British King of Jazz”, who has been credited for bringing Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and other jazz giants to Europe during the 1930s.

Hylton signed the nineteen-year-old Fuld to a three-year contract with his celebrated band which resulted in engagements in every important theater in the British Isles and the Continent. In September 1933, Fuld made his first recordings for the Odeon label in Berlin.

A year later his version of “My Yiddishe Momme,” originally recorded by the Ukrainian-born American singer Sophie Tucker, became a world success.

The song expressed a bittersweet nostalgic emotion that would have rung true to audiences of immigrant and second-generation Jews (its lyricist Jack Yellen had himself arrived as a child from Poland in the United States).

When Hitler came to power in 1933, the lyric was banned by the Nazis (and sung in concentration camps by victims of the Holocaust).

Manhattan

Fuld added a several Yiddish and Hebrew lyrics to his repertoire that attracted a wide audience, including “Rosinkes mit Mandeln” (Raisins and Almonds), a traditional Jewish lullaby arranged by Ukraine-borm Abraham Goldfaden for his 1880 Yiddish musical Shulamis (Al Jolson attended the Casino every night at “five to ten” just to catch Fuld’s rendition of the song).

Fuld’s performances at the French Casino were followed by engagements at the prestigious Paramount Theatre, Broadway (famous for the largest theater organ ever built by the Wurlitzer Company), which turned the singer into a star with a growing number of celebrity admirers.

In 1938 his temporary visa ran out and he had to return from Manhattan to Rotterdam where he re-applied for an immigration visa. After a series of concerts in the Netherlands, Fuld left the country in February 1940 on the last boat back to New York before the Nazi invasion on May 10, 1940.

Four days later the Luftwaffe destroyed large parts of Rotterdam. Most of the city’s Jews were deported and perished in Nazi death camps.

Staying at the Mayflower Hotel overlooking Central Park, Fuld teamed up with Dutch-American writer and historian Hendrik Willem van Loon (also born in Rotterdam) and the exiled Jewish orchestra leader Max Tak, providing radio broadcasts from Manhattan intended for the Netherlands and the then East Indies.

News of what was happening to Jews in Europe gradually reached the United States. When Leo learned that almost his entire family had been murdered (only one sister survived the Holocaust), he was no longer able to face an audience and stopped performing.

He used his talent for writing and quickly became a sought-after writer on Broadway. He also produced a musical comedy called Fun for Your Money with which he toured all over the country. For a while he ran an Israeli nightclub and restaurant named Café Sahbra at 253 West 72d Street.

Fuld experienced both the height of Yiddish culture in New York City and its imminent decline. The flow of Yiddish speakers to America had stemmed, while many earlier arrivals turned away from its reach as they assimilated in society. UNESCO has recently put Yiddish on the list of definitely endangered languages.

Amsterdam and Paris

Fuld returned to the Netherlands in 1948, by then an American citizen. His Jewish audience there had almost entirely disappeared, but upon arrival thousands of people greeted him with acclaim. He was offered a contract to sing again.

He had not performed for five years, but his daily performances in Amsterdam’s stylish Tuschinski theatre (with its iconic Wurlitzer organ) were sold out weeks in advance. Reinvigorated, he went on to work at the London Casino and London Palladium.

Invitations to sing arrived from all over the world. Performing in Paris, he visited a small cabaret club where he heard a survivor from the Warsaw ghetto singing a Yiddish tango that moved him deeply: “Wo Ahin Soll Ich Geh’n.”

Composed by the Latvian composer Oskar Strock with words by the Polish poet Igor Korntayer (who was murdered in Auschwitz), Fuld adapted the lyric in English and recorded it under the title “Where Can I Go?” for the Decca label.

The song took America by storm. Fuld sang it on television shows hosted by Milton Berle, Perry Como and Frank Sinatra. The lyric was also recorded by great singers such as Ray Charles and Steve Lawrence. Billy Holiday was one of Fuld’s loyal fans.

Having resumed his professional career, the circle of admirers widened. He performed in New York, Hollywood, Chicago, Miami, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Buenos Aires and Santiago.

Having shared the stage for ten weeks with Edith Piaf at the famous Théâtre de l’ABC on Boulevard Poissonnière, Paris, Fuld attracted a substantial French following. He encouraged young Charles Aznavour to persist in chasing his dream as a performer.

The chansonnier repaid his debt of gratitude by writing “l’Émigrant” for Fuld, a song for which he was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque in 1954.

The Arab World

Fuld’s presence was paradoxical. Although his work was strongly Jewish and related to the diaspora, his performances appealed to broad audiences in Europe and the United States.

From a present-day perspective, it is – to put it mildly – surprising that a leading exponent of Yiddish song found an enthusiastic audience in the Arab world. Fuld sang for packed concert halls in Alexandria, Beirut, Casablanca, Algiers and Tunis.

When performing at the Auberge des Pyramides in Cairo (the club was a favorite with British officers and the city’s cosmopolitan elite during the war), his concert was attended by Egypt’s legendary singer and actress Umm Kulthum (also: Oum Kalthoum) who was dubbed as “Egypt’s Fourth Pyramid” and “Star of the East.” The daughter of an imam, she was astonished to hear Fuld sing in Arabic but preferred listening to his Yiddish songs.

Also present at the concert were Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Ambassador of Ethiopia. At the latter’s suggestion, Emperor Haile Selassie booked Fuld for his daughter’s wedding on April 26, 1942, at the Imperial Palace in Addis Ababa.

ad ever made.

Shortly after the album’s release Fuld died in Amsterdam, leaving a legacy of 500 recordings for 23 different labels, selling more than 250 million records. His extraordinary career is significant.

Overcoming linguistic barriers, Fuld’s musical language of emotion spoke to millions of listeners across all borders. It built bridges by connecting people and acknowledging cultural diversity. His music spread a message of shared humanity.

At one time an Arab version of “My Yiddishe Momme” served as a reminder that over history there had been many Jewish victims of persecution (forced conversions and pogroms) in Muslim countries too.

TUESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY

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CREDITS

JAAP  HARSKAMP
NEW YORK ALMANACK

Illustrations, from above: Poster of the Yiddish Theatre exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York, 2016 (detail); poster for the 1932 musical comedy that included the hit song “Bei Mir Bistu Shein” at Brooklyn’s Parkway Theatre; view of the cocktail lounge at the French Casino; and a young Salim Halali wearing a fez.

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