King Lear in Yiddish; Habima Players
Creator(s)
- Getty Images
- Julien H. Bryan (Director)
Biographical History
Julien Hequembourg Bryan (1899-1974) was an American documentarian and filmmaker. Bryan traveled widely taking 35mm film that he sold to motion picture companies. In the 1930s, he conducted extensive lecture tours, during which he showed film footage he shot in the former USSR. Between 1935 and 1938, he captured unique records of ordinary people and life in Nazi Germany and in Poland, including Jewish areas of Warsaw and Krakow and anti-Jewish signs in Germany. His footage appeared in March of Time theatrical newsreels. His photographs appeared in Life Magazine. He was in Warsaw in September 1939 when Germany invaded and remained throughout the German siege of the city, photographing and filming what would become America's first cinematic glimpse of the start of WWII. He recorded this experience in both the book Siege (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1940) and the short film Siege (RKO Radio Pictures, 1940) nominated for an Academy Award in 1940. In 1946, Bryan photographed the efforts of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency in postwar Europe.
Scope and Content
There are burn-in time codes on the intermediate Betacam SP (Protection) video. There is no way to order a clean copy. Prominent actor, Solomon Mikhoels, of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater, in his dressing room, applying makeup. Starkly lit closeup of Mikhoels as King Lear. Another prominent Jewish theater group in the Soviet Union, the Habima Players, perform an ancient Hebrew dance.
Note(s)
01:13:25-01:14:19
Same sequence as Story 768. Neither has the full Mikhoels sequence in King Lear as filmed on stage. Additional photographs are available in the USHMM Photo Archives. It is likely that the ancient Hebrew dance seen here was parodied in "A Night at a Hasidic Rebbe's" which premiered at the Moscow State Yiddish Theater in 1924. It was one of three sketches in "Three Jewish Raisins." According to the historian Jeffrey Veidlinger, this popular play parodied the "mystical piety of Moscow's own Habima [Theater].... One critic praised 'A Night at a Hasidic Rebbe's' for its intrinsic artistic content as well as its propagandistic anti-religious message..." See Jeffrey Veidlinger's book, "The Moscow State Yiddish Theater: Jewish Cuture on the Soviet Stage" (2000), for more information.
Julien Hequembourg Bryan (1899-1974) was an American documentarian and filmmaker. In the 1930s, he conducted extensive lecture tours, during which he showed film footage he shot in the former USSR. Between 1935 and 1938, he captured unique records of ordinary people and life in Nazi Germany and in Poland. He was in Warsaw within days of Germany's invasion of Poland in September 1939 and remained throughout the German siege of the city, filming and photographing what would become America's first cinematic glimpse of the start of WWII.
Subjects
- DANCING
- MIKHOELS, SOLOMON
- STAGES
- SOVIET UNION
- JEWS
- THEATERS
- ACTORS
- USHMM (PERMANENT EXHIBITION)
- BRYAN, JULIEN
- YIDDISH
- JEWISH LIFE (PRE-WAR)
Places
- Moscow, Soviet Union
Genre
- Film
- Unedited.