Background
Jacob Pavlovich Adler was born in Odessa, Russian Empire (now Ukraine).
Jacob Pavlovich Adler was born in Odessa, Russian Empire (now Ukraine).
Born in Odessa, Adler left school early and entered the business world. His lack of education always plagued him but he had an excellent memory. He became an avid theatergoer, partial to serious, real¬istic plays, a taste that would become important in later years.
When in 1879 Abraham Goldfaden brought his troupe to Odessa, Adler became friendly with the actors and joined them on the tour. For a brief time he headed his own company but when the tsar closed all Yiddish theaters in 1882, he went to London.
From 1882 to 1889 Adler worked in London and the United States. At first unsuccessful in London, he eventually became a star and a famous carouser, moving from cafe to cafe with a train of hangers, on whom he insulted in both Russian and Yiddish.
The first time a New York theater sent him money to cross the Atlantic, he squandered it and was forced to stay behind. He used to swagger through London parks, looking like an Oriental prince in his black cloak. Englishwomen would follow him, hoping just once that he would look at them and smile.
In 1889, after four theatrical managers begged him to come to New York, he made his debut, billed as a combination of Salvini, Barrett, and Booth. Rather than appear in Uriel Acosta, a play befitting this billing, he chose instead The Ragpickers, a comedy. The audience, expecting a tragedy, did not laugh and in horror, the unhappy managers rushed before the curtain and told them that Adler was a bad actor and had deceived them. Adler later had his revenge when he became owner of the theater and dismissed the entire company.
Adler was far from an overnight success. He did not sing or dance well, a serious handicap in the Yiddish theater. While financially successful acting in melodramas and operettas with Boris Thornashevsky and David Kessler he was restless and yearned for higher artistic and moral ideals. On and off stage he created his public personality. But it was not until his meeting with Jacob Gordin that he found the “word" that satisfied his longing for art. Gordin gave Adler “realism,” plays that dealt with the lives and problems of ordinary Jews; heads of households, matriarchs running businesses, disoriented immigrants, and tamilies torn apart by generational clashes.
Adler’s first important role was Gordin’s Yiddish King Lear in 1892. In 1894 he produced three of Gordin’s plays. Throughout the 1890s he continued with translations of Shakespeare and continental writers and in 1901 performed a powerful Yiddish Shylock. Two years later he performed the same role on Broadway, with Adler speaking Yiddish and the other actors English.
While the sacred word for Adler was realism, his own acting style was by no standard realistic. He would begin with a character from ordinary Jewish life and magnify the role to heroic proportions. A Gordin character became Adler.
In 1902, after twenty years of stardom he fell sick. He had an announcement placed in the Yiddish press that he was dying and wished his admirers to come to his hospital bed so he could say farewell. On Saturday, the biggest matinee day for Yiddish theater, all the Yiddish theaters were empty. The thousands had come to his hospital window. Adler boasted that even from a hospital bed he could empty all the other shows on the Lower East Side.
When Adler died in 1926, he had carefully planned his funeral. His coffin was carried from Yiddish theater to Yiddish theater. He lay in a black mourning coat with Windsor tie and prayer-shawl. Thousands attended the funeral and when the first shovel of dirt hit the coffin, the crowd wailed, “The king is dead!”
Physical Characteristics: He was over six feet tall, with a noble and expressive face. His nickname was "nesher hagodl" (“The Great Eagle”; Adler is the Yiddish word for eagle) for his piercing gaze, strong profile, and commanding stage presence. In later years he sported a mane of pure white hair.
Quotes from others about the person
Sholem Asch said that Adler “looked like a lord and carried himselflike a king.”
Isadora Duncan saw him as “a reincarnation of Greek beauty.”
He was married three times and had nine children.