Bertha Kalich

Born Beylke Kalak in Lwów in the Austro-Hungarian city of Lemberg (today Lviv, Ukraine), Bertha Kalich (her stage name) attended oper with her mother, a dressmaker and costume designer, and became enraptured with the stage. Studying at the Lemberg Conservatory, Kalich went on to make a career as one of the first great actresses of the Yiddish stage tradition, which was just beginning to take shape. She had her first major role in Yankev Ber Gimpel’s troupe playing the titular role in Abraham Goldfaden’s Shulamis. She later joined Goldfaden’s company, touring with them in Romania, where she was acclaimed at the state theater. In 1890 Kalich married, and around 1894 she and her family moved to the United States, where she became a regular lead in Yiddish performances, acting in plays by Jacob Gordin, Z. Libin, Y. L. Peretz, and David Pinski; Gordin designed characters in Kreutzer Sonata and Sappho just for her. In 1905, Kalich became the first Yiddish actress to successfully transfer to English-language productions, appearing in a number of plays by Lee Shubert, Harrison Grey Fiske, and even an adaptation by George Bernard Shaw. According to her own estimate, she played 125 roles in seven different languages during her career on the stage; she also performed on the radio and in movies. Her health deteriorated at the end of the 1920s, prompting her retirement in 1931.