Moses Horowitz

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the playwright Moses Ha-Levi Horowitz. Moses Horowitz was also the birth name of Moe Howard of the Three Stooges.

Moses Ha-Levi Horowitz (1844–March 4, 1910), also known as Moishe Hurvitz, Moishe Isaac Halevy-Hurvitz, etc., was a playwright and actor in the early years of Yiddish theater.[1] Jacob Adler describes him as an "authorit[y] on dramaturgy", but also remarks that before being part of the Yiddish theater in London in the mid-1880s he had "wandered in different lands, involved himself in various undertakings, and then moved on often leaving, it is said not altogether pleasant memories behind him." He was one of the few figures in the early years of Yiddish theater who did not participate in the boom years in Imperial Russia (1879–1883).[2]

Self-styled a "professor", Horowitz had converted from Judaism to Christianity[3], but in Romania in 1877 he converted back to Judaism[citation needed] and (along with Joseph Lateiner) began to write plays for Israel Grodner and Sigmund Mogulesko after they left Abraham Goldfaden's troupe. A favorite of Bucharest intellectuals, he was known for historical dramas, sometimes with improvised monologues (especially for his own roles); he was initially seen as a more serious playwright than Goldfaden, who at this time was writing vaudevilles, light operetta, and the occasional melodrama,[1] although Goldfaden's work would also soon take a more serious turn.

Horowitz soon put together a troupe of his own, including actor Abba Schoengold, with which he toured eastern Romania.[3]

Famous for the speed with which he turned out his plays (usually in no more than three days), he would sometimes start actors rehearsing the first two acts of a play while he wrote the third backstage.[1]

He was born, according to the Jewish Encyclopedia on the 7th of Adar, 1844, at Stanislau, Galicia (Central Europe) (now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine). After the usual Jewish education he studied German and went to Bucharest. Horowitz went to New York City in 1884, taking with him a company of his own.[4]

He wrote no less than 169 plays. Das Polishe Yingel being his first dramatic production. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, among his more successful plays are: Schlome Chochom, Kuzri, Chochmath Noshim, Ben Hador, and Yetziath Mizraim.[4] Bercovici also singles out his Sabbatai Zvi and Tragedy of Tisza-Eszlar, both from 1884.[1] Most of Horowitz's plays were historical, but he also wrote "zeit piessen" on topical subjects, such as a play about the Homestead Strike of 1892, one about a 1903 pogrom in Chişinău,[4] and a distinctly socialist take on the 1889 Johnstown flood written while working with Boris Thomashefsky in Chicago.[citation needed] The most successful of his "zeit piessen" was Tissa Eslar. Many of his dramas were composed in the course of a few days, and he utilized without hesitation whole scenes of foreign dramas. Though a successful playwright, Horowitz failed as an actor, and after he went to America he abandoned acting entirely.[4]

At one time quite wealthy and "the best-dressed man on the lower east side,"[5] he died poor. After the success of his 1904 play Ben Hador, he lost all of his money on an unsuccessful venture in 1905 to present grand opera in Yiddish at the Windsor Theater; shortly after that, he was stricken with paralysis, and lived out his last years in the Montefiore Home, provided for by his friends.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b c d Bercovici, O sută de ani…
  2. ^ Adler, 1999, 266, 268
  3. ^ a b Adler, 1999, 125n
  4. ^ a b c d Rosenthal and Gorin, Jewish Encyclopedia
  5. ^ NYT, March 7, 1910

[edit] References

  • "Petitions in Bankruptcy", New York Times, February 9, 1905, 12.
  • "Yiddish Dramatist Dead", New York Times, March 5, 1910, 9.
  • "1,500 at Dramatist's Burial", New York Times, March 7, 1910, 9.
  • Adler, Jacob, A Life on the Stage: A Memoir, translated and with commentary by Lulla Rosenfeld, Knopf, New York, 1999, ISBN 0-679-41351-0, 125 (commentary), 266, 268, 314.
  • Bercovici, Israil, O sută de ani de teatru evreiesc în România ("One hundred years of Yiddish/Jewish theater in Romania"), 2nd Romanian-language edition, revised and augmented by Constantin Măciucă. Editura Integral (an imprint of Editurile Universala), Bucharest (1998). ISBN 973-98272-2-5. 79.
  • This article incorporates text from the 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, a publication now in the public domain.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../m/o/s/Moses_Horowitz_19d5.html"