Molly Picon (1898--1992)

A Jewish Immigrant Becomes a Cultural Icon

Like many immigrant Jews, Molly Picon (1898-1992) sought to create a synthesis of her East European Yiddish roots and American culture. For Picon this opportunity was expressed through her career on New York's Lower East Side in Vaudeville, and then in both Yiddish and English speaking films. Known for her powerful performances, Picon spent seven decades promoting Yiddish culture by bringing it out of the "shtetl" (the Jewish ghetto) and performing it in a media that would make it accessible to the wider American culture.