Clara Young

Who was Clara Young?

Clara Young was a Yiddish theatrical actor. Born to parents who loved the stage she spent her early years in a home that housed rehearsals of traveling Yiddish theater troups. After her father's death the family went to America, where she soon joined the Tantsman company and went to Boston, there to Zolotarevski's troup in Montreal, thence to Toronto and to Morris Finkel's theater in Philadelphia.

In 1903 she played in the People's Music Hall where she made a name with songs like Di dame fun Broadvey and Libe mayne. In 1909 she went over to the Thalia Theater where her husband Boaz Young was part owner, and there played serious roles for the first time, Tsipeniu and Got, mentsh un tayvl and Kreutzer Sonata and in Dos yidishe harts singing the couplet Sigmund Mogulesko wrote for her, Ikh hob es punkt vi in der heym. She played in Di bigamistin which, along with Avrom Shomer's Alrightnikes, she and her husband took to London in 1911 and then to the Lodz Groys teater and Warsaw's Elyseum Theater. Her success encouraged the couple to return to Warsaw, where in 1912 she starred in Anshel Shor and Joseph Rumshinsky's Dos meydl fun der vest and later Khantshe in Amerike and Alma, vu voynstu? and the German operetta Puptshik.