Nellie Casman

Who was Nellie Casman?

Nellie Casman was an actress and singer in Yiddish theater. Some sources say she was born in Proskurov, Russia, and moved to the United States in the early 1900s; Zylbercweig says she was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Her father was a hazzan. Casman showed such talent as an actress when a child, the actress Rose Rubin took her into a professional Yiddish theater, where she began to play child roles in 1910.

Playing Gitele in Zalmen Libin's Gebrokhene hertser, she came to the attention of Regina Prager's husband, a theater manager, who hired her for his company in New York. She played several years as a soubrette in vaudeville houses and became successful enough to be hired to replace Bessie Thomashevsky in Edelstein's People's Theater where she played opposite David Kessler in Mish Mash. She then abandoned "legitimate theater" and went back to vaudeville. She recorded Yiddish songs and couplets for the Victor and Columbia labels. She married playwright Samuel Steinberg and collaborated with him in writing songs and shows; their biggest hit, written in 1923, was Yosl, Yosl, popularized in English by the Andrews Sisters in 1938.