Isidore Lillian

Isidore Lillian was born into a poor family in Rzeszów, Galicia, Austria-Hungary in the early 1880s.[3] His exact birthdate is unclear; on many government documents he said September 14, 1883[4][5] but the Lexicon of Yiddish Theatre and other documents give the date as September 7, 1882.[3][6] He emigrated to the United States in March, 1892 apparently with his mother and sister.[7][8] In New York, he soon became interested in the Yiddish Theatre and joined it very young, becoming a member of the Dramatist Union at 16 and joining a Vaudeville troupe by age 17.[3][2] In that troupe, he wrote and performed his own sketches and songs.[3] A popular genre for Lillian and others of his cohort, such as Solomon Smulewitz and Louis Gilrod, was to write Yiddish-language parodies of popular American songs of the day.[9]

Cover of Score for A Grus fun die Trenches, 1918

Lillian started to write full-length plays, and lyrics for other plays and operettas in the Yiddish theatre starting in 1905.[3] Thereafter he wrote plays and song lyrics continuously for several decades.

In 1911 he took over management of the Union Theatre where he planned to stage his own productions with his wife Annie Black and his collaborator Alex Cohn.[10] His lyrical contributions to Isidore Solotarefsky's Yesoymim fun der velt (Orphans of the World) in 1916 were regarded as some of the best work of his career, even decades later.[11] Then in 1923 he took over management of the Lyric Theatre in Williamsburg (not to be confused with the Lyric Theatre in Manhattan) which he eventually renamed Lillian's Lyric Theatre. As Vaudeville went out of fashion, by 1926 it was considered the only Yiddish Vaudeville theatre in New York.[12]

In the early 1930s Lillian attempted to move from theatre to Yiddish film. He wrote 1930's My Yiddishe Momme by Judea Pictures, directed by Sidney Goldin.[13] In the summer of 1931 he was being announced as the director of Judea Pictures' first "Yiddish talker".[14] However, it is unclear whether that refers to My Yiddishe Momme or another film that was never finished, nor does he seem to have continued to work in film.

After the end of the Second World War, Lillian's career became very closely tied to that of actor Menasha Skulnik. The men collaborated on a number of musicals and musical comedies to great success, and when Skulnik left the Yiddish Theatre to pursue an English-language career in the 1950s, Lillian's lost much of his steady income.[11]

In his old age, Lillian became blind and lived in the New York Guild for the Jewish Blind where he encountered Louis Kramer, an old Yiddish Theatre colleague of his, who also lived there.[11] The two men sometimes staged 1-act plays or scenes in the home and were planning to do more when Lillian died unexpectedly on August 27, 1960 at age 78.[2][11] He was buried in the Mount Hebron Cemetery.[15][6]

Isidore married his wife Annie (née Black), born in Minsk, Russian Empire, in December 1906.[5][16] The union appears to have been childless. They were divorced by 1930.[8]