Molly Picon

In 2007, she was featured in the film Making Trouble, a tribute to female Jewish comedians, produced by the Jewish Women's Archive.

Picon Pie, a biographical play, ran off-Broadway from 2004 to 2005.

The New Century Theatre, a former legitimate Broadway theatre located at 932 Seventh Avenue at West 58th Street in midtown Manhattan (since closed and demolished), was at one point known as the Molly Picon Theatre.

She was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1981.

Kildare," "Gomer Pyle" and "Car 54, Where Are You?"Following her husband's death in 1975, Molly slowed down considerably. She suffered from Alzheimer's disease in her later years and died at age 94.

In 1966 she quit the disastrous Chu Chem during previews in Philadelphia; the show closed before reaching Broadway.

" Such amusing, unflappable film roles would be found in the social comedy Come Blow Your Horn (1963) as Sinatra's meddling Italian mother; the musical Fiddler on the Roof (1971) as Yente the turn-of-the-century matchmaker (her husband had a minor role as Yankel); the delightful madam in the rollicking slapstick comedy For Pete's Sake (1974) starring Barbra Streisand; and as Mom Goldfarb in the Burt Reynolds action vehicles The Cannonball Run (1981) and Cannonball Run II (1984). Molly also began embracing TV on occasion, appearing to both humorous and heartwarming effect in such popular 60's programs as "Dr.

Was a 1962 Tony Award nominee as Best Actress (Musical) for "Milk and Honey," in the role that really cemented her fame beyond the Yiddish theater.

In the 1960's she returned to Broadway with delightful appearances in "Milk and Honey," How to Be a Jewish Mother" and "The Front Page. "Molly grew with delightful ease into matronly roles, became synonymous with the well-meaning but overbearing and coddling "Jewish mama.

On an ironic note, in 1959 she was featured on an episode of the N.B.C.-T.V. series Startime. This particular episode was an adaptation of Samson Raphaelson's play "The Jazz Singer" starring Jerry Lewis, in which she played Lewis's mother, Sarah Rabinowitz. In one scene, Lewis says the line, referring to Picon as his mother, "She's still in our presence, ladies and gentlemen, the Matchmaker".

One of America's finest storytellers, Molly made her English-speaking Broadway debut in 1940 as a Jewish widow in the dramatic "Morning Star," then returned in 1942 with her Yiddish musical offering "Oy Is Dus a Leben!" and with the 1948 comedy "For Heaven's Sake, Mother.

" She remained a strong stage presence throughout the 1940s and 1950s as she included more and more English-speaking plays as well.

Come the advent of sound, she would be fondly remembered for her native-language showcases of the 30s, notably in Yidl mitn fidl (1936), the story of a traveling musician who dresses as a boy to avoid unwarranted male advances and as a Yiddish Cinderella, a dutiful but unappreciated daughter who cares for her father and his large family, in Mamele (1938), the last Jewish film made in Poland. During one musical vignette, Picon portrays her character's grandmother in several stages of life.

In 1934, Picon had a musical comedy radio show, the Molly Picon Program, on WMCA in New York City. In 1938, Picon starred in I Give You My Life on the same station. That program "combined music and dramatic episodes that purported to be the story of her life." Two years later, she starred in Molly Picon's Parade, a variety show (also on W.M.C.A.).

In 1931, she opened the Molly Picon Theatre in New York and by 1934 had her own radio program.

Her first English-speaking role in film was a Vitaphone short titled Molly Picon (1929), in which she played two characters from her stage act.

"As for film, she appeared in such Yiddish/Jewish pictures as Hütet eure Töchter (1922) and Good Luck (1923).

Molly and her husband toured much of Europe in 1921 so that she could perfect her Yiddish. After returning to the United States, she starred in more than 200 Yiddish productions, performing comic renditions of "The Working Goil" and "The Story of Grandma's Shawl.

Picon was so popular in the 1920s that many shows had her adopted name, Molly, in their title.

Breaking into the big time with a vaudeville act called "The Four Seasons" in 1919, she eventually made an endearing comedic name for herself as the "Sweetheart of Second Avenue" of New York's Lower East Side Yiddish Theatre District. The indefatigable Picon was a real live wire and played very broad, confident, dominant characters on stage, which ended up making it hard for her to be taken seriously in dramatic pieces.

Molly's marriage in 1919 to Yiddish playwright and stage star Jacob Kalich, was a fruitful one. He became her mentor, collaborator, co-star, the author of many of her popular plays and the manager of her career.

Barely 5' tall, the little "yente" with the big, expressive talent and mischievous twinkle in her eye, Yiddish icon Molly Picon, entertained theater, radio, TV and film audiences for over seven decades. Born Malka Opiekun to Polish-Jewish parents in New York on February 28, 1898, she would gradually assist in popularizing the Yiddish culture into the American mainstream as well as overseas. Raised in Philadelphia, she began performing at age 5 in song-and-dance routines.