Michael Tilson Thomas, the grandson of Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, wrote, hosted and conducted The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater. The show was broadcast in March on PBS’ Great Performances and was released on DVD on Tuesday. Recorded in April 2011 in Miami Beach, it stars Judy Blazer as Bessie, and Shuler Hensley as Boris, as well as Ronit Widmann-Levy and Eugene Brancoveanu and the New World Symphony. According to Tilson Thomas, the show tells the story of “two kids from little shtetls in the middle of the Ukrainian nowhere who came to America and became the founders and pioneers of the American Yiddish Theater.” Bessie Thomashefsky is shown below in Dos grine vaybl, oder der yidisher yenki-dudl (The Greenhorn Wife or The Yiddish Yankee Doodle), which premiered in 1905 at the theater Boris established at Hunter, New York (Catskills). For information, visit: www.thomashefsky.org. — E.E.B.
(American Jewish World, 4.27.12)
