So Laugh a Little

By Molly Picon and Eth Clifford Rosenberg

Molly Picon, lauded Jewish actress, reminisces about her upbringing and career through the relationship with her fascinating Grandmother.

“The famous Yiddish actress, who for half a century has been playing vaudeville circuits around the world, starring in the Yiddish Theatre in New York and currently winning all hearts in her first Broadway role in Milk and Honey, has written a sort of I Remember Grandma. Her Grandmother must have been quite a person. She came to Philadelphia from Russia and had a finger in raising Molly. From the time Molly was five she was fascinated by the theatre—and Grandmother put all sorts of hurdles in her way. She did constructive things for the family, too, helped them to better homes, to more food, to guard them in their opening lives. She even moved to New York to keep an eye on Molly after her marriage to her manager. The family encouraged her to believe she did a good deal of managing of their affairs, and her interest in Molly’s success never lagged, even when she passed the eighty mark. Her fineness, her humor, her philosophy comes through and there’s also a good deal of Molly in the blend. An inside picture of Jewish family life but rather special in appeal.”—Kirkus Reviews

Subtitled – “Hilarious Hints on How to be a Jewish Grandmother”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barakaldo Books
• Release date: May 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781839745164

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© Barakaldo Books 2020, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

SO LAUGH A LITTLE

BY

MOLLY PICON

AS TOLD TO ETH CLIFFORD ROSENBERG

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

ACKNOWLEDGMENT 5

Preface 6

1—So Who Watches? 8

2—When Does the Show Start? 12

3—Stage Fever 16

4—The Example 21

5—The Professional 25

6—Stealing Isn’t Nice—Especially in Front of the Children 29

7—A Regular Rock of Gibraltar 33

8—I’ll Give You Law 38

9—The Marvels of Rezshishtchov 44

10—The Beautiful Month of June 47

11—Everybody Walks Around with Shoes On 51

12—My Head Feels Like a Feather 55

13—Who Gets Married in Boston? 60

14—I’m a Human Being 67

15—Why Is She Hanging Over Me? 71

16—They Can’t Make Up Their Minds 75

17—A Plain Genius 79

18—She Was a Real Wreck 84

19—I Wish You Could Have Been There 88

20—Solid Muscle, No Fat 91

21—Could I Knock? 97

22—Who Knows You From the Back? 102

23—I Wouldn’t Give You Two Cents for It 106

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 109

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

With everlasting gratitude to Yonkel (my husband, Jacob Kalich) without whom neither this book nor Molly Picon would have been possible.

Preface

DURING THE TWO YEARS I played in Boston, from 1919 to 1921, I got to know fairly well a woman who ran the grocery store on the corner near the Grand Opera House. Every Saturday she showed up for the matinee performance. And after every performance she would come backstage and hand the performers little bags of rock candy. The throats shouldn’t get too dry, she would inform us gravely. In the two years I appeared there, she never missed a performance, never failed to bring the little gift for the throat.

Recently we had an out-of-town performance of my current show, Milk and Honey, in Boston. After the show, a friend of mine dropped in for some idle chitchat. Her grooming was immaculate; her social manner was impeccable; her conversation was filled with just the right smattering of theatre patter. Into this social atmosphere plunged my little grocery lady! Without stopping to take note of who else might be present, she rushed up to me, threw her arms about me, and cried, Molly! Dolly! Let me look at you! You haven’t changed one little bit. She hugged me with vigor. Then she caught sight of my friend. She said conversationally to her, That’s a living doll, that Malkele. You know when she was here in Boston I had a little grocery store. You remember that grocery story, Molly? I nodded and smiled. Well, it just shows you, she continued to address my friend. She started out and I started out. And now Molly is up there with the big opera singers in an English show, and I myself am also a somebody. You wouldn’t believe it to look at me, she said proudly, that I live now in a brand new eight-story apartment house and my husband, my Harry, is the janitor. Would you believe it to look at me that we even have a stall shower?

That’s wonderful, I said sincerely. Congratulations.

From out of her voluminous purse she whipped a small bag.

Rock candy, she said happily. You see? I didn’t forget.

After she was gone, my friend made a comment about my keeping my dressing room more exclusive. I looked at her thoughtfully. Had I also become concerned only with externals? Had I, somewhere along the line, accepted people only on the evaluation put upon them by other people on different levels?

That woman, in many ways, reminds me of my own grandmother, I told her. Oh maybe no strong physical resemblance. But the same zest for life, the same warmth, the same humanity...

Hey, Molly! Save it, my friend said breezily. You may want to put it in a book someday.

She was being facetious, but the idea began to germinate. Why not a book about my grandmother, who was no one that anyone had ever heard of, who had made no history, who had left no mark on the times, but who had given me as my heritage her capacity for laughter, for humor, for a joyous appreciation of life itself. Why not a book about a woman who represented an era of mid-Victorian serenity? Her kind no longer exists; the world, as she knew it, no longer exists. Perhaps, in putting down on paper the moments we shared, I could recapture that world and that flavor briefly. I felt it was worth aiming for.

I have, in this book, made no attempt to draw a complete and rounded picture of all the people who were part of our lives—my father, my mother, my sister Helen, my grandfather. I wanted only to keep the image of my grandmother as I remember her, a bright reflection for both myself and the reader. The simple physical fact of writing has accomplished this for me. I hope, in the perusal of these pages, that you will feel it has been done equally for you.

MOLLY PICON

1—So Who Watches?

MY GRANDPARENTS CAME from a little town in Russia that looks like a sneeze in print, and is pronounced the same way. The town was called Rezshishtchov. My grandfather owned quite a bit of land on which he raised wheat, which he sold wholesale. A number of people worked for my grandfather and brought their problems to my grandmother. She gave them remedies and recipes and advice, wholesale. My grandmother worked on one theory: if it was good for her, it was good for everybody.

In 1880, Grandpa and Grandma and their five children, Daniel, Charlie, Meyer, Mathilda and my mother Clara, left Rezshishtchov quite suddenly, courtesy of the Cossacks who periodically felt the urge to purify themselves with a little bloodletting—other people’s blood. The Paul Revere of the neighborhood came tearing through the village, shouting The Cossacks are coming! When the Cossacks came, everybody fled, including some of the peasants, who felt they would have a hard time convincing the Cossacks that their blood lines had not been tampered with.

A woman has to pack something when she picks up and leaves a way of life and work and effort behind her. So Grandma packed her featherbed and her samovar, and off they went to America. As long as Grandma could sleep softly and consume tea, no problem was really insoluble.

They settled in Philadelphia. There were no wheat fields in Philadelphia. So Grandpa, who was a fine carpenter, found work in a trunk factory. While he made trunks, Grandma went about the business of managing her household. As additional children came along, the older ones were pushed out of the nest. The boys ran errands, and my mother, who was a handy girl with needle and thread, found work in a factory making waists. Only Mathilda stayed home, because she was delicate. The word delicate covered a multitude of ailments; today the crippling disease is called polio. Mathilda was the real beauty of the family, I think, judging from the photographs that Grandma used to show me.

Grandma eventually had eleven children, and Grandpa made fifteen dollars a week. Grandma figured she was four dollars ahead. In later years, when I would ask Grandma how it was possible to bring up so many children on so little, she would answer mysteriously, I managed.

How? How did you manage? I would persist.

You really want to know, Malkele?

I really want to know, Bubba. With so many in such a crowded space...

It was easy, she would say then, her eyes half-closed with laughter. I took in boarders.

I didn’t realize until later what an old joke this was. But every time I heard it, I laughed. There wasn’t any situation that Grandma really couldn’t cope with and come up smiling. Until my father entered the picture, that is. With my father, Grandma positively could not cope. In one of the quieter moments, after Grandma had decimated his background, his family, his appearance and his probable future, she said hopelessly to my mother, What do you see in him?

Go ask a young girl in love what she sees in a man. Sir Galahad, Lochinvar come out of the West, a dash of Svengali, a hint of Captain Kidd...

He’s nice, Mama said, stubbornly. I like him.

So Clara Ostrow became the bride of Louis Pyekoon.

It was a foregone conclusion that Grandma and Papa would never see eye to eye. Grandma’s philosophy was positive; Papa’s was definitely negative.

I’m against, Papa would cry. This was an absolute fact. Papa was against everything. He was against exploitation of the workers. He was against sweat shops. He was against long hours. He was against female children.

In his way, Papa was quite a philosopher. He believed that everyone should have a good education in the classics, and that a man should have plenty of leisure time in which to enjoy and savor the classical life. Of course, Papa couldn’t convert the world to his way of thinking, but he was a man to practice what he preached. He would go to the sweat shop, as it was called in those days, bring home a big bundle of shirts for Mama to sew, and he would sit and read. Papa didn’t mind, because when he was absorbed in a book the sound of the sewing machine didn’t disturb him. Mama didn’t mind, because how many women could boast of such a brilliant thinker for a husband? Grandma minded.

It doesn’t bother you, your wife sits and takes her eyes out with the needle? she used to reproach him. It doesn’t bother you to sit there and watch your poor wife working her fingers to the bone?

Papa would put his finger in the book to mark his place temporarily, lift his eyes innocently to Grandma’s, and say gently, So who watches?

Papa did make a stab at working every now and then, of course.

Louis, Mama would say. Try not to see the workers being exploited this week.

How can I help it? Papa would ask morosely. Am I blind?

Look the other way once in a while, Mama would urge him, timidly. At least until the baby is born.

With a son on the way, Papa made a noble attempt to hold down his indignation. He made plans. There would be no women in his son’s world. They would do what was necessary for his son, and then get out of his life. He, Louis Pyekoon, would show his son what it was to be a man in a man’s world. He would learn the classics. He would learn to speak Greek and Latin. He would be a scholar....

My grandmother used to tell me of the conversations she held with my father at this period.

I would ask him. Louis, I would say, so what will happen if the son turns out to be a daughter? You wouldn’t believe me, she would continue, warming up to the subject no matter how often she repeated it to me. You wouldn’t believe what that man said to me.

What did he say? I would ask immediately, for my grandmother would not go on with the story unless I fed her the proper lines.

He said, listen to this, Molly dolly, he said he would never talk to your mother again. Did you ever hear such a thing in your life?

I’ll say one thing for Papa. He was certainly a man of his word. When I ruined all his plans, my grandmother said he stood and stared down at me, sleeping in my cradle, and then he said, talking to me directly, It’s nothing personal. You understand? You I don’t hold responsible.

That was language to a new baby? Grandma would always burst out indignantly at this point.

But Papa held to his threat. He stopped talking to Mama for a whole year. He continued to bring home the bundle of shirts for Mama to sew. He continued to sit and read against the hum of the machine and the background music of infant howling. But he absolutely and resolutely refused to exchange a single word with Mama. However, he wasn’t completely an unforgiving person. He did eventually give Mama another chance. But my mother couldn’t seem to live up to what was expected of her. She promptly produced my sister Helen.

I was three years old at