Joseph Buloff (December 6, 1899 – February 27, 1985) was a Jewish actor and director known for his work in

Broadway Broadway may refer to: Theatre * Broadway Theatre (disambiguation) * Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S. ** Broadway (Manhattan), the street ** Broadway Theatre (53rd Stre ...

and

Yiddish theatre Yiddish theatre consists of plays written and performed primarily by Jews in Yiddish, the language of the Ashkenazi Jewish community. The range of Yiddish theatre is broad: operetta, musical comedy, and satire, satiric or nostalgic revues; melodr ...

. He received the

Itzik Manger Prize The Itzik Manger Prize for outstanding contributions to Yiddish literature (, ) was established in 1968, shortly before Itzik Manger's death in 1969. Manger "was and remains one of the best-known twentieth-century Yiddish poets." The Prize has bee ...

for contributions to Yiddish letters in 1974.

Life and career

Buloff was born on December 6, 1899, in

Vilna Vilnius ( , ) is the capital of and List of cities in Lithuania#Cities, largest city in Lithuania and the List of cities in the Baltic states by population, most-populous city in the Baltic states. The city's estimated January 2025 population w ...

, in what was then the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

and is now

Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...

. Buloff debuted on stage with the Jewish State Theatre in Vilna. He joined the

Vilna Troupe The Vilna Troupe (; ; ; ), also known as Fareyn Fun Yiddishe Dramatishe Artistn (Federation of Yiddish Dramatic Actors) and later ''Dramă şi Comedie'', was an international and mostly Yiddish-speaking theatre, one of the most famous in the history ...

when he was a teenager, and "his first major success" came in that company's production of ''Day and Night'' by S. Ansky. While with the troupe, he also met

Luba Kadison Luba Kadison Buloff (December 13, 1906 – May 4, 2006) was a Lithuanian Jewish actress, active for decades in Yiddish theatre, in both Europe and the United States. Early life Luba Kadison was born in Kaunas, Kovno, Lithuania. She moved with her ...

, whom he married and remained with until his death six decades later. They had a daughter, Barbara. Buloff immigrated to the United States in 1927 and worked with Maurice Schwartz's Yiddish theatre company. Buloff and Kadison toured Europe and the Western Hemisphere in the early 1930s, acting with Yiddish troupes in the countries that they visited. Their productions included adaptations of works by Dostoevski and Tolstoy and translated versions of works by Chekhov, Molière, and Pirandello. Broadway productions in which Buloff appeared included ''The Price'' (1979), ''The Fifth Season'' (1975), ''The Wall'' (1960), ''Moonbirds'' (1959), ''Once More, With Feeling'' (1958), ''Mrs. McThing '' (1952), ''The Whole World Over'' (1947), ''Oklahoma!'' (1943), ''Spring Again'' (1941), ''My Sister Eileen'' (1940), ''Morning Star'' (1940), ''The Man from Cairo'' (1938), ''To Quito and Back'' (1937), ''Call Me Ziggy'' (1937), and ''Don't Look Now'' (1936). On February 27, 1985, Buloff died at his Manhattan home, aged 86. He left a memoir, written in Yiddish, which was translated by Joseph Singer and published by Harvard University Press in 1991 as ''From the Old Marketplace''.

Legacy

Some of Buloff's papers are preserved at

YIVO YIVO (, , short for ) is an organization that preserves, studies, and teaches the cultural history of Jewish life throughout Eastern Europe, Germany, and Russia as well as orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to Yiddish. Estab ...

and at the

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, is located at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza, in the Lincoln Center complex on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, New York City. Situated between the Metropolitan O ...

Filmography

References

External links

* *
Joseph Buloff papers, 1925–1993
held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division,

Joseph Buloff's Acting
from the

Yiddish Book Center The Yiddish Book Center (formerly the National Yiddish Book Center), located on the campus of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States, is a cultural institution dedicated to the preservation of books in the Yiddish language, ...

Performing alongside Joseph Buloff in "Yoshke Muzikant"
from the

{{DEFAULTSORT:Buloff, Joseph 1899 births 1985 deaths 20th-century American male actors 20th-century Lithuanian male actors American male film actors American male stage actors American people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent Jewish American male actors Lithuanian Jews Lithuanian emigrants to the United States Lithuanian male film actors 20th-century American Jews Itzik Manger Prize recipients