Biography for
Molly Picon More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

1 June 1898, New York City, New York, USA

Date of Death

5 April 1992, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA (Alzheimer's disease)

Birth Name

Margaret Pyekoon

Height

5' (1.52 m)

Mini Biography

The little "yente" with the big, expressive talent, New York-born Yiddish icon Molly Picon entertained theater, radio, TV and film audiences for over seven decades (from age 6) with her song-and-dance routines while helping to popularize the Yiddish culture into the American mainstream as well as overseas. Raised in Philadelphia, she was performing from age 5 but broke into the big time with a vaudeville act called "The Four Seasons" in 1919, eventually making a comedy name for herself in the Second Avenue Theatres on the Lower East Side back in New York. 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. In film she is best remembered for her Yiddish-language showcases of the 30s, notably in Yidl with His Fiddle (1936), the story of a traveling musician who dresses as a boy to avoid unwarranted male advances. She was cast 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 the 1940s, Picon started to include English-speaking plays as well and as she grew into matronly roles, became synonymous as the typical well-meaning but overbearing and coddling "Jewish mama." Such amusing, unflappable film roles would be found in Come Blow Your Horn (1963) (as an interfering Italian mother) and Fiddler on the Roof (1971) as Yente the matchmaker. Her long association with husband and corroborator, Yiddish stage star Jacob Kalich, was a fruitful one. He became her mentor, the author of many of her popular plays and the manager of her career. Married in 1919, he died in 1975 but she continued performing albeit sporadically. Picon suffered from Alzheimer's disease in her later years and died at age 93. Vicariously known as the "Jewish Charlie Chaplin" and "Jewish Helen Hayes", she was a patriot and humanitarian at heart, with an energy, creativity and ability to entertain that couldn't help but make her one of entertainment's most beloved citizens.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

Spouse

Jacob Kalich

(29 June 1919 - 16 March 1975) (his death)

Trivia

Pre-eminent actress of Yiddish theater in the United States.

Popular at the Second Avenue Theater in New York, she opened the theatre in 1931 when they changed the theater's name to The Molly Picon Theater in her honor.

Her first English-speaking role in film was an uncredited role as a soda-selling neighborhood shopkeeper in Mark Hellinger's movie "The Naked City" (1948).

Along with her husband, the writer/actor Jacob Kalich, she wrote over 100 songs and skits for the stage.

Was a strong, popular presence in World War II, performing for the sick, the American troops, and the Jewish Holocaust survivors. She also was active in the Foster Parents' Plan for war children.

Her father was from Warsaw Poland and worked in the needles trade; her mother was from Kiev, Ukraine, and worked as a seamstress. He left the family when Molly was still a child and the family relocated to Philadelphia where her mother sewed costumes for actresses at Kessler's Yiddish Theatre.

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.