Jacob Jacobs

Jacob Jacobs was a Yiddish theatre and vaudeville director, as well as a producer, lyricist, songwriter, coupletist, character actor and comic.

Jacob was born in Romania. In 1904 the family immigrated to the United States and Jacob worked in a soda factory, later in a sheet-metal factory, and then learned tailoring.

In 1907 he joined the chorus in a vaudeville theatre and sang couplets on Sundays, when vaudeville plays could not be presented.

The following year he was hired as a vaudeville actor.

In 1911 he was in his first play, Leon Kobrin's "Yankel Boyla" at the Odeon Theatre.

In 1912 he became director of the Lyric Theatre in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and then went into partnership with Nathan Goldberg in the Lenox Theatre in Harlem.

From 1926 to 1930 he was co-director of the National Theatre, and then the Prospect Theatre in the Bronx. He wrote the music to his own couplets. He married Betty Treitler, who was the daughter of the Yiddish theatre director Chaim Benjamin Treitler.

In 1932 he collaborated with composer Sholom Secunda on a Yiddish musical comedy, "I Would If I Could." Although the show was not a great success, it did produce a song that become a #1 hit, "Bei Mir Bistu Shein".