Bertha Kalish was one of the Yiddish theatre's finest dramatic actresses.
The actor Maurice Schwartz, founder and director of the Yiddish Art Theatre, characterizes her thus:
"Bertha Kalish was as beautiful as a Greek goddess. Her Ettie in the play "Kreutzer Sonata," and her "Sappho," delighted and enchanted the Yiddish theatre audience. Young and old ran to see the goddess-like Kalish. Her every movement, her every pose, her tall figure, her long hands with its elegant fingers, took the spectator’s breath away. In the theatre, along with the applause, you could hear people sighing, "Oh, how beautiful! May she be healthy! A flower, a fragrant flower, an orange from the land of Israel." In addition, her voice — in her throat, Kalish possessed a whole orchestra, and she knew how to use the instruments. At the first moment, she began high, almost like the sound of a fiddle, now she is a cello, and then a moment later she speaks out in a bass tone. I admired Kalish, but I was never inspired. Although her Sappho was a daring figure, a modern young woman with a bohemian character, I could not believe that a woman would speak this way, would feel and live her life the way Kalish played the character.
Bertha Kalish’s success on the English stage was exceptionally great, and Jews hastened to see the slim, beautiful Broadway actress in Gordin’s repertoire. Profits were in the thousands ..."
Here is what the theatre critic Naftali Buchwald wrote about her character:
"In the career of other actors, the decades on the Yiddish stage were not more than a long episode, but Bertha Kalish created for herself a legendary greatness, nearly—the greatest Yiddish tragedienne. The same legend is not the least bit diminished because Madame Kalish left the Yiddish stage for Broadway. On the contrary—in the eyes of her "patriots" it was new evidence and an extra confirmation of her greatness. What explains the enigma of Bertha Kalish’s legend? How did she come to leave such a deep impression in the consciousness of two generations of Yiddish theatregoers and, as a legend, continue to be treasured in our generation? Partly—because of the "golden epoch" of Yiddish theatre, which Kalish symbolized. Her name is associated with "great roles" from Gordin’s repertoire, such as "Sappho" and "Kreutzer Sonata," and from the European repertoire such as Zunderman’s Homeland and Magda. ... She was a sort of priestess of high drama (whether the height was genuine or not—is another question). And she represented the lofty, the deep, the greatness of the theatre—in contrast to the banality and ordinariness and insignificance of daily reality. But Bertha Kalish was not merely one of a group of distinguished actors, that made a difficult living on holidays from the Jewish immigrant masses. Her personality elevated the stage with a distinct enchantment, with a type of awe and a romantic strangeness. All her years—on the Yiddish and on the English stage—she was an envoy from a foreign world. Whether that world was genuine or a romantic invention—she was assuredly from an unknown world.
People used to say about Madame Kalish, that she was a European artist. They used to praise her with such words as "majestic," "noble," "masterly." For all her years on the Yiddish stage, she remained a guest, a great guest from another spiritual state. She charmed the Yiddish spectator just that way, because she seemed "exotic." Among the Yiddish characters in a play, she always played an aristocratic type of woman, and her method of acting possessed the authority of a lady of the manor. No matter what kind of role she played—we veterans of the "golden age" are so sure—she played a queen in her art. In the biography of Bertha Kalish, we read that she came from poor parents in Galicia. Her father was a brushmaker, her mother—a seamstress, who used to make clothes for actresses. In the style and the repertoire of Madame Kalish we find opposite of her childhood environment—in her exacting approach to her romantic acting and her deep and stormy roles one could find a recompense, a compensation for the week of poverty, for the meager emotional experiences of her childhood and early youth. And it seemed that she brought the same spirit of compensation, to her Jewish immigrant spectators, who by her merit lived with her the deep emotional storms of heroic women from an unknown world. Also on Broadway, Madame Kalish played heroic roles from a romantic, exotic world. She also stirred up the non-Jewish audience with her "Europeanness." In place of the familiar type of women, with their superficial, naturalistic precision, Madame Kalish brought to the stage not small, individual people but great "universal roles," deep emotions. She did not play people, she played emotional experiences, and however little the experiences of her heroines had to do with daily life, they were that much more stirring."
So much has been written about Bertha Kalish, so many fine words spoken about her acting on the stage. Without doubt she was one of our finest Yiddish actresses, a woman of extraordinary talent.
