Anecdotes

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.

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.

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

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

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

Her first English-speaking role in film was a Vitaphone short titled Molly Picon (1929), in which she played two characters from her stage act.

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.

Molly Picon was also called the female Charlie Chaplin (she mimic Chaplin at several occasions) or the Yiddish Helen Heyes.

In 2007, she was featured in the film Making Trouble, a tribute to female Jewish comedians, produced by the Jewish Women's Archive.

Picon was so popular in the 1920s that many shows had her adopted name, Molly, in their title.

She and her husband are interred in the Yiddish Theater section of the Mount Hebron Cemetery in New York City. Also buried there is Ida Kaminska, who like Picon, operated her own Yiddish theatre.

Molly played the role of Molly Gordon in an episode of CBS's Gomer Pyle, USMC and had a recurring role as Mrs. Bronson in the NBC police comedy Car 54, Where Are You?.

In 1934, Picon had a musical comedy radio show, the Molly Picon Program, on WMCA in New York City. In 1938, Picon starred in I Give You My Life on the same station. That program "combined music and dramatic episodes that purported to be the story of her life." Two years later, she starred in Molly Picon's Parade, a variety show (also on W.M.C.A.).

In 1980, she published an autobiography, Molly.

Costumes she wore in various theater productions are displayed at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia.

Picon Pie, a biographical play, ran off-Broadway from 2004 to 2005.

She was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1981.

The New Century Theatre, a former legitimate Broadway theatre located at 932 Seventh Avenue at West 58th Street in midtown Manhattan (since closed and demolished), was at one point known as the Molly Picon Theatre.

An entire room was filled with her memorabilia at the Second Avenue Deli in New York (now closed at that location).

Picon wrote a biography about her family called So Laugh a Little in 1962.

In 1966 she quit the disastrous Chu Chem during previews in Philadelphia; the show closed before reaching Broadway.

On an ironic note, in 1959 she was featured on an episode of the N.B.C.-T.V. series Startime. This particular episode was an adaptation of Samson Raphaelson's play "The Jazz Singer" starring Jerry Lewis, in which she played Lewis's mother, Sarah Rabinowitz. In one scene, Lewis says the line, referring to Picon as his mother, "She's still in our presence, ladies and gentlemen, the Matchmaker".

Her first major Anglophonic role in the movies was in the film version of Come Blow Your Horn (1963), with Frank Sinatra.

During a longer stay in Austria she made her film debut with "Das Judenmädel" (21) at Ferdinand Bonn's side.