José Maurer(1906-1968)
- Actor
Born Yoshe Maurer Neumann on May the 6th 1906 in the town of Boryslav,
then a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, later annexed to Poland and
nowadays in the Ukraine, Maurer was the son of the local cobbler and
known in the city as an amateur violinist, actor and singer. When the
famous Vilnius Jewish Theatre, under the direction of
Zygmunt Turkow visited Boryslav in 1922,
the 16 year old Yoshe was offered a minor role. Two weeks later, as the
Theatre left, so did Yoshe, never to return to his hometown. As a
member of this famous Yiddish Theatre he toured Poland until 1927, when
he emigrated to Argentina. In Buenos Aires he became one of the leading
actors in the Jewish Yiddish Theatre, playing along such renown actors
as Joseph Buloff,
Maurice Schwartz,
Jacob Ben-Ami and many others. He was
regarded as a first class "character" (drama) actor and as a "tour De
force" used to change leading roles, e.g. playing with
Jacob Ben-Ami both parts of Man and Devil
in "Got, Mentsch Und Taivel", the famous Yiddish version of Faust by
Jacob Gordin, night after night. On the
other hand he had a gift for Comedy and took part in many musical
comedies. In the late forties he was elected President of the "Jewish
Actors Guild in Argentina" and served in this post for more than 20
years, until his emigration to Israel. He was a notable co-star in many
Argentinean films, specializing in "foreign" accents and played the
Spanish Argentinean stage, among others, with
Berta Singerman. In 1963 he moved to
Israel where he played the Yiddish stage and was elected there too as
President of the Yiddish Actor's Guild until his death. His lifelong
wish dream was to die on stage and this he did. In 1968, shortly after
the curtain went down, and still wearing the makeup on his face, he had
a stroke and died shortly afterwards, aged 62. His collection of
manuscript plays, including translations into Yiddish of modern
Argentinean drama, was donated to the Bar Ilan University and is now
part of the Rena Costa Center for Yiddish Studies.
