15 Facts About Celia Adler

Celia Feinman Adler was an American actress, known as the "First Lady of the Yiddish Theatre".

Tzirele Adler was born in New York City on December 6,1889, to daughter of Jacob Adler and Dinah Shtettin, who were both actors in the Yiddish theater.

Celia Adler was the half-sister of Stella Adler, Luther Adler, and Jacob Adler's five other children.

Shtettin subsequently married the actor and playwright Sigmund Feinman, and Celia Adler was raised by her mother and stepfather.

When Celia Adler was four, she acted in The Yiddish King Lear alongside her father and step-mother, in a role playwright Jacob Gordin had written specifically for her.

Celia Adler acted alongside her mother in the London Pavilion Theatre, and they toured together in 1910.

Celia Adler was typically cast as a weeping maiden or desperate mother.

Celia Adler and Jacob Ben-Ami convinced director Maurice Schwartz to stage a serious drama, which was an instant hit, but did not ultimately change Schwartz's directing style.

In 1946, Celia Adler gave one of the first theatrical portrayals of a Holocaust survivor in Luther Celia Adler's Broadway production A Flag Is Born.

In 1937, Celia Adler starred in the Henry Lynn Yiddish film, Where Is My Child.

Celia Adler's last film was a 1985 British documentary with archive footage, Almonds and Raisins, narrated by, among others, Orson Welles, Herschel Bernardi and Seymour Rechzeit.

Celia Adler was married three times, to actor Lazar Freed, theatrical manager Jack Cone, and businessman Nathan Forman.

Celia Adler and Freed married in 1914; they had one child, Selwyn Freed and divorced in 1919.

In 1930 Celia Adler married Cone, who was her manager at the time; he died in 1959.

Celia Adler is buried in the Yiddish Theatre Section of Mount Hebron Cemetery in New York City having died from a stroke.