Joseph Buloff (December 6, 1899 – February 27, 1985) was a Jewish actor and director known for his work in Broadway and Yiddish theatre. He received the Itzik Manger Prize for contributions to Yiddish letters in 1974.
Life and career Buloff was born on December 6, 1899, in Vilna, in what was then the Russian Empire and is now Lithuania.
Buloff debuted on stage with the Jewish State Theatre in Vilna. He joined the Vilna Troupe when he was a teenager, and "his first major success" came in that company's production of Day and Night by S. Ansky. While with the troupe, he also met Luba Kadison, whom he married and remained with until his death six decades later. They had a daughter, Barbara.
Buloff immigrated to the United States in 1927 and worked with Maurice Schwartz's Yiddish theatre company. Buloff and Kadison toured Europe and the Western Hemisphere in the early 1930s, acting with Yiddish troupes in the countries that they visited. Their productions included adaptations of works by Dostoevski and Tolstoy and translated versions of works by Chekhov, Molière, and Pirandello.
Broadway productions in which Buloff appeared included The Price (1979), The Fifth Season (1975), The Wall (1960), Moonbirds (1959), Once More, With Feeling (1958), Mrs. McThing (1952), The Whole World Over (1947), Oklahoma! (1943), Spring Again (1941), My Sister Eileen (1940), Morning Star (1940), The Man from Cairo (1938), To Quito and Back (1937), Call Me Ziggy (1937), and Don't Look Now (1936).
On February 27, 1985, Buloff died at his Manhattan home, aged 86. He left a memoir, written in Yiddish, which was translated by Joseph Singer and published by Harvard University Press in 1991 as From the Old Marketplace.
Legacy Some of Buloff's papers are preserved at YIVO and at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
Filmography Year Title Role Notes1941 Let's Make Music Joe Bellah 1941 They Met in Argentina Santiago, O'Shea's Trainer 1947 Carnegie Hall Anton Tribik 1948 To the Victor Bolyanov 1948 The Loves of Carmen Remendado 1949 A Kiss in the Dark Peter Danilo 1950 Monticello, Here We Come 1956 Somebody Up There Likes Me Benny 1957 Silk Stockings Ivanov 1981 Reds Joe Volski
References
External links
Joseph Buloff papers, 1925–1993, held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Joseph Buloff's Acting from the Yiddish Book Center Performing alongside Joseph Buloff in "Yoshke Muzikant" from the Yiddish Book Center