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We used to have a Purim Ball every year at
Kingsbury Street. Everybody turned out for it. They picked the Queen
Esther every year, which was like a beauty contest. They had all
kinds of games, and they sold Jewish foods.
-Elinor Fishman Freedman |
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The vibrant spirit of the Jewish people of Waterbury
has been experienced by their non-Jewish neighbors through public
celebrations and private entertainments.
Through food and music, plays and holidays, we have shared the
joys.
At night, we would all get together in front
of our house or somebody else's, or on the stairs, and sit and
sing all night.
-Louise Greenfield
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Members of the Floradora Sextet
at Temple Hall, c.1934
(Collection of Clayton Blick)
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Mrs. Harry Fleisher's Kiddie Show at Beth El, c.1934
Collection of Fred and Janet Hennick |
Conrad Fleisher's mother took
all the kids and she would run two shows or maybe three shows
a year. Big productions. All those costumes and we had to go
to rehearsals. We had two ladies that played the piano all the
time. There was always a prince and a princess or a king and
a queen.
-Janet Meyers Hennick
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[My brother Stan Freeman] used to go to the
movies and listen to a song... and then come home and play it....
Paul Whiteman asked him to be on national radio.... He wrote two
Broadway shows; he wrote "I Had a Ball," [which starred]
Buddy Hackett and Richard Kiley. He was Marlene Dietrich's conductor....
He wrote a lot of music for Shari Lewis, ...for Michael Feinstein.
He played Carnegie Hall.
-Paul Freedman |
I always wanted to write for the theater.
We felt that the second generation Jews were drifting away from
traditional Jewish fare. You have Chinese food, or something like
that. Where are the latkes [potato pancakes]? The whole gang of
us, we’d go up to the Catskills, and you would have all this
stuff up there. So that was the idea of [the script for the play]
"What’s Cooking?"
-Isadore Cross |
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Clayton, Anna and Marjorie Blick, 1920
(Collection of Clayton Blick) |
My father would work out the program
[for our broadcasts on WATR radio]. I think we were on three times
a week until I went away to school.... We had a great time.... [My
father] was a born stage producer. He would pick out the songs,
he would rehearse us, he would write out the program, [and announce],
"Clayton sings this", "Marjorie sings this",
and "Clayton and Marjorie sing this."
-Clayton Blick |
When I was in high school, we
[had]...the Phi Beta fraternity. It was a Jewish fraternity. There
was also an AZA [fraternity].... They used to have conventions every
year. We used to meet the kids from Ansonia, Derby, West Hartford.
There must have been ten or twelve fraternities throughout the state....
There were always Phi Beta dances, and the Halloween Hop. We put
on plays, shows. There was an old folks home on Cooke Street for
Jewish people, and the kids would go and entertain the old folks.
-Paul and Elinor Freedman |
AZA Fraternity, 1940s
(Collection of William Kramer)
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