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This event is made possible by the Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.

Film restoration & new English subtitles by The National Center for Jewish Film, www.jewishfilm.org

Photo Copyright: National Center for Jewish Film

Jolly Paupers (Freylekhe Kabtsonim)

Poland, 1937, 62 min, b&w (35mm/16mm/DVD)
Yiddish w/ English subtitles
Directors: Leon Jeannot & Z. Turkow

Restoration & New English Subtitles: The National Center For Jewish Film

 Jolly Paupers combines the talents of the Warsaw Art Players under the leadership of Zygmund Turkow. In this musical comedy, the famous comic duo Dzigan and Shumacher play two small town “entrepreneurs” who believe they have struck oil in a local field. The whole town finds out and thus begins a comedy of errors, including millionaire investors, American schemers, and insane asylums (not to mention a little matchmaking on the side).

In the years preceding the outbreak of World War II, the Dzigan and Shumacher Comedy Revue Theatre gained immense popularity. Their satirical monologues and skits provided Jewish audiences with an escape and a rare opportunity to laugh. Other Dzigan and Shumacher comedies: Our Children and Without a Home.

“The film has its charm, especially in a delightful comic sequence when the pair are declared insane…It’s all silly fun.” – 
Dan Kimmel, Variety

“A low-budget satire of shtetl mores…Jolly Paupers is the closest the screen came to a Yiddish cabaret sensibility: irreverent, mordant, and consciously theatrical.”
 – J. Hoberman, Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds