The Women Behind "Salome of the Tenements"

Salome of the Tenements is a now-lost classic of 1920s silent film, a tale of romance and struggle among Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side. Behind the plot of the movie lay a tale perhaps even more remarkable, that of the four women who helped bring it to life. Alan Robert Ginsberg chronicles the story in his new book, The Salome Ensemble: Rose Pastor Stokes, Anzia Yezeierska, Sonya Levien, and Jetta Gould. He will discuss it with Budd Mishkin, broadcast journalist and former host of NY1's One on 1.

The Salome Ensemble recovers the entangled lives, works, and passions of a political activist, a novelist, a screenwriter, and an actress. Salome of the Tenements began its life as a novel, written by Anzia Yezierskaia, the Polish-born writer who chronicled the struggles of her generation of Jewish Americans. The book was inpsired by Rose Pastor Stokes, the socialist activist who advocated for labor rights and birth control and against the war. Rounding out the ensemble were screenwriter Sonia Levien and actor Jetta Goudal, who played Salome onscreen. Told in four movements, an overture, and a coda, Ginsberg's book—a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award—interprets their collaboration as a project of self-invention that shaped the cultural landscape as much as it reflected it.

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