the Mount Hebron Cemetery, Flushing, Queens, New York. Both Thomashefskys did much to shape the world of modern theatre from the follies to Broadway and gave a start to many actors, composers and producers who went on to start and own theaters and movie studios. Even the Gershwin brothers had their start with the Thomashefkys. They were also prominent in addressing controversial social issues of the day and in teaching the Greenhorns how to be Americans. They not only founded theaters and production companies, but had publishing houses and many other successful business adventures. Boris Thomashefsky even founded and funded a Jewish Army which he sent to Israel and was named after him. The unit later became a unit in the British Army. In the third Marx Brothers movie, Monkey Business, Groucho Marx (in defending his right to hide in a gangster's moll's closet) exclaims, "That's what they said to Thomas Edison, mighty inventor, Thomas Lindbergh, mighty flyer, and Thomashefsky, 'mighty like a rose'!" Tribute was also paid in Mel Brooks' stage and film musicals based on his 1968 film The Producers, when Max Bialystock attributes his acumen as a Broadway producer to the tutelage of "the great Boris Thomashefsky" in the song "The King of Broadway". In 2011, Shuler Hensley portrayed Boris Thomashefsky in The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater, a concert stage show celebrating the Thomashefskys and the music of American Yiddish theatre hosted by their grandson the conductor Michael Tilson Thomas. The show aired on the PBS series Great Performances in 2012. Works 'The Broken Violin (1918), music by Joseph Rumshinsky References Sources Chira, Susan, "100 Years of Yiddish Theater Celebrated", The New York Times, October 15, 1982, C28. Adler, Jacob, A Life on the Stage: A Memoir, translated and with commentary by Lulla Rosenfeld, Knopf, New York, 1999, . Liptzin, Sol, A History of Yiddish Literature, Jonathan David Publishers, Middle Village, NY, 1972, . Boris Thomashefsky from the Jewish Virtual Library (JVL), retrieved February 28, 2005. Timeline from The Thomashefsky Project American people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent Yiddish theatre performers 1868 births 1939 deaths Burials at Mount Hebron Cemetery (New York City)