Jesse De Vorska
Jesse De Vorska was a Russian-born American film actor.
De Vorska was born in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1898. He lived on the streets after his parents were killed in pogroms directed at Jewish people. After he began working as a baker's helper, he lived in the bakery. In 1914 a relative who lived in Syracuse, New York, provided funds for him to move there. After being employed as a delivery boy for a Syracuse pharmacy, he found work in a theater there. That job led to an opportunity in vaudeville, and later he began acting in silent films. A heavy Yiddish accent kept him from performing in talking films.
De Vorska was in the Navy in World War I and World War II. He died on December 27, 1999, in Veterans Hospital in Westwood, California, aged 101.