Pepi stopped. She walked to the footlights. She unbuttoned her coat, pulled off her cap, and ran a hand through her short, dark curls. “You want a woman?” she said, in her lowest growl. “I’m a better man than your husband.”
Pepi Litman was born in a muddy lane of Berdychiv, a Ukrainian city that existed more in prayer than on any map. The year was 1874, give or take a winter. The name on the birth certificate was Pesha, but she shed it like a loose thread the first time she heard a cantor’s tenor slice through the Sabbath candles. pepi litman male impersonator born ukrainian city
The trouble began when a traveling Yiddish operetta troupe got snowbound in Berdychiv. The lead comic, a gin-blossomed fellow named Zelig, heard Pepi doing his own jokes from the back of the room—but in a lower register. He turned. “Who’s the boy?” Pepi stopped
Zelig laughed for a full minute. Then he hired her. “You want a woman
“I’m no boy,” she said, and lit a cigarette exactly the way he did.