Jewish Currents December 1985 39:11 (433) p41 Remembering Martha Schlamme

I've just learned of Martha Schlamme's passing... Martha was a very special person, my fond connection to whom I owe almost entirely to Jewish Currents, to which she was, I dare say, ever the most devoted of friends. I first heard her bold, jubilant, moving singing at a never-to-be-forgotten (especially "Ach Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ya") 1961 Town Hall program for Jewish Currents with Morris Carnovsky reading Mark Twain's "That Awful German Language." And I first met her 20 years later when she called up my parents asking for me, having read my first Jewish Currents article (on Hannah, in March, 1981). With her that April I drove down to the premiere of my musical Growing Up Woman at Glassboro State College, and that summer her Aspen students sang my translations of the Brecht-Eisler songs from The Roundheads and the Pointedheads. Having helped her find some Blitzstein material for her Blitzstein-and-Bernstein show with Alvin Epstein a year or two later, I was hoping to arrange for her to come perform for the Jewish Music Theater Association here in Berlin. Her death came as quite a shock. A wonderfully thrilling performer who was also an honest, warm, open-hearted and wonderful lady. We'll all miss her.

LEONARD J. LEHRMAN
Berlin, West Germany Oct. 13.