Born into a poor, religiously orthodox family, Litman’s birth name was probably Perel, but the rigid confines of the shtetl could not hold her. Legend holds that as a child, she was captivated by the traveling Purim players—the Purimshpil —where men traditionally played female roles. Litman saw the loophole: if a man could be a woman, why couldn’t a woman be a man? By her early teens, she had run away to join a wandering Yiddish theater troupe, cutting her hair, binding her chest, and stepping into trousers for the first time.
Pepi Litman (often spelled Pepi Littmann) was born around in the historic, multicultural port city of Odessa , Ukraine. At the time, Odessa was the louche, vibrant capital of the Russian Jewish underworld and intelligentsia—a bustling Black Sea metropolis of gangsters, poets, and revolutionaries. It was the perfect breeding ground for a rebel. pepi litman male impersonator ukrainian city born
Biographers and Yiddish scholars have long debated Litman’s private identity. Was she a lesbian in a time before that word was public? A transgender man surviving without the language of transition? A businesswoman exploiting the only gimmick that would pay? The record is hazy. She married once, briefly, to a man—a marriage that ended almost immediately. For most of her life, she lived with a series of female “roommates,” which in Yiddish theater circles was an open secret. She was likely a butch lesbian or a trans masculine figure who found her truest expression in the footlights. Born into a poor, religiously orthodox family, Litman’s
The rise of talkies and the decline of Yiddish theater during the Great Depression hit Litman hard. By the 1930s, the roles dried up. The young, assimilated Jewish audience no longer wanted the Old World vaudeville; they wanted gangster films and jazz. By her early teens, she had run away
With slicked-back hair, a painted-on mustache that became her trademark, and a three-piece suit tailored to hug her slender frame, Litman exuded a swagger that made real men jealous and women swoon. Critics of the day marveled that she was a better lover on stage than any male actor. She sang baritone love songs with a throaty, passionate growl. When she kissed her female co-stars (usually the famous prima donna Yetta Zwerling), the electricity was palpable.
What is known is that off stage, she never fully dropped the persona. She spoke in a lower register, refused to wear skirts in public, and was known to get into bar fights defending the honor of her female co-stars.
For a generation of immigrant Jewish women who worked in sweatshops and lived in tenements, seeing Pepi Litman was liberation. On stage, she smoked cigarettes in long holders, slapped cards on tables, and clicked her heels. She represented a freedom from the domestic cage. For male audience members, she was a puzzle they couldn’t solve—a woman who was more masculine than they were, yet undeniably beautiful.