Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rudolph Marks

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Consensus is that the article should be kept thanks to RebeccaGreen's addition of sources. (non-admin closure) Jovanmilic97 (talk) 09:18, 16 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Rudolph Marks[edit]

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Both offline and online source searches (WorldCat, Scholar, Books, Google) reveal a few passing mentions but nothing which would satisfy notability guidelines for creative professionals or people in general. User:Jmabel - courtesy ping for deprod. SITH (talk) 12:38, 2 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. PriceDL (talk) 13:02, 2 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of New York-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 13:54, 2 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Theatre-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 13:54, 2 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

As I wrote on the article talk page, I realize we are short on independent documentation of notability here, but that's not uncommon for people who wrote almost entirely in Yiddish, especially if virtually all writing about them was in Yiddish. Few, if any, Yiddish-language newspapers can be found online; there are not all that many books about Yiddish-language performing in any language other than Yiddish, and those in Yiddish are not well catalogued.

Jacob Adler, the one citation I have here, was by any standard among the half-dozen most important actors in the history of Yiddish theater. Many would account him the most important. I'm pretty comfortable saying that if he considered Marks worth singling out for mention in his memoir as someone who had a brief but notable career in the 1890s, he knew whereof he spoke. - Jmabel | Talk 17:11, 2 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete The GNG is very clear we need multiple sources, one source is never enough. One can not argue that sources might exist, one needs to demonstrate what these sources are.John Pack Lambert (talk) 23:32, 4 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I do not consider that to be the case in reality. One really reliable source in a place with worldwide coverage is sufficient. We have , for example, kept thousands of bio articles on account of their being covered as a NYT editorial obit. The GNG is a summary, and needs to be interpreted according to reason.

Keep until a search for proper sources can be made by someone competent to do so. There were in that period 4 (or perhaps 5 )Yiddish language daily newspapers in NYC, all of which covered the Yiddish theater extensively. There are additionally many books available, I think mostly in Yiddish. You're not going to find this in Gbooks or in any of the newspaper indexes. At the very least, draftify, I'm asking one or two of the people I know. . DGG ( talk ) 05:54, 7 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
DGG, I could go with draftify, sure. SITH (talk) 01:42, 9 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 03:51, 9 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep There is actually a fair amount in the digitised papers in Newspapers.com. The Philadelphia Inquirer called him a "well known and clever comedian" when the United Hebrew Opera Co appeared there in 1893 [1]; a review in the Philadelphia Times said he deserved the applause he received [2], and a review in the The Philadelphia Inquirer said there was "a vein of clever comedy throughout the piece, the chief promoter of which was Rudolph Marks" [3]. In the same year a paper called Der Waechter ran a contest for the most popular young actor (reported in The World, New York) [4], which was narrowed down to Marks and another, but Marks went to court saying his name and photo could not be used (this report describes him as an actor at the Thalia Theater and law student at the University of the City of New York). By 1900, Marks was acting as counsel for theater managers against the newly formed Hebrew Actors' Union [5], [6]. In 1901, there were efforts to start a Yiddish theater in Chicago, and there was a performance of a play called The Bowery Tramp by "a New York lawyer, Rudolph Marks, who was formerly a Yiddish actor" [7] In 1904, there are small mentions of him as a Chicago lawyer "who has made a specialty of theatrical law" [8], and in 1907 as a lawyer of 320 Broadway (again engaged by theater managers) [9]. A 1903 report of a court case describes him as "better known as a writer of Yiddish plays and as an actor of Shakepearean parts in the Bowery theaters than as a lawyer" [10]. His plays were performed in Connecticut in 1911 ("the great comedy success Chaim in America") [11] and Kentucky in 1912 (The Shop Girl) [12]. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle had an obituary when he died in 1930 aged 63 [13] - apparently his full name was Rudolph Marks Rodkinson; he was born in Odessa, went to England aged 15 and appeared on the stage there, then arrived in New York aged 19. He worked as a lawyer for 32 years, and had a son and two daughters. Plenty of coverage even without access to sources in Yiddish. RebeccaGreen (talk) 05:10, 9 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I have added the references I found, plus some information and quotes, so the article now has more than just one sentence. RebeccaGreen (talk) 06:16, 9 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per WP:HEY. FOARP (talk) 13:17, 9 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Rebecca's expansion seems sufficient to confirm the subject's notability. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 14:39, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, WP:HEY, Kudos to the indefatigable Rebecca Green.E.M.Gregory (talk) 23:54, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.