Broadway Rose

Broadway Rose gained notoriety in the 1940s as a panhandler in the Broadway Theater District of New York City. Biography Anna Dym was born in approximately 1913 in Woodburn, New Jersey. Her parents, Sam and Dora Dym, were Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They had five additional children. By 1920, the family had moved to 264 Grafton Street in Brooklyn, New York City, New York. Anna attended New York City's Public School 175. Beginnings According to the 1941 profile by Maurice Zolotow, Anna began her interest in stage when her uncle took her to the Brooklyn Orpheum to see vaudeville. Thereafter she became an autograph hunter and collector, and attended vaudeville, memorizing many routines she saw. From Hound to hunter According to Zolotow, her transformation occurred when she realized that theater performers were just ordinary people. She learned to tag and hound performers, dispensing well-crafted flattering phrases. After doing this for a week to Georgie Price, he offered to give her five dollars if she would stay away from him. It was the event that would create her reputation, for now she realized that she could get money by being so annoying to people, that they would give her cash to stay away.