Galina Kopernak

Galina Kopernak (March 22, 1902 – July 11, 1985) was a Russian theater actress who came to the United States from Moscow and may have originally been from Shanghai. She appeared on Broadway across the 1920s, establishing herself in a range of dramatic and comedic productions.

Kopernak's early New York stage work included a performance at the Belmont Theater with Vera Smirnova in April 1921. Her Broadway career began in earnest with Montmartre in February 1922, a production adapted by Benjamin Glazer from the work of Pierre Frondale and staged at the Belmont after having been promised to New York audiences on multiple prior occasions. Her castmates included Helen Lowell, Helen Ware, and Mabel Frenyear. Playing the role of Marie-Claire, Kopernak attracted the attention of critic Alexander Woollcott, who noted that she possessed style, talent, and considerable fascination, while advising her against attempting certain emotional moments he considered beyond her range at that stage of her career. She subsequently appeared alongside Arnold Daly in The Farewell Supper at the Palace Theatre.

Producer Louis Kaplan, making his debut as a Broadway producer, signed Kopernak for The Wasp at the Morosco Theatre. The play was written by Thomas F. Fallon and adapted from Wadsworth Camp's novel The Last Warning. In September 1923, she took the leading role in The Four-in-Hand, a comedy adapted from the French of Paul Frank, which debuted at the Greenwich Village Theater. She played a wife who divorces her husband for failing to become jealous of her, though reviews of her performance were unfavorable. In March 1925, she appeared in Pierrot The Prodigal at the 48th Street Theater, a Carre-Wormser pantomime featuring Laurette Taylor. Two months later, in May 1925, she assumed the role previously held by Vivienne Osborne in Aloma of the South Seas after Osborne departed to replace Lenore Ulric in The Harem. Kopernak missed one performance due to a throat ailment before returning to the cast on May 16.

During the summer of 1925, Kopernak both authored and performed the leading role in The Squall, presented by a Cleveland, Ohio stock company. That September, she headed a production of Love's Call at the 39th Street Theater, written by Joe Byron Totten with a supporting cast that included Robert Gleckler, Norma Phillips, and Mitchell Harris. The production encountered significant difficulties before it could open: the elaborate Mexican costumes worn by the cast were seized by a clothing maker at 21 East 49th Street, who claimed an unpaid balance of $150. Kopernak removed her makeup, changed into street clothes, and left the theater, while an audience of approximately four hundred people sought refunds or accepted tickets to other productions.

In 1927, Kopernak appeared in What the Doctor Ordered, a farce by Cesar Dunn whose cast included Herbert Yost, Hale Hamilton, Eva Condon, and Louise Squires. Her final noted Broadway credit came in May 1929, when she joined the cast of She Got What She Wanted, written by Shubert Theater revue actor George Rosener, performed at Wallack's Theater. In the play she portrayed a Russian girl, a role producer George E. Wintz considered irreplaceable. Shortly after the premiere, Kopernak was injured in a car accident that fractured her right index finger, causing pain and swelling significant enough that her doctor recommended she leave the production. She returned to the cast on June 3 while wearing a cast on her hand.

Beyond her stage work, Kopernak had loaned money to Nicholas Arliokop, a Russian royalist who emigrated to Canada using her funds. Arliokop accumulated a fortune and in 1929 willed $250,000 to Kopernak. On March 20, 1930, she was listed in a vital record indicating her intention to marry Max Rabinowitsh (1893–1973), a Latvian concert pianist born in Liepāja who had immigrated to the United States in 1922 following the Russian Revolution. Rabinowitsh was 38 at the time and Kopernak was 28. She later married and subsequently divorced the novelist James Hilton.