Sara Biala

Sara Biala, born Sarah Bialablotcky on February 5, 1881, in Pilvishok, Lithuania, was a Polish-born American actress whose Broadway career spanned two decades, from 1909 to 1929. The daughter of Jacob Blotcky and Miriam (Mary) Werblofsky Blotcky, she emigrated to the United States with her family during early childhood and was raised in Iowa. She pursued formal training in oratory at Drake University and studied music in Chicago before beginning her professional career as a dramatic reciter performing throughout the Midwest.

Biala made her Broadway debut in A Citizen's Home in 1909 and went on to accumulate a substantial list of stage credits in New York. Her subsequent Broadway appearances included Baby Mine (1910), The Clouds (1911), The Ghost Breaker (1913), Pilate's Daughter (1914), Some Baby! (1915), Paganini (1916), The Torches (1917), and The Broken Chain (1929). During World War I, she took on roles in two topical dramas: War Brides (1916) and The Weaker One (1918). Beyond Broadway, she appeared in Mary Magdalene and The Snow Storm at the Hackett Theatre in New York, and traveled to London in 1915 to appear in Three Spoonfuls.

In addition to her stage work, Biala appeared in several silent films, among them The Heart of a Gypsy (1919), The Fear Market (1920), and The Law of the Yukon (1920). In 1910, she was refused membership in the Three Arts Club on the basis of her Jewish identity. In 1934, she returned to New York to study acting with Frances Duff-Robinson.

Biala married Harry D. Cohen in 1920 in Chicago. The couple settled in Iowa, where she periodically gave dramatic readings. She died on March 15, 1963, at the age of 82, and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Des Moines, Iowa.