SYLVIA KAUDERS
I t’s a clear, cool day in Chelsea. Outside of Murray’s Bagels, a young
man and woman with a stroller sit to rest on a bench next to an
elderly woman.

The pair attempts a private conversation, but the old lady intrudes:
“How old is the baby?” she asks. And: “How long have you two been
married? Did you meet in the city?”
The young man starts making things up — saying the child’s
name is Hampus, and that the pair (who are actually just friends)
met at a Star Trek convention. “We were both dressed as Klingons
… I knew right away she was the one.” The old lady is slightly con-
fused but remains polite. “Well, enjoy,” she says. “You’re perfect to-
gether, it’s very clear.”
And … cut.

The above is a scene from Orange Is the New Black, the phenome-
nally popular Netflix drama about women in prison. The young couple
play recurring characters on the show, but the Jewish buttinski on the
bench — billed in the script as “Old Lady” — is just in that scene, in
which she serves as the clueless elderly foil for the savvy youngsters.

It’s a role that Sylvia Kauders, the actor who plays “Old Lady,”
knows something about.

Over the course of her prolific acting career, she has been billed var-
iously as “elderly woman” (Rescue Me), “Old Jewish lady” (Smash; Amer-
ican Splendor), “Seder guest” (Crimes and Misdemeanors), “Old Woman”
(30 Rock), “Lady at Deli Counter” (The Wrestler), “Tiny Old Lady” (Lip-
stick Jungle), “Grandma” (The Mother) and “Elderly Wife” (The Big
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Wedding). At least three times she’s been credited as a lady on a bench
— and, in the case of Orange Is the New Black, filmed outside of the real
Murray’s Bagels, she was clearly intended to be the Old Jewish Lady on
the Bench.

Kauders, who lives in Center City and now blends volunteerism
with acting, isn’t offended when she gets pigeonholed.

For one thing, much of her acting career — from Broadway to
the big screen — has involved major roles. For another, she has had
recurring parts on TV shows like The Sopranos, Spin City, Dream
On and Law & Order. And her characters in her two most recent
films — the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis and Love the Coopers,
with Steve Martin, Diane Keaton and John Goodman — were people
with names, not just stand-in ciphers.

And then there’s this: “I am, indeed, an old Jewish lady,” Kauders said.

Kauders grew up in South Philadelphia at Sixth and Mifflin streets
and went to Upper Darby High School — “Tina Fey and me!” she
said. She knew from a young age that she wanted to be an actor.

“I was in second grade the time I did my first play,” Kauders said.

“I was an understudy, and the kid who had the part got sick and I
went on — you know, one of these great stories.”
After this All About Eve-style debut, Kauders was hooked, al-
though her mother wasn’t enthused by Sylvia’s plans to be an actor.

“My mother wanted me to be a s choolteacher. My aunt and
uncle were both schoolteachers — my aunt was one of the
founders of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers — and we
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admired her so, we wanted to emulate her. But I really didn’t want
to be a teacher. I wanted to be an actor.”
Still, Kauders went to the University of Pennsylvania to study
“all the good subjects” —“history, social studies, English, not math-
ematics.” She had a fantastic time at the school, and understood her
mother’s insistence on a good education.

“Penn taught me how to think, bless them for it,” Kauders said.

She has remained an active and appreciated alum; there’s an en-
dowed lecture series in her name at the Kelly Writers House.

But when she first graduated and went to look for a job, she got
a wakeup call.

“A woman at an employment agency said to me, ‘My dear, you have
a wonderful education, but you don’t know how to do anything.’ ”
So she went to secretarial school, took a typing and shorthand
course, and learned how to do something. Those skills, she said,
were the key to getting hired.

“In my day, it was very rare that women moved into professional
jobs [from the beginning],” she said. “You always started as some-
body’s secretary.”
Aside from dealing with chauvinism, she often wondered if her
Judaism held her back.

“I would ask myself, ‘Did I not get this job because I’m Jewish?’”
She could tell when it was having an impact on someone’s per-
ception of her. Her first job after secretarial school was as a secretary
at a patent office.

“The guy there tried every which way and Saturday to ask me
whether I was Jewish or not without coming out and saying it,” she re-
membered. “I think it was against the law to ask me at that time. So he
said to me, ‘What’s your nationality?’ I said, ‘I’m American!’ He asked
what’s this, what’s that, and finally I said to him, ‘You know something?
I think patent law would be very boring. I don’t think I’m interested.’”
He was incensed, but the bright, strong-willed Kauders probably
wasn’t cut out to be a secretary anyway; instead, she began a long,
successful career in Philadelphia city government — for five different
mayors — and in public relations. She still loved acting, and did it
every chance she got, but she had to be practical, too.

“You don’t really kid yourself if you think as an actor you’re going
to be busy all the time,” she said. “You can’t count on steady work.

You’ve gotta have a steady job.”
She would, however, take advantage of a slow season in public
relations by doing plays. Things could get a little confusing, though.

After acting in the stage play Crossing Delancey, she went up to New
York to audition for the movie version.

A natural blonde, Kauders temporarily dyed her hair brown to
make a more persuasive case as the character. When she came back
into town, she headed straight to a special event connected to her
PR work — with an unfamiliar mass of dark hair. She had to tell
people, “Hello, I’m Sylvia Kauders — the same Sylvia.”
Though she juggled the two careers rather successfully, her proud-
est moment is actually connected to municipal promotions.

“I created a program called Wednesday is for Women,” she said.

“The city representative felt that the tours of City Hall were neglected,
so I created this program on a Wednesday that the women would
come, the municipal guides would take them on a tour of City Hall,
they’d come back to the Mayor’s Reception Room and we would do
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