The advent of talking pictures and the decline of Yiddish theater after the 1929 stock market crash hit Litman hard. Her humor—linguistic, intimate, and steeped in immigrant irony—did not translate to Hollywood musicals. The last known sighting of Pepi Litman is a tattered playbill from in 1935, where she performed for a dwindling community of aging Yiddishists.
Pepi Littman became a defining figure in the genre of the "male impersonator" (or travesty artist). In the Yiddish vaudeville scene, female performers who dressed as men were not merely novelty acts; they were superstars. Littman specialized in playing "shtetl swashbucklers"—dashing, romantic, or roguish male characters. The advent of talking pictures and the decline