Actor’s career began on the Yiddish stage
Emmy-winning work spanned Broadway, television and movies
Actor Fyvush Finkel, the plastic-faced Emmy Awardwinning character actor whose career in stage and screen started in Yiddish theatre and led to memorable roles in Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway and on TV in Boston Public and Picket Fences has died, his son said. He was 93.
Finkel, who was known for his mischievous smile and an ability to prop his ears at an angle for optimum comic effect, died Aug. 14 in Manhattan, said his son, Ian. He said his father had suffered heart problems for months.
He was a comedian, a singer, a stage actor, a film actor and a noted TV performer, from Fantasy Island to Blue Bloods. He celebrated his 80th birthday on the set of Boston Public, playing history teacher Harvey Lipschultz.
“He did everything,” Ian Finkel said. “That seems to be a trait of the old-time performers. They could all sing and dance and act and everything. It’s so wonderful.”
Finkel was born Oct. 9, 1922 in Brooklyn, N.Y. His long career began at age nine in 1930 when a production in his Brooklyn neighbourhood was looking for a boy to sing Oh, Promise Me. Recalled Finkel in a 2002 interview: “I stopped that show cold. They gave me a dollar a night.”
In the vibrant Yiddish theatre of the period, a solid performer could find steady work. Finkel studied singing, dancing and acting at a $1-a-week school.
He found himself back onstage when his new, mature voice settled in. He took a job with Yiddish theatre in Pittsburgh just shy of his 18th birthday. “I thought, ‘This is where I belong.’ And I’ve been in the theatre ever since.”
In 1964, as Yiddish theatre was dying, he was hired for the touring company of the Broadway hit Fiddler on the Roof. He later said: “I went to do Fiddler for less money than I was getting in Yiddish theatre, but I had to make the move. And it was the best move I ever made.”
In Fiddler he played Mordcha, and he took on the role of Tevye the milkman in a national touring production in 1981. In his last appearance on Broadway in 1989’s Cafe Crown, Finkel earned a Drama Desk Award nomination.
At age 60, after 12 years with various productions of Fiddler, he was cast in the off-Broadway musical Little Shop of Horrors. That opened up movies and TV for him, including Brighton Beach Memoirs (1986), Q&A (1990) and Nixon (1995).
“If you retire, you shrivel up. No doubt about it,” he said in 2002.
Finkel won a supporting actor Emmy in 1994 for playing public defender Douglas Wambaugh on Picket Fences — he was also nominated the year before — and earned a Golden Globe nomination for the role in 1995. He also earned three Screen Actors Guild Awards, one for Nixon and two for Picket Fences.
Finkel was married to Trudi Lieberman for 61 years until her death in 2008. His survivors include their two sons and five grandchildren.