By, Tom Tugend
1 min read
ByTom Tugend, Tom Tugend
Theodore Bikel, folk singer, actor, liberal activist, Zionist and multilinguist, died Tuesday morning at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles of natural causes. He was 91.
Considered one of the most versatile actors of his generation, Bikel originated the role of Captain Georg von Trapp in the original Broadway production of “The Sound of Music.” But the performer may be best remembered as the definitive Tevye the Milkman, polishing the role during 2,200 performances of “Fiddler on the Roof.”
As a versatile and multilingual movie actor, he was nominated for an Academy Award as best supporting actor, playing a Southern sheriff in “The Defiant One.”
He performed in hundreds of television in shows ranging from “Gunsmoke” to “All in the Family.”
Born in Vienna, the then 14-year old Theodore Meir Bikel, nicknamed “Theo,” saw Nazi troops march into his native city in 1938. Soon afterwards, the family moved to Palestine, where young Bikel spent the next few years working on a kibbutz.
As an ardent political and Zionist activist, Bikel served as senior vice president of the American Jewish Congress, and held leadership roles in the Democratic Party, Amnesty International and president of Actors Equity from 1973-82. He was an early and powerful advocate for Soviet Jews.
But he gloried most in the his role as a folksinger, telling this reporter in an extended interview in late 2013 that he was proudest of “presenting the songs of my people, songs of pain and songs of hope.”
Shortly after the interview, the one-time refugee returned to Vienna at the invitation of the Austrian parliament to accept the country’s highest honor in the arts. As a finale, Bikel asked the distinguished audience to rise, as he sang the Song of the Partisans in Yiddish.
For his tombstone, Bikel told the interviewer, he planned the inscription, “He Was the Singer of His People” – in Yiddish.
