Mostel, (Samuel Joel) Zero

Mostel, [Samuel Joel] Zero (1915–77), actor. The hefty, cocky comedian was born in New York where he studied art at New York University. His earliest professional performances were given in small Greenwich Village nightclubs, followed by roles in several Broadway shows before calling attention to himself as Leopold Bloom in an Off‐Broadway production of Ulysses in Nighttown (1958). He consolidated his reputation with his playing of John, the clerk who turns into a wild animal, in Rhinoceros (1961). Moving to musicals, Mostel starred as the clever slave Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962) and the poor dairyman Teyve in Fiddler on the Roof (1964), the latter generally recognized as the high point of his career, and he returned to it for several revivals. Newsweek wrote that from his performance “there radiates so supple, luminous, and wide a light as to transform the stage into a scene of high, compelling art. When he sings ‘If I were a rich man. . . ’ he follows these words with a sighing, dream‐tasting spiral of Yiddish scat‐syllables which become the anthem of yearning for poor men everywhere.” He was on tryout tour with The Merchant at the time of his death.