Zero Mostel

Zero Mostel , 1915-77, American actor, b. New York City as Samuel Joel Mostel. Mostel made his Broadway debut in Keep 'Em Laughing (1942). A comic actor with an expressive face, he combined a large paunch with acrobatic grace. His major stage appearances include Ulysses in Nighttown (1958 and 1974), Rhinoceros (1961; film, 1973), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962; film, 1966), and Fiddler on the Roof (1964). Mostel's other films include The Producers (1968).

Bibliography: See his Zero by Mostel (1965).

Mostel, Zero [ Samuel Joel] (1915–77), American actor, a huge, moon-faced man of enormous talent, who gained his theatrical experience in Greenwich Village night clubs before appearing in vaudeville on Broadway in 1942. In 1946 he was seen as Hamilton Peachum in Beggar's Holiday, an adaptation of Gay's The Beggar's Opera with music by Duke Ellington, and in 1952 he played Argan in The Imaginary Invalid, his own adaptation of Molière's Le Malade imaginaire. Among his later parts were Shu Fu in Brecht's The Good Woman of Setzuan in 1956, Leopold Bloom in a dramatization of part of Joyce's Ulysses as Ulysses in Nighttown in 1958, John in Ionesco's Rhinoceros in 1961, and Prologus in the highly successful musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in 1962. In 1964 he scored a great success in the musical Fiddler on the Roof. He died while on a pre-Broadway tour.