Bikel, Theodore Meir
BIKEL, THEODORE MEIR
BIKEL, THEODORE MEIR (1924– ), actor and folksinger. Born in Vienna, Bikel went to Palestine and joined Kibbutz Massada in 1941. In 1943 he worked at the *Habimah theater in Tel Aviv. In 1944 he became one of the co-founders of the Israeli Chamber Theatre, later called the *Cameri.
Bikel entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London in 1946, graduating with honors in 1948. Sir Laurence Olivier, impressed with Bikel's performance in several local plays, gave him a small role in his production of A Streetcar Named Desire (1949), and in a matter on months Bikel took over the part of Mitch. In London he also performed in The Love of Four Colonels. On Broadway, Bikel's stage performances include Tonight in Samarkand (1955); The Rope Dancers (1957–58); The Lark (1956); The Sound of Music (1959–63), in which he played Baron von Trapp; Cafe Crown (1964); Pousse-Cafe (1966); and The Inspector General (1978). In American national tours he starred in Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, Zorba, The Rothschilds, The Good Doctor, and She Loves Me. Most widely identified with Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, Bikel played that role more than 2,000 times from 1967 – more than any other actor. In 1997 he coauthored and co-starred with Bruce Adler in the stage show Greetings … Sholom Aleichem Lives.
The films Bikel appeared in include The African Queen (1951), Moulin Rouge (1952), The Enemy Below (1957), The Defiant Ones (Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, 1958), I Want to Live (1958), The Blue Angel (1959), My Fair Lady (1964), The Russians Are Coming (1966), Sweet November (1968), My Side of the Mountain (1969), Prince Jack (1984), Dark Tower (1988), Crisis in the Kremlin (1992), My Family Treasure (1993), The Lost Wooden Synagogues of Eastern Europe (as narrator, 2002), and Crime and Punishment (2002).
In addition, Bikel made more than 100 appearances on tv drama series. Fluent in several European and Middle Eastern languages and skilled at accents and dialects, Bikel also sang folksongs in nearly 20 languages, accompanying himself on guitar, mandolin, balalaika, and harmonica, and recordered numerous albums, including many in Yiddish. He traveled widely in the U.S., New Zealand, Australia, and Europe, performing his eclectic repertoire that includes songs from Russia, Eastern Europe, and Israel.
Bikel co-founded the Newport Folk Festival (1960), was a founder of the Arts Chapter of the American Jewish Congress (1961) and served as its national vice president (1963), was president of Actor's Equity (1973–82), and was appointed to the National Council for the Arts (1977–82).
[Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)]