You may remember Theodore Bikel as Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music on Broadway and Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, for which he was known best. The 91-year-old Tony award nominee took his last breath yesterday, at the UCLA medical center in California.
The actor played Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof more times on stage than even Chaim Topol, who played the role on the big screen. He also starred in several TV shows including The Twilight Zone, Charlie’s Angels, and Star Trek: The Next Generation, as Worf’s father.
Born in Vienna in 1924, Bikel moved from Austria with his parents after the Nazi occupation of Austria to British-occupied Palestine, where he began acting in a Hebrew theatre in his teens. He then studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London where he was spotted by Michael Redgrave who recommended him for the West End premiere of A Streetcar Named Desire. Bikel made his Broadway debut after moving to the US in 1954 and was Tony-nominated for The Rope Dancers in 1958 and The Sound of Music the subsequent year.
His multilingualism and talent for accents allowed him to play a wide range of roles on the big screen as a German officer, French commander, Russian submarine captain and US sheriff to name a few, along with the acclaimed role of the Hungarian voice coach in My Fair Lady. From the 1950s, he began recording albums of folk songs, and co-founded the Newport folk festival where he sang beside Bob Dylan and Joan Baez in 1959. Bikel received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles in 2005.
Dedicating much of his life to the betterment of the acting society, he was also president of Actor’s Equity from 1977 and 1982, and later presided the Associated Actors and Artistes of America.
In Bikel’s words: “Retiring – within that word is tiring, and I’m not tired. I don’t believe in retirement, really.”