Zero Mostel
WATCH: Zero Mostel Sings A Yiddish Classic
What did Mostel perform for a mainstream TV audience long before American popular culture embraced multiculturalism? A Yiddish song.
Everything You Wanted To Know About 'Fiddler on the Roof' But Didn't Ask
How did three less-than-observant Broadway guys come up with the biggest Jewish musical ever? Eileen Reynolds explores the engaging story — and explains why it still matters.
Zero Mostel's Long Shadow on 'Rhino'
One reason Eugene Ionesco’s classic play ‘Rhino’ is so rarely shown is because of Zero Mostel’s sensation-causing performance a half-century ago.
May You Be Like Jerry and Like Joseph
Yesterday I was watching Nightly News with Brian Williams and was surprised to see that Sparky Anderson got a five-minute tribute but Jerry Bock, the beloved composer of “Fiddler on the Roof,” didn’t get a mention. I have a personal stake in this, as I write musicals and often worry about posterity. Mr. Bock leaves us 10 days after his collaborator, Joseph Stein, did, who wrote the book for “Fiddler,” based on Sholom Aleichem’s stories.
‘Fiddler’ Writer Joseph Stein Dies
It’s hard not to hum “Sunrise, Sunset” (swiftly flow the years…) when reporting the death of Joseph Stein, the playwright who wrote the Semitic-kitsch musical classic “Fiddler on the Roof.” According to the BBC, Stein died at a New York hospital from complications after a fall; the writer had been in care suffering from prostate cancer. He was 98.
How an Actor Died of the Blacklist
Fifty-five years ago today, union activist and thespian Philip Loeb checked himself into the Taft Hotel in Midtown Manhattan under a false name and took a fatal dose of sleeping pills. Targeted by the insidious blacklist, Loeb could no longer find work in his beloved acting profession and had reached rock bottom.