Fyvush Finkel
| Fyvush Finkel | |
|---|---|
Finkel on the red carpet at the 1994 Emmys
|
|
| Born |
Philip Finkel October 9, 1922 Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
| Died | August 14, 2016 (aged 93) Manhattan, New York, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Heart attack |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1931–2016 |
| Television |
Picket Fences Boston Public |
| Spouse(s) | Trudi Lieberman (m. 1947–2008); her death |
| Children | 2 |
| Awards | Emmy Award (1994) |
Philip "Fyvush" Finkel (Yiddish: פֿײַוויש פֿינקעל; October 9, 1922 – August 14, 2016) was an American actor known as a star of Yiddish theater and for his role as lawyer Douglas Wambaugh on the television series Picket Fences, for which he earned an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series in 1994. He is also known for his portrayal of Harvey Lipschultz, a crotchety history teacher, on the television series Boston Public.
Philip Finkel was born at home in Brownsville, Brooklyn, the third of four sons of Jewish immigrant parents, Mary {Miryam}, a housewife from Minsk, Belarus, and Harry Finkel {Cwi Hirsh Finkel}, a tailor from Warsaw. He adopted the stage name "Fyvush", a common Yiddish given name.
Finkel first appeared on the stage at age 9, and acted for almost 35 years in the thriving Yiddish theaters of the Yiddish Theater District of Manhattan's Lower East Side, as well as performing as a standup comic in the Catskill's Borscht Belt. In 2008 he recalled:
I played child parts till I was 14, 15, then my voice changed. So I decided to learn a trade and went to a vocational high school in New York. I studied to be a furrier, but I never worked at it. As soon as I graduated high school, I went to a stock company in Pittsburgh, a Jewish theater, and I played there for 38 weeks, and that's where I actually learned my trade a little bit as an adult.
He worked regularly until the ethnic venues began dying out in the early 1960s, then made his Broadway theatre debut in the original 1964 production of the musical Fiddler on the Roof, joining the cast as Mordcha, the innkeeper, in 1965. The production ran through July 2, 1972. Finkel then played Lazar Wolf, the butcher, in the limited run 1981 Broadway revival, and eventually played the lead role of Tevye the milkman for years in the national touring company.
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