Theodore Bikel
| Theodore Bikel | |
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Bikel in 2009
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| Born |
Theodore Meir Bikel May 2, 1924 Vienna, Austria |
| Died | July 21, 2015 (aged 91) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Resting place | Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery, Culver City, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Film, television actor; folk singer |
| Years active | 1946–2007 |
| Spouse(s) |
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| Children | 2 |
| Website | Theodore Bikel |
Theodore Meir Bikel (pronounced bih-KEL; May 2, 1924 – July 21, 2015) was an Austrian-American Jewish stage, television and film actor, folk singer, musician, composer, unionist and political activist.
He made his stage debut in Tevye the Milkman in Tel Aviv, Israel, when he was in his teens. He later studied acting at Britain's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and made his London stage debut in 1948 and in New York in 1955. He was also a widely recognized and recorded folk singer and guitarist. In 1959 he co-founded the Newport Folk Festival and created the role of Captain von Trapp opposite Mary Martin as Maria in the original Broadway production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's The Sound of Music. In 1969 Bikel began acting and singing on stage as Tevye in the musical Fiddler on the Roof, a role he performed more often than any other actor to date. The production won nine Tony Awards and was one of the longest-running musicals in Broadway history.
Bikel was president of the Associated Actors and Artistes of America and was president of Actors' Equity in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He served as the Chair of the Board of Directors of Partners for Progressive Israel, where he also lectured.
Theodore Bikel was born into a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria, the son of Miriam (née Riegler) and Josef Bikel, from Bukovina. As an active Zionist, his father named him after Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism. Following the German union with Austria in 1938, Bikel's family fled to Mandatory Palestine, where his father's contacts helped the family obtain British passports. Bikel studied at the Mikve Yisrael agricultural school and joined Kibbutz Kfar HaMaccabi.
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