Leo Fuchs

Sequence of images with Leo Fuchs, dancing

Leo Fuchs (born May 15, 1911 as Abraham Leon Springer Fuchs in Warsaw , Generalgouvernement Warsaw , Russian Empire ; † December 31, 1994 in Los Angeles ) was a Polish-American film actor. Known as the Yiddish Fred Astaire , he starred as a singing and dancing comedian in numerous Yiddish plays and musicals on Broadway and in Yiddish films .

Live and act

Leo Fuchs was born into a Yiddish theater family in Warsaw. His father, a character actor at the Yiddish theater, died at the age of 40, and his mother, a musical singer and actress, was murdered in the Holocaust . Leo Fuchs began to appear in comedies at Yiddish theaters in Warsaw in the 1930s. A little later he received an offer from a Yiddish theater in New York, where, as a trained violinist, he also played in musicals. Soon he also got offers to work in Yiddish films. Including the comic short film Ich will seyn a Boarder (I want to be a Boarder) (1937) and the long-play comedy Americaner Shadchen (American Matchmaker) (1940).

After the end of the war he appeared several times in the Yiddish theaters in London. The Alexander Theater had previously moved to a large venue with 1,500 seats, but had problems filling the tiers. Therefore, stars from New York were ordered. Fuchs, now known as the Yiddish Fred Astaire due to his elegant demeanor, acting style, singing and curious dance skills , performed as The Galitzianer Cowboy and filled the theater for several weeks. Something similar happened in the 1950s when he performed at London's Grand Palais - together with his wife Rebecca Richman , whom he had meanwhile married. His last season was in London in the 1960s, in The Great Waltz at the Theater Royal.

From the 1950s until the 1980s, he played in numerous television series produced in Los Angeles and occasionally in movies.

Individual evidence

^ ^A ^b The Independent : Obituaries: Leo Fuchs. Bernard Mendelovitch, London, January 18, 1995 (online at findarticles.com , accessed January 7, 2009)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Fox, Leo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Springer Fuchs, Abraham Leon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American actor of Yiddish film
DATE OF BIRTH	May 15, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH	Warsaw
DATE OF DEATH	December 31, 1994
Place of death	los Angeles

[independent-1] A ^b The Independent : Obituaries: Leo Fuchs. Bernard Mendelovitch, London, January 18, 1995 (online at findarticles.com , accessed January 7, 2009)