Nehemiah Persoff
Nehemiah Persoff (born August 2, 1919 in Jerusalem , Palestine ) is an American actor and painter . Between 1948 and 1999 he played in almost 200 film and television productions, mostly in prominent supporting roles.
Acting career
Nehemiah Persoff's exact year of birth is controversial: Most sources mention the year 1919, but 1920 is also mentioned again and again. In 1929 the Jewish Persoff emigrated with his parents from the city of his birth, Jerusalem, to the United States , where he first attended the Hebrew Technical Institute in New York City . Persoff then earned his first living as an electrician on the New York City Subway , where it was his job to maintain the signal lights. However, he has always been interested in acting, and from an early age he appeared in amateur theater groups. His personal motivation to try it as a professional actor, so the later reasoning of Persoff, was the rising anti-Semitism in Europe, and the prevailing opinion that Jews would get nowhere.
Persoff won a scholarship for a New York drama school and should be in the Cort Theater his Broadway debut with the war drama The Eve of St. Mark of Maxwell Anderson give. However, he was released shortly before the premiere. It wasn't until 1940 that he first appeared on stage in The Emperor's New Clothes . In 1942, like other men, Persoff had to do his military service in World War II and served three years in European theaters of war. After retiring from the United States Army , Persoff was discovered and promoted by the influential actress Stella Adler . In 1947 he was back on stage in Charles Laughton's stage production Galileo by Bertolt Brecht and in the same year was also one of Elia Kazan's first acting students . In 1948 Persoff made his film debut in City Without Mask , directed by Jules Dassin , in which he only took on a small role that was neither mentioned in the credits nor had spoken text.
His career includes roles in nearly 200 television series and feature films. In the 1950s he had small roles in Elia Kazan's Fist in the Neck - as a taxi driver during Marlon Brando's famous "Contender" scene - or in Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man in the role of Henry Fonda's brother-in-law Gene Conforti . In 1959, he played one of his best-known roles as Mafia boss Little Bonaparte in Billy Wilder's classic film Some Like It Hot , which Persoff deliberately created as a Mussolini parody. In the following years he played the fictional high priest Shemia in the lavish Bible adaptation The Greatest Story of All Time and in 1968 in The Day of the Owl , a film about the Italian mafia based on the novel by Leonardo Sciascia . He often played rogue roles and characters from foreign ethnic groups. In 1976 he worked as the husband of Maria Schell in the film drama Reise der Verdammten and starred in Yentl in 1983 , based on the short story Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy by Isaac Bashevis Singer , the father of the title character played by Barbra Streisand . In 1988 he was the rabbi in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ and as a professor in the comedy Twins, alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito .
In addition to cinema appearances, Persoff was also a very busy television actor, particularly between the 1950s and 1980s, who made a name for himself as a guest actor in numerous television series. He took on roles in series classics such as Columbo , Murder is Her Hobby , Hawaii Five-Zero , Our Little Farm , Charlie's Angels , Smoking Guns , Merciless City , Law & Order and Starship Enterprise: The Next Century . Although Nehemiah Persoff never actually played leading roles in his film and television career and did not win any film awards, he built a reputation as a versatile character actor of supporting roles. Towards the end of his acting career, in the 1990s, he spoke the role of Papa Mousekewitz in the Feivel cartoons .
Private life and painting
In 1999 Persoff retired from acting and has since devoted himself to painting pictures. His over 100 works , most of them Impressionist, have been exhibited in numerous Californian cities. He has been married to his wife Thia since 1951, and Persoff has four children with her. He now lives in the small town of Cambria, California . There he celebrated his 100th birthday in August 2019 with over 140 guests.
Filmography (selection)
- 1948: City without a mask (The Naked City)
- 1953–1955: The Philco Television Playhouse (TV series, four episodes)
- 1954: On the Waterfront (On The Waterfront)
- 1956: Dirty Laurel (The Harder They Fall)
- 1956: Wild Night (Wild Party)
- 1956: The Wrong Man (The Wrong Man)
- 1957: Day without End (Men in War)
- 1957: Street of Sinners
- 1957–1960: Playhouse 90 (TV series, six episodes)
- 1958: Hot Coast (This Angry Age)
- 1958: Shirley Temple's Storybook (TV series, as Ali Baba )
- 1958: Stolen Gold (The Badlanders)
- 1959: Tropenglut (Great Mansions)
- 1959: Al Capone
- 1959: Some Like It Hot (Some Like It Hot)
- 1959: Day of the wicked (Day of the Outlaw)
- 1959–1963: Chicago 1930 (TV series, six episodes)
- 1959–1963: Merciless City (TV series, six episodes)
- 1961: The big attraction (The Big Show)
- 1963: The Comancheros (The Comancheros)
- 1963: Men - Hard As Iron (The Hook)
- 1964: State affairs (A Global Affair)
- 1964: Conqueror of Death (Fate Is the Hunter)
- 1965: The Greatest Story Ever Told (The Greatest Story Ever Told)
- 1965: Gilligan's Island (TV series, an episode)
- 1965–1968: Crazy Wild West (TV series, three episodes)
- 1965–1975: Smoking Colts (TV series, six episodes)
- 1966: Big Valley (TV series, two episodes)
- 1966–1969: Cobra, Take Over (TV series, three episodes)
- 1967: Diamond Raid (Too Many Thieves)
- 1967: Solo for ONKEL (TV series, one episode)
- 1968: The Six Suspects (The Power)
- 1968: The Day of the Owl (Il giorno della civetta)
- 1968–1972: Disney Land (TV series, four episodes)
- 1968–1979: Hawaii Five-Zero (TV series, seven episodes)
- 1971: Red Sky At Morning
- 1972: The Streets of San Francisco (TV series, an episode)
- 1973: Dracula (TV movie)
- 1976: The Voyage of the Damned (Voyage of the Damned)
- 1976: Columbo : When Appearances are Deceptive (TV series, episode)
- 1976–1977: The Six Million Dollar Man (TV series, two episodes)
- 1977: Quincy (TV series, episode)
- 1978: Our Little Farm (TV series, episode)
- 1978: Ziegfeld: The Man and His Women (TV movie)
- 1978–1981: Barney Miller (TV series, three episodes)
- 1979: Battlestar Galactica (TV series, episode)
- 1979: Victor Charlie calls Lima Sierra ( The French Atlantic Affair ; TV miniseries, 3 episodes)
- 1981: Mount St. Helens - The Killer Volcano ( St. Helens )
- 1982: Haunted Marriage (O'Hara's Wife)
- 1983: Yentl
- 1984: Agent with a Heart (TV series, an episode)
- 1985: Magnum (TV series, an episode)
- 1986: Feivel the Mouse Wanderer (An American Tail) (voice)
- 1986: An Angel on Earth (TV series, episode)
- 1987: The Last Temptation of Christ (The Last Temptation of Christ)
- 1988: Twins - Twins (Twins)
- 1989: MacGyver (TV series, an episode)
- 1990: Spaceship Enterprise - The Next Century (TV series, an episode)
- 1991: Feivel, the mouse wanderer in the Wild West (An American Tail: Fievel Goes West) (voice)
- 1995: Chicago Hope (TV series, episode)
- 1998: Feivel, the mouse wanderer 3: The Treasure of Manhattan (An American Tail: The Treasure of Manhattan Island) (voice)
- 1999: Feivel, the Mouse Wanderer IV: The Monster of Manhattan Island (An American Tail: The Mystery of the Night Monster) (voice)
Web links
- Nehemiah Persoff in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Website by Nehemiah Persoff
Individual evidence
- ↑ EXCLUSIVE! INTERVIEW WITH ACCLAIMED ACTOR NEHEMIAH PERSOFF - Celebrating Films of the 1960s & 1970s. Retrieved April 7, 2018 .
- ↑ Jeffrey Meyers: The Genius and the Goddess: Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe . University of Illinois Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-252-07854-5 ( google.de [accessed September 7, 2019]).
- ↑ For Cambria's Nehemiah Persoff, art isn't just an act . In: sanluisobispo . ( sanluisobispo.com [accessed April 7, 2018]).
- ↑ Newspaper article about Persoff's 100th birthday
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Persoff, Nehemiah |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Persov, Nehemiah |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American film and theater actor and painter |
DATE OF BIRTH | August 2, 1919 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Jerusalem , Palestine |