Theodore Bikel, an actor and folksinger who was recognized in 1997 with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, died July 21 at age 91.
He died of natural causes at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Born in Vienna, Bikel fled Austria at age 13 with his family after the 1938 Nazi Anschluss. The family settled in pre-state Palestine, and in 1946 Bikel went to London to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Bikel moved to the United States in 1954 to appear on Broadway in “Tonight in Samarkand,” becoming a U.S. citizen in 1961. Also on Broadway, he played Captain Georg Von Trapp in the first Broadway production of “The Sound of Music.”
During his career, Bikel appeared on stage, film and television in musicals, dramas and comedies. In 1958, he was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in “The Defiant Ones.” In 1959, he co-founded the Newport Folk Festival with Pete Seeger and George Wein.
Bikel came to Milwaukee several times. He performed solo at then-Congregation Beth Israel in 1970, at Lubavitch House in 1975 and 1980, and at Congregation Sinai in 1987.
He served as MC and narrator of the show “Proclaim Liberty” in 1977 at the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts. He starred as Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof” at the Riverside Theater in 1995.
He opened the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center’s Book and Culture Fair in 2003. The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle interviewed him for its issues of Dec. 18, 1987, Feb. 10, 1995, and Oct. 10, 2003.
Along with his arts work, Bikel was active in many left-wing causes, from the civil rights movement to the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa to the Soviet Jewry movement to progressive Zionism and the Democratic Party.
He was a longtime board member of the American Jewish Congress. In 2010, he was one of more than 150 American artists to sign a letter in support of Israeli actors boycotting performances in the West Bank settlement of Ariel.
Bikel also was a labor activist, serving as president of Actors Equity Association for 11 years and as the longtime president of the AFL-CIO-affiliated Actors & Artistes of America, according to Deadline Hollywood.
In a 2007 interview with Hadassah Magazine, Bikel linked his activism to his experience living through the Anschluss, the Nazi invasion of Austria in 1938.
“It became clear that I would never ever put myself in the place of the nice people next door who said ‘It’s not my fight,’” he said. “It’s always my fight. Whenever I see an individual or group singled out for persecution, there’s a switch thrown in my mind — and they become Jews.”
Bikel won fame playing Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof,” doing more performances of the role than any other actor, but Tevye was not Bikel’s only Jewish role.
In 2007 he was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for outstanding solo performance in “Sholom Aleichem: Laughter Through Tears.” In 2014, Bikel produced and starred in the documentary “Theodore Bikel: In the Shoes of Sholom Aleichem.”
In 2013, at an event marking the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Austrian government honored Bikel with its highest honor in the arts.
Many of Bikel’s 27 albums featured Hebrew and Yiddish folk music — two languages that he spoke fluently, along with German, French and English.
In a 2013 interview, he said that of all his accomplishments he was proudest of “presenting the songs of my people, songs of pain and songs of hope.”
In the same interview, Bikel said he had planned the inscription for his tombstone — “He Was the Singer of His People” — in Yiddish.
And in 1987, when The Chronicle asked him when he might start to slow down, he replied, “When I die. Who ever heard of an artist retiring?”
JTA correspondent Tom Tugend and Chronicle editor Leon Cohen contributed to this article.
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