Actors - Jack Gilford

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	Actors - Jack Gilford

Jack Gilford (July 25, 1908 – June 2, 1990) was an American actor with a long and successful career on the Broadway stage, films and television.

Biography

Gilford was born Jacob Aaron Gellman on the lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City, and grew up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, then a teeming impoverished neighborhood, now an increasingly expensive Yuppie area. His parents were Romanian-born Jewish immigrants Aaron and Sophie ("Susksa") Gellman. Jacob was the second of three sons, with an older brother Murray ("Moisha") and a younger brother Nathaniel ("Natie"). Aaron worked in the fur industry, and Sophie owned a restaurant, and was also a bootlegger.

He was discovered working in a pharmacy by his mentor Milton Berle. While working in amateur theater, he competed with other talented youngsters, including a young Jackie Gleason. He started doing imitations and impersonations. He first appearance on film was a short entitled Midnight Melodies where he did his imitations of George Jessel, Rudy Vallee and Harry Langdon. He developed some unique impressions that became his trademarks -- most notably, one of "split pea soup coming to a furious boil" using only his face. Other unusual impressions he created were a fluorescent light going on in a dark room, John D. Rockefeller Sr. imitating Jimmy Durante, and impressions of animals.

In 1938, Gilford worked as the MC in the first downtown New York integrated nightclub, "Cafe Society". He created original spoofs on movies -- in one of them, he coined the now-common phrase "The butler did it". He was a unique blend of the earlier style of the Yiddish theater, Vaudeville and Burlesque and started the tradition of Monology such as later comedians Lenny Bruce and Woody Allen used.

One of Mr. Gilford's specialties was pantomime, and this talent was put to good use by director George Abbott when he cast Gilford as the silent King Sextimus in Once upon a Mattress (Off-Broadway, 1959). Gilford shared the stage with a young Carol Burnett in this production, and reprised his performance with her in two separate televised versions of the show, in 1964 and in 1972.

His talent for pantomime was also employed to a great extent in the ten years Gilford was the face of the Cracker Jack TV commercials. The most memorable of these commercials featured Gilford walking through the sleeping car of a train when he discovers two passengers passing a box of Cracker Jack back and forth between their sleeping compartments and decides to surreptitiously intercept.

Mr. Gilford won many awards. He was nominated for several Tony awards for best supporting actor as Hysterium in A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum (1963), and for his role as Herr Schultz in Cabaret (1966). He was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actor in (1972) for his role as Phil Green in Save the Tiger
(his co-star Jack Lemmon won for Best Actor).

Mr. Gilford's career was derailed for a time. He believed deeply in social change in the United States, integration and Unions. He was quite active both socially and politically. He had to pay a price for this as many who were ruined by the 1950s political "Witch hunting" Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee along with the Hollywood blacklist. But he managed to become successful mostly through roles on the Broadway stage, such as Drink to me only, Romanoff and Juliet, The Diary of Anne Frank, and No, No, Nanette.

He met actress and later producer Madeline Lee Gilford at political meetings in 1947. They were married and were partners for 40 years later creating a Jack Gilford Special 1981 for Canadian cable CBS. At this time after 40 years of night club performing Jack started to perform his one man shows in the 1980s. This included appearances at the Paramount Theater in Denver, as well as Town Hall NYC. He went on to became a highly recognizable and loved comedic, serious and character actor.

Some of Gilford's most memorable work was done for series television, where he made numerous guest appearances. Some notable examples:

Get Smart (1969), playing Simon the Likeable
Soap (1979), recurring role as Saul, a 4000-year-old man abducted by aliens
Taxi, (1979, 1981), two appearances as "Joe Reiger", the cold, uncaring father to Judd Hirsch
's sensitive and caring "Alex Reiger" character. In one of these episodes, Gilford reprised his old "pea soup coming to a furious boil" impression
The Golden Girls, (1988, 1990), playing "Max Weinstock"
Other series: The Defenders, All in the Family, The Duck Factory, Rhoda
, Night Court, Car 54, Where Are You?.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Jack Gilford ]

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