Jerry Orbach

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Jerry Orbach
Jerry Orbach 1965 press photo.JPG
Orbach in a 1965 publicity photo
Born Jerome Bernard Orbach
(1935-10-20)October 20, 1935
Bronx, New York, U.S.
Died December 28, 2004(2004-12-28) (aged 69)
New York, New York, U.S.
Cause of death Prostate cancer
Nationality American
Occupation Actor, singer
Years active 1955–2004
Spouse(s) Marta Curro (1958–1975; divorced: 2 children)
Elaine Cancilla (1979–2004; [his death])
Children Anthony Nicholas
Christopher Benjamin
Awards Tony Award

Jerome Bernard "Jerry" Orbach (October 20, 1935 – December 28, 2004) was an American actor and singer. He was well known for his starring role as Detective Lennie Briscoe in Law & Order from 1992 to 2004, Harry McGraw in the hit series Murder She Wrote 1985–1991 and as the voice of Lumière in Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Orbach was also a noted musical theatre star. Prominent character roles that he originated include El Gallo in The Fantasticks, the longest-running musical play in history; Chuck Baxter in Promises, Promises (for which he won a Tony Award); Julian Marsh in 42nd Street; and Billy Flynn in Chicago.

Contents

Early life [edit]

Orbach was born in the Bronx, the only child of Emily (née Olexy), a greeting card manufacturer and radio singer, and Leon Orbach, a restaurant manager and vaudeville performer.[1] His father was a Jewish immigrant from Hamburg, Germany.[2][3] His mother, a native of Pennsylvania, was Polish American and Catholic, and Orbach was raised Catholic (a religious background later replicated in his character on Law and Order).[4][5] Throughout his childhood, the Orbach family moved frequently, living in Mount Vernon, New York; Wilkes-Barre, Nanticoke, and Scranton, Pennsylvania; Springfield, Massachusetts; and Waukegan, Illinois. Orbach attended Waukegan High School in Illinois and graduated in 1952.[6][7] Orbach played on the football team and began learning acting in a speech class.[8] The summer after graduating from high school, Orbach worked at the theatre of Chevy Chase Country Club of Wheeling, Illinois and enrolled at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the fall. In 1953, Orbach returned to the Chicago area and enrolled at Northwestern University. Orbach then left Northwestern before his senior year and moved to New York City in 1955 to pursue an acting career and study at the Actors Studio. Among his instructors at the Actors Studio were Lee Strasberg.[8]

Career [edit]

Orbach (right) played Billy Flynn in the original Broadway production of Chicago in 1975.

Orbach was an accomplished Broadway and Off Broadway actor. His first major role was El Gallo in the original cast of the decades-running hit The Fantasticks, and Orbach became the first to perform the show's signature song and pop standard "Try To Remember".[9] He also starred in The Threepenny Opera, Carnival!, the musical version of the movie Lili (his Broadway debut), in a revival of Guys and Dolls (as Sky Masterson, receiving a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical), Promises, Promises (as Chuck, receiving a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical), the original productions of Chicago (as Billy Flynn, receiving a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical), 42nd Street, and a revival of The Cradle Will Rock. Orbach made occasional film and TV appearances into the 1970s.

In the 1980s, he shifted to film and TV work full-time. Prominent roles included a superb performance as tough, effective, but "allegedly corrupt" NYPD officer Gus Levy in Sidney Lumet's Prince of the City; he was the 1981 runner-up for the NSFC Best Supporting Actor award. He also portrayed Jennifer Grey's father in Dirty Dancing and a gangster in the Woody Allen drama Crimes and Misdemeanors. In 1985 he became a regular guest star as a private detective on "Murder, She Wrote" which led to him starring in the short-lived 1987 crime drama The Law and Harry McGraw. He also appeared as a celebrity panelist on both What's My Line? and Super Password, and guest starred on the sitcom The Golden Girls.

In 1991, Orbach starred in the Academy Award-winning animated musical Beauty and the Beast, as the voice (both singing and speaking) of the candelabrum Lumière, a role he would reprise in the film's direct-to-video sequels and some of its video game spin-offs. That same year, he played a NYPD police lieutenant of detectives in Steven Seagal's Out for Justice and appeared as a defense attorney in the Law & Order episode "The Wages of Love". In 1992, Orbach joined the main cast of Law & Order as world-weary, wisecracking, streetwise NYPD police detective Lennie Briscoe. People loved the relish he took in his sarcastic comments as he arrested some pompous bigwig.[10] He remained on the show until 2004 and became one of its most popular characters. TV Guide named Briscoe one of their top 50 television detectives of all-time. Orbach was signed to continue in the role on Law & Order: Trial by Jury, but appeared in only the first two episodes of the series. Both episodes aired in March 2005, after his death. The fifth episode of the series, "Baby Boom", and the Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode, "View from Up Here", were dedicated to his memory.

Personal life and death [edit]

Orbach was married in 1958 to Marta Curro, with whom he had two sons, Anthony Nicholas and Christopher Benjamin; they divorced in 1975. Elder son Tony is a crossword puzzle constructor for The New York Times. Younger son Chris Orbach, who is an actor and singer, played Lennie Briscoe's nephew Ken Briscoe on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. In 1979, Jerry Orbach married Broadway dancer Elaine Cancilla, whom he met while starring in Chicago.

Orbach lived in a high-rise on 53rd Street off Eighth Avenue in Hell's Kitchen and was a fixture in that neighborhood's restaurants and shops.[11] His glossy publicity photo hangs in Ms. Buffy's French Cleaners, and he was a regular at some of the Italian restaurants nearby. As of 2007, the intersection of 8th Avenue and 53rd Street was renamed in honor of Orbach. The plans met with some resistance by local planning boards, but were overcome thanks to his popularity and his love of the Big Apple.[12]

In early December 2004, it was announced that Orbach had been receiving treatment for prostate cancer. He died at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York on December 28, 2004 at the age of 69. His agent, Robert Malcolm, announced at the time of his death that Orbach's prostate cancer had been diagnosed more than 10 years before. The day after his death, the marquees on Broadway were dimmed in mourning, one of the highest honors of the American theatre world. In addition to his sons, wife and ex-wife, Orbach was survived by his mother Emily Orbach and two grandchildren, Peter and Sarah Kate Orbach, his older son Tony's children. The season 14 episode "C.O.D.", the last Law & Order episode featuring Orbach, was re-aired in his memory on December 29, 2004. One of his wishes while he was alive was to have his eyes donated after his death. His wish was granted when two individuals – one who needed correction for a nearsighted eye and another who needed correction for a farsighted eye – received Orbach's corneas.[13] Orbach's likeness has been used in an ad campaign for Eye Bank for Sight Restoration in Manhattan. The interment of his remains was at Trinity Church Cemetery.

Honors [edit]

In addition to his Tony Award and nominations, Orbach was named a "Living Landmark", along with fellow Law & Order castmate Sam Waterston, by the New York Landmarks Conservancy in 2002. He quipped that the honor meant "that they can't tear me down". On February 5, 2005, he was posthumously awarded a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series.

On September 18, 2007, a portion of 53rd Street, near Eighth Avenue, in New York City, was renamed in Orbach's honor as Jerry Orbach Way.[14]

Also in 2007, the Jerry Orbach Theatre was named for him in the Snapple Theater Center on 50th Street and Broadway, in New York City. The naming occurred as a tribute to him during a revival of The Fantasticks at the theatre.

From others [edit]

Law & Order executive producer, René Balcer, was quoted in the Wall Street Journal on May 21, 2010: "I always think about the show as before Jerry and after Jerry...You saw the weariness of 25 years of crime-fighting in New York written on his face."[15]

Author Kurt Vonnegut was a fan of Orbach, and during an Australian radio interview in 2005, he said, "People have asked me, you know, 'Who would you rather be, than yourself?', and he replied "Jerry Orbach, without a question...I talked to him one time, and he's adorable."[16]

Patrick Swayze once said in an interview:

With Jerry Orbach, his life in many ways has paralleled mine. We were on a certain level, born into musical theatre. And as time goes on... for my training in musical theatre, I considered that was the school of presentational acting. When I was gonna transition into film acting, all of sudden I had to learn what organic looked like. Jerry Orbach has been one of the most successful actors who ever lived to make that transition from musical theatre into real, organic, break-your-heart kinds of reality in his work as a film actor, but transition back and forth seamlessly. I just did Billy Flynn in Chicago, which Jerry Orbach originated, which felt like a legacy to me. But it was a very interesting time for me, when I was shooting Dirty Dancing, I think probably the eyes I trusted if I was real, and it worked, and I had nailed it, was Jerry Orbach's eyes. I would go over to him and under my breath 'What did you think?' and he goes "No, go there further, I think there's more you can get'. He would say little things like "courage", and it gives me goosebumps to say that. I really, really respected that man. I watched his career from the time I was little. I think it was a great loss when he passed.[citation needed]

Former co-worker Elisabeth Röhm was asked about any crazy memories she had of Orbach at the 2007 Dragon Con:

You know, it's hard to say a specific, kind of crazy story, because Jerry was all about golf. The first day I showed up to work, he was like "Hey kid, I got a golf game, so I hope you're gonna get it done quick," and I was like "Alright...". But that was one of the great things I learned from Jerry, is to like... number one, no matter how lucky or how special we are to do what we do, Jerry taught me it's a job. And so I went from being like "I'm an actress" to "I've had a great job and I love my job and I'm lucky that I got a job that I love with all my heart and I didn't wimp out and say I'm not gonna go after my dreams, but my job isn't any better than anyone else's job." That's what I learned from Jerry. Jerry was a human being first, and he loved his job and it paid him well... better than me... he was not better than anyone else because he was famous or because he was an actor and he touched people's hearts, he was just a regular guy. That's why the show is good. Because, here he was, this regular guy. you believed he was this regular guy. You believed he was a cop. He was just somebody you felt like if you sat down and had coffee with him, he wouldn't be like "I don't have time for this"... he wouldn't be like that, he was so warm and so charming. You know what's interesting about Jerry and I, and I have to say I have put this in my back pocket and from everybody I have ever worked with I've learned something really important is everybody has their disappointment and pain and nobody's life is perfect. And I suppose that's a good thing so you don't feel bad about the things that are going on or aren't working out and taking them too seriously. For instance, just like with Sam Waterston, he has his sob story about why he's not Robert Redford. Jerry's is why he's not Al Pacino and the grass is always greener and it looks like somebody else's life worked out tons better, but he'd be the first to say this is what's meant for me. He worked his ass off and he was in the right movies, and he did all the right things, even a little bit for him, some of his dreams he didn't achieve. So it's never perfect. He was really real in that way.

Work [edit]

Stage [edit]

Broadway
Off Broadway

Video Games [edit]

Filmography [edit]

Television [edit]

Note: Jerry Orbach voiced two Disney characters; Lumiere from Beauty & tne Beast and Sa'luk from Aladdin and the King of Thieves.

Books [edit]

His love poems to his wife Elaine were published in Remember How I Love You: Love Letters from an Extraordinary Marriage (Touchstone, 2009).[17] Another biography, Jerry Orbach, Prince of the City: His Way From The Fantasticks to Law & Order by John Anthony Gilvey, was published on May 1, 2011.[18]

References [edit]

  1. ^ Jerry Orbach Biography (1935-)
  2. ^ Orbach had stated that his father was descended from Sephardic refugees from the Spanish Inquisition
  3. ^ Brady, James (February 27, 1994), "In Step With...Jerry Orbach", Parade Magazine: 26 
  4. ^ Horwitz, Simi (February 28, 1993). "Jerry Orbach; His `Law & Order' Role Fits Him Like a Glove". The Washington Post.  Reprinted in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel on April 7, 1993 as "Orbach Gives `Law & Order` Seedy Side" and Bangor Daily News on March 6, 1993 as "Orbach likes new role as cynical cop."
  5. ^ Hiltbrand, David (January 4, 2004). "Jerry Orbach gets his due on the sidewalks of New York". The Boston Globe. Knight Ridder. Retrieved April 12, 2013. 
  6. ^ Thompson, Lorraine (December 31, 2004). "Local woman went to school with actor". St. Augustine Record. Retrieved April 12, 2013. 
  7. ^ Brantley, Ben; Severo, Richard (December 29, 2004). "Jerry Orbach, Star of 'Law & Order,' Dies at 69". The New York Times. Retrieved April 12, 2013. 
  8. ^ a b "Jerry Orbach". biography.com. A&E Networks. Retrieved April 12, 2013. 
  9. ^ http://articles.latimes.com/2004/dec/30/local/me-orbach30
  10. ^ [1] The Associated Press, 12/29/2004
  11. ^ Brantley, Ben; Severo, Richard. "Jerry Orbach, Stage and TV Actor, Is Dead at 69", The New York Times, December 30, 2004. Retrieved August 11, 2009.
  12. ^ NY Times article 3/7/07
  13. ^ Eye Bank advertising campaign information. Retrieved 2007-01-12.[dead link]
  14. ^ Street renamed in Orbach's honor
  15. ^ Chosick, Amy and Gamerman, Ellen."'Law & Order' School of Drama"The Wall Street Journal, May 21, 2010
  16. ^ October 6, 2005. Kurt Vonnegut interviewed on ABC Radio National Audio by Phillip Adams. Available on the Slaughterhouse-Five Region 4 DVD, released by Umbrella Entertainment Pty Ltd in 2007
  17. ^ Orbach, Jerry; Orbach, Elaine; Waterson, Sam (November 3, 2009). Remember How I Love You: Love Letters from an Extraordinary Marriage. Touchstone. ISBN 978-1-4391-4988-1.  Unknown parameter |forward= ignored (help)
  18. ^ John Anthony Gilvey (May 1, 2011). Jerry Orbach, Prince of the City: His Way from The Fantasticks to Law and Order. Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 978-1-4234-8845-3. 

External links [edit]
Authority control
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