Even though Jerry Orbach is best known for his role as Detective Lennie Briscoe on TV's Law and Order, he originally made his mark as a stage performer, starring in many musicals on and off Broadway. He originated the roles of El Gallo in The Fantasticks, Billy Flynn in Chicago and Julian Marsh in 42nd Street on the New York stage. His performance in the Broadway production of Promises, Promises, won him the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical Play, as well as the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance.
Jerry Orbach was born on October 20, 1935, in the Bronx, NY, and moved several times during his childhood. In 1955, he found work as an understudy in The Threepenny Opera. He stayed with the show for over three years, eventually playing the lead character, Mack the Knife. In 1959, he received two simultaneous acting offers: one for a Broadway production paying $250 a week and the other for an off-Broadway show paying only $45 a week. Orbach chose the latter and created the role of El Gallo in the off-Broadway production The Fantastiks, which became the longest running off-Broadway show in history. Orbach left the show in 1961 to make his Broadway debut in Carnival! and won rave reviews for both his singing and his acting. He later won a Tony nomination for his portrayal of Skye Masterson in Guys and Dolls and made a critically acclaimed performance as a neurotic Jewish intellectual in Scuba Duba. After his Tony Award win in 1969 for his portrayal of Chuck Baxter in Promises, Promises, he received another Tony nomination for his role in Chicago.
In the meantime, he also began to win more roles in TV and film, including a recurring role as Harry McGraw in the TV series, Murder, She Wrote. That led to a short-lived spin-off, The Law and Harry McGraw. He earned Emmy nominations for his performances in Neil Simon'sBroadway Bound, and in the TV series, The Golden Girls. He also had major roles in the films, Prince of the City, F/X, and Dirty Dancing. He gave voice to the animated character, Lumiere, in Disney'sBeauty and the Beast. In 1990, he first appeared as Detective Lennie Briscoe, on Law and Order, which became a regular part in 1992.
Orbach, who lived in New York City, died on December 29, 2004 after a battle with prostate cancer. Married twice, he was survived by his second wife, Elaine Cancilla, and his sons Chris and Tony from his first marriage.
Orbach, [Jerome] Jerry (1935–2004), actor. The swarthy, lanky performer was born in the Bronx and, after graduating from Northwestern, studied with Herbert Berghof and Lee Strasberg. He made his New York debut as a replacement in the role of Macheath in the long‐running Threepenny Opera in 1958, then called attention to himself when he created the part of El Gallo in The Fantasticks (1960). Leading musical roles followed: the crippled puppeteer Paul in Carnival (1961) and the enterprising businessman Chuck Baxter in Promises, Promises (1968). Orbach's nonmusical performances included the put‐upon Jewish husband Harold Wonder in Scuba Duba (1967) and the apartment hunter Paul Friedman in 6 Rms Riv Vu (1972). His last major Broadway roles were the slippery lawyer Billy Flynn in Chicago (1975) and the Broadway producer Julian Marsh in 42nd Street (1980). Much of his later career has been in films and television. Orbach is not a traditional leading man, yet he has an engaging stage presence. Writing in the Times of his Promises, Promises performance, Clive Barnes describes this presence, noting that he “has the kinds of wrists that look as though they are about to lose their hands, and the kind of neck that seems to be on nodding acquaintance with his head.”
Actor/singer Jerry Orbach spent 20 years working primarily as a leading man in Broadway musical comedies, a career that netted him a Tony Award and appearances on eight cast albums, before devoting himself more to non-singing character roles in films and a part on a long-running TV series. This second part of his career brought him such recognition that his earlier work was all but forgotten, or, more precisely, never known to the millions who tuned in to watch him on television each week.
Orbach was born the son of a father who was a restaurant manager, but had once worked in vaudeville and a mother who was a radio singer in the New York City borough the Bronx. His family moved around during his childhood, settling in Waukegan, IL, when he was 11. Having skipped grades, he graduated from high school at 16 and attended the University of Illinois for a year before transferring to Northwestern University, where he stayed for two-and-a-half years before leaving to launch his career. Moving to New York City, he studied with such famed acting teachers as Herbert Berghof and Lee Strasberg. In 1955, he was hired as an understudy in the long-running Off-Broadway revival of The Threepenny Opera. Over the next three years, he gradually worked his way up in the cast to the point that, in 1958, he began playing the lead role of Macheath (aka Mack the Knife). The same year, he made his film debut with a small part in Cop Hater. He moved to another long-running Off-Broadway success originating the role of the narrator El Gallo in The Fantasticks (May 3, 1960), a part that allowed him to introduce the standard "Try to Remember." He made his recording debut on the original cast album, which reached the charts. He then made his Broadway debut in Carnival (April 13, 1961). The musical was a hit, running 719 performances, and the cast album reached number one. Both of the cast albums on which Orbach had appeared were released by MGM Records, which signed him as a recording artist and in 1963 released his only solo album, Off Broadway. (The album was reissued on CD on Decca Records in July 2000.)
Orbach appeared in a series of revivals of notable musicals in the mid-'60s: an Off-Broadway production of The Cradle Will Rock (1964) and limited-run Broadway stagings of Guys and Dolls (April 26, 1965), Carousel (August 10, 1965), and Annie Get Your Gun (May 31, 1966). His performance in Guys and Dolls earned him his first Tony Award nomination as a supporting actor in a musical, but that show was the only one of the four not to produce a cast album. In 1967, he made his debut on Broadway as a non-singing actor in the comic play Scuba Duba. He originated his second starring role in a Broadway musical in Promises, Promises (December 1, 1968), singing the title song and the standard "Ill Never Fall in Love Again." The show ran 1,281 performances and produced a charting cast album; Orbach won the Tony Award for leading actor in a musical.
Orbach had had roles in a couple of more films (Mad Dog Coll [1961], John Goldfarb, Please Come Home [1965]), but it was not until 1971 that he got a starring role on film in the crime comedy The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight. His film career was not yet ready to take off, however, and he returned to the Broadway stage in the comic play 6 Rms, Riv Vu in 1972. He was given his third opportunity to originate a starring role in a Broadway musical with Chicago (June 1, 1975). The show ran 923 performances and produced a charting cast album, while Orbach earned his third Tony Award nomination for lead actor in a musical. He made his last appearance in a Broadway musical with 42nd Street (August 25, 1980), which ran 3,486 performances and had a cast album that reached the charts.
Orbach had continued to take the occasional film role (A Fans Notes [1972], Foreplay [1974], The Sentinel [1977], Underground Aces [1980]), but it was his appearance in Prince of the City (1981) that was a turning point in his career. Now in his mid-forties, he had matured into a gruff, sleepy-eyed tough guy type, perfect for playing cop characters, which he did here. (The persona did not prevent him from appearing in comedies as well, however.) After leaving 42nd Street, he began to appear frequently in films: Brewsters Millions (1985), The Imagemaker (1986), F/X (1986), Dirty Dancing (1987), I Love N.Y. (1987), Someone to Watch Over Me (1987), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989), Delusion (1990), California Casanova (1991), Dead Women in Lingerie (1991), Toy Soldiers (1991), Out for Justice (1991), Delirious (1991), The Cemetery Club (1992), Straight Talk (1992), Universal Soldier (1992), and Mr. Saturday Night (1992). He also briefly returned to his roots in musical comedy by serving as one of the voices in the animated Disney movie musical Beauty and the Beast (1991), also appearing on the soundtrack album, as Lumiere, the French-accented candelabra who sings "Be Our Guest." (He continued his work with Disney in the straight-to-video animated films Aladdin and the King of Thieves [1996] and Belles Magical World [1997], the latter a sequel to Beauty and the Beast.)
Orbach also worked regularly in television, making many TV movies and also guest-starring on several series. In the 1987-1988 season he starred in his own show, The Law and Harry McGraw, a spin-off of Murder, She Wrote, playing a private detective. He was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for his appearance on The Golden Girls during the 1989-1990 season. In 1992 he replaced Paul Sorvino in the long-running dramatic series Law and Order, playing Detective Lenny Briscoe; he remained with the show for an extended period and eventually becoming best known for his part on the show. He also continued to make the occasional film appearance: A Gnome Named Gnorm (1994), To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995), Prince of Central Park (1999), Chinese Coffee (2000), and The Acting Class (2000).
After 12 seasons on Law & Order, Orbach agreed to move to the spin-off series Trial by Jury in early 2004. Around the same time, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He shot several episodes of the new series before succumbing at the age of 69 on December 28, 2004, in New York. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
Died: Dec 28, 2004 in Manhattan, New York, New York
Occupation: Actor
Active: '70s-2000s
Major Genres: Drama, Mystery
Career Highlights: Crimes and Misdemeanors, Prince of the City, Dirty Dancing
First Major Screen Credit: Mad Dog Coll (1961)
Biography
Jerry Orbach often commented, without false modesty, that he was fortunate indeed to have been a steadily working actor since the age of 20. Such was an understatement: graced with not only formidable dramatic instinct but one of American theater's top singing voices, Orbach resisted others' attempts to peg him as a character actor time and again and established himself as one of the most unique talents in entertainment per se. Television producer Dick Wolf perhaps put it best when he described Orbach as "a legendary figure of 20th century show business" and "one of the most honored performers of his generation."
A native of the Bronx, Orbach was born to an ex-vaudevillian father who worked full time as a restaurant manager and a mother who sang professionally on the radio. The Orbachs moved around constantly during Jerry's youth, relocating from Gotham to Scranton to Wilkes-Barre to Springfield, Massachusetts and eventually settling in Chicago - a mobility that gave the young Orbach an unusual ability to adapt to any circumstance or situation, and thus presaged his involvement in drama. Orbach later attended Northwestern University, trained with Herbert Berghof and Lee Strasberg, and took his Gotham theatrical bow in 1955, as an understudy in the popular 1955 revival of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera, eventually playing the lead role of serial killer Macheath.
During the Threepenny run, Orbach made his first film appearance in the Manhattan-filmed low budgeter Cop Killer (1958). In 1960, Orbach created the role of flamboyant interlocutor El Gallo in the off-Broadway smash The Fantasticks, and later starred in such Broadway productions as Carnival (1961), Promises Promises (1966), Chicago (1975) and 42nd Street (1983). By day, Orbach made early-1960s appearances in several New York-based TV series, notably The Shari Lewis Show.
In the early years, Orbach's film assignments were infrequent, but starting around 1981, with his pivotal role as officer Gus Levy in Sidney Lumet's masterful urban epic Prince of the City, the actor generally turned up in around one movie per year. His more fondly remembered screen assignments include the part of Jennifer Grey's father in Dirty Dancing (1987), Martin Landau's shady underworld brother in Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) the voice of the Chevalieresque candellabra in the Disney cartoon feature Beauty and the Beast (1990), and Billy Crystal's easily amused agent in Mr. Saturday Night (1992). Orbach perhaps made his most memorable contribution to television, however. After headlining a brief, short-lived detective series entitled The Law and Harry McGraw from September 1987 to February 1988 (a spinoff of Murder, She Wrote), Orbach landed a role that seemed to draw heavily from his Prince of the City portrayal: Detective Lennie Briscoe, a sardonic, mordant police investigator on Wolf's blockbuster cop drama Law & Order.Orbach carried the assignment for twelve seasons, and many attributed a large degree of the program's success to him.
Jerry Orbach died of prostate cancer at the age of 69 on December 28, 2004. Three years later, Orbach turned up, posthumously, on subway print advertisements for the New York Eye Bank. As a performer with nearly perfect vision, he had opted to donate his eyes to two women after his death - a reflection on the remarkable humanitarian ideals that characterized his off-camera self. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Jerome Bernard "Jerry" Orbach (October 20, 1935 – December 28, 2004) was an American actor, well known for his starring role as Detective Lennie Briscoe in the Law & Order television series and as the voice of Lumière in Disney's Beauty and the Beast, as well as for being a noted musical theatre star; most notably El Gallo in The Fantasticks, Julian Marsh in 42nd Street, and Billy Flynn in the original production of Chicago.
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. 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. In 1955, he played an uncredited bit part in the movie version of Guys and Dolls[4] - he plays a barber shop customer during the musical number, "The Oldest Established," and is given a solo during one of the song's "Nathan, Nathan Detroit!!" choruses. Orbach made occasional film and TV appearances into the 1970s.
In 1991, Orbach starred in the Academy Award-winning animated musical Beauty and the Beast, as the voice of the candelabrum Lumière, a role he would reprise in the film's direct-to-video sequels. Also in 1991, he played a police captain in Steven Seagal's Out for Justice. That same year, Orbach appeared as a defense attorney in the Law & Order episode "The Wages of Love" and, a year later, he joined the main cast of Law & Order as world weary, wisecracking police detective (and recovering alcoholic) Lennie Briscoe. He remained with the show for 12 years (1992–2004) and became one of its most popular characters. TV Guide named Briscoe as one of their top 50 television detectives of all-time. He also voice acted the character for the video game spin-offs of the series. 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," was dedicated to his memory.
Personal life
Orbach was married in 1958 to Marta Curro, with whom he had two sons, Anthony Nicholas and Christopher Benjamin; they divorced in 1975. In 1979, he 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 Manhattan neighborhood's restaurants and shops.[5] 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 had been met with some resistance by local planning boards, but these were overcome due to his popularity and love of the Big Apple.[6]
In early December 2004, it was announced that Orbach had been receiving treatment for prostate cancer since spring 2004; he died at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York on December 28, 2004. Orbach was 69 years old. 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 and both wives, Orbach was survived by his mother.
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.[7] Orbach's likeness has been used in an ad campaign for Eye Bank for Sight Restoration in Manhattan. His interment was at Trinity Church Cemetery.
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."[8]
Honors
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.[9]
Also in 2007, the Jerry Orbach Theatre was named for him in the Snapple Theater Center in New York City. The naming occurred as a tribute to him during a revival of The Fantasticks at the theatre.
^ 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
