Who Am I? April 2023
II was born in Cleveland, OH to Russian-Jewish immigrants. My dad, Benjamin, was a dress cutter and my mom, Bertha, was a women’s rights activist. I was actually brought up in the Bronx but I later returned with my family to Pittsburgh.
There wasn’t a lot of money in our household so I worked in the steel mills to pay for my education at Carnegie Tech; however, I soon discovered my calling to be in the performing arts. I have no Portuguese ancestry but that didn’t stop me from changing my surname to one of Portuguese origin.
I became a member of every important theater company in NYC. I debuted with the Civic Repertory theatre, joined the Group Theatre and associated with Orson Welles’s Mercury Theater Company. It didn’t hurt that I was blessed with a bass, baritone voice. I also directed plays at the Cleveland Playhouse. Many of you may have gotten to know me as an actor, a director or a musical performer on stage, TV, radio and film. I appeared in over 60 feature films. Heck, I even directed plays not too far from the JHSNJ at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn.
Early in my career I often appeared as a sinister thug in the film noir genre. Some of you may remember me as that alcoholic, one-eyed psychopath murderer, “Chicamaw,” which co-starred a fresh, young male lead.
Over the course of my career I have portrayed characters as diverse as Khrushchev, F.D.R., Ben Franklin, and even Mendeleh the Bookseller in “The World of Shalom Aleichem. Some of my illustrious co-stars were John Garfield, Ida Lupino, Edward G. Robinson, Raymond Massey, Ronald Reagan, Ann Sheridan, Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, Jayne Wyman, Spencer & Kate, Walter Brennan, Ray Milland, Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake.
My career took a temporary nosedive during the McCarthy Era when I was investigated and called up as a friendly witness before H.U.A.C. At my hearing I stated, “I refuse to answer the question on the following basis: The first and fifth amendments and all of the Bill of Rights protect me from inquisitional procedure, and I may not be compelled to cooperate with the committee in producing evidence designed to incriminate me and to drive me from my profession as an actor. The historical origin of the fifth amendment is founded in the resistance of the people to attempts to prosecute and persecute people for their political views.” For my noble efforts of defending my rights I was blacklisted and named in the notorious “Red Channels” publication.
After a hiatus, I returned to the stage. I made TV guest appearances on Ben Casey, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Mannix. I’ve earned both a Tony and an Emmy. I think you should know me by now. That’s me in the photo below. It was taken from one of my more menacing movie roles.
(1a)Who Am I? (1b)What role won me my Emmy? (1c)What role won me a Tony? (2a) In what film did I appear as the menacing psychopath,“Chicamaw,” and who was my young up- and-coming male co-star in that film? (2b)What is my association with the following songs: “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too; Keep Cool & Keep Coolidge; Get on the Raft with Taft; Row, Row, Row with Roosevelt”? (3a)My star must have been aligned with that of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s because I took 2 different roles in the two films taken from the same title of one of his novels 25 years apart. What was the name of that novel? (3b)In one of those roles I portrayed Meyer Wolfsheim, a guy with “gonnections,” that allegedly fixed the 1919 World Series. What was my other role in the earlier version of that film? (4)I was a hit on the Broadway stage playing one of our founding fathers. I reprised that role in a film with the same name. What was the name of that film?
