Who Am I? October 2025

I was born in the place Carl Sandburg called the ‘City of the Big Shoulders’ soon after V-J Day. My grandparents were Russian-Jewish immigrants who started out in the grocery business. That all changed one day after my ‘babushka’ (bubbe) entered a nickelodeon to see what it was all about. When she emerged from the show she realized that the family was in the wrong business. No longer would they have to worry about spoilage and customers who wouldn’t or couldn’t pay their charge accounts. In fact, the movie distributors were always willing to take back their ‘old product’ and supply a stream of new films to replace the previous ones!

My family was to eventually own a chain of movie theatres. Dad built a landmark theatre in town. He was to become a pioneer in the concept of cable TV, set-top boxes, and pay-per-view. Maybe my family background gave me the idea to enter the entertainment business because in later years I became an actor, a director, a producer and a writer but hey, I’m getting ahead of myself.

I got my first role in a school play when I was 6 or 7 and loved playing with puppets. I starred in high school plays as well. I studied at Colgate and NYU but left school to take up acting full-time. Along the way I studied at Second City for young improvisers. I usually play a kind of a Zelig-like character on screen. You know the type – soft-spoken, nerdy, wears specs and often plays secondary character actor parts such as lawyers, doctors and shrinks just the way Charles Lane did back in the 1930’s and 1940’s. I’ve been in over 70 movies, appeared as a regular in several TV series and I speak a decent French too.

I am a member of the board of the Exoneration Initiative. We fight to exonerate wrongfully convicted people in N.Y. That’s me in the photo below.

(1a)”Who Am I?” (1b) What early role did I play in a production at my grammar school? (2a)What beautiful, long-legged dancer/actress signed my cast when I broke my arm as a kid? (2b)Some people sometimes confuse me with another short, balding Jewish actor about my same age. Who is my supposed doppelganger? Hint – a waiter at the former Carnegie Deli asked me for my autograph thinking I was the other guy. It happens all the time. (3a)How did my ability to speak French advance my career? (3b)On another occasion, I played an Army Air Force pilot who was shot down on every single mission, yet always managed to save his crew. That character might have been suffering from what we now call P.T.S.D. but we do know he surely wanted to escape the stress of one too many combat missions and find asylum in neutral Sweden. What was my character’s name in that film? What was the name of the film? Hint- the film was based on a book written by a former WWII B- 25 bombardier. (5)Finally, I am a writer of children’s books and novels. I write for Scholastic and often go to book fairs, schools and book signings at places like Barnes & Noble. In fact, in October 2012 I came to a signing right here in Bergen County at Books and Greetings in Northvale, NJ. In a lot of my stories I write about an unusual pet that is sometimes a robot, sometimes bionic, and sometimes in real life, just a plain old golden retriever. What is my unusual pet character’s name?