Jerry Orbach

Jerome Bernard Orbach (October 20, 1935 – December 28, 2004) was an American actor and singer, described at the time of his death as "one of the lastbona fide leading men of the Broadway musical and global celebrity on television"[1] and a "versatile stage and film actor".[2]
Orbach's professional career began on the New York stage, both on and off-Broadway, where he created roles such as El Gallo in the original off-Broadway run of The Fantasticks (1960) and became the first performer to sing that show's standard "Try To Remember";[3] Billy Flynn in the original Chicago (1975–1977), and Julian Marsh in the original 42nd Street (1980–1985). Nominated for multiple Tony Awards, Orbach won for his performance as Chuck Baxter in Promises, Promises (1968–1972).[4]
Later in his career, Orbach played supporting roles in films such as Prince of the City (1981), Dirty Dancing (1987), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and Disney's Beauty and the Beast (1991).[3] He also made frequent guest appearances on television, including a recurring role on Murder, She Wrote (1985–1991) as private detective Harry McGraw. However, he gained worldwide fame for his starring role as NYPD Detective Lennie Briscoe on the long-running NBC crime drama Law & Order (1992–2004).[5]
== Early life ==
Orbach was born on October 20, 1935, 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.[6] His father was a Jewishemigrant from Hamburg, Germany. Orbach stated that his father was descended from Sephardic refugees from the Spanish Inquisition.[6][7] His mother, a native of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, was a Roman Catholic of Polish-Lithuanian descent, and Orbach was raised in her faith (a religious background later replicated in his character on Law & Order).[8][9][10] 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 (having skipped two grades in elementary school due to his high IQ[3]).[11][1] He played on the football team and began learning acting in a speech class.[12] 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–Champaignin the fall. In 1953, Orbach returned to the Chicago area and enrolled at Northwestern University. Orbach left Northwestern before his senior year and moved to New York City in 1955 to pursue acting and to study at the Actors Studio, where one of his instructors was the studio's founder, Lee Strasberg.[12]
== Career ==
Orbach was an accomplished Broadway and off-Broadway actor. His first major role was El Gallo in the original 1960 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".[13] 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 Baxter, winning a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical), the original productions of Chicago (as Billy Flynn, receiving another Tony Award nomination), 42nd Street, and a revival of The Cradle Will Rock. Orbach made occasional film and TV appearances into the 1970s and appeared as a celebrity panelist on both What's My Line? and Super Password.
In the 1980s, Orbach shifted to film and TV work full-time. Prominent roles included a superb performance as tough, effective, but "allegedly corrupt" NYPD narcotics detective 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 gangsters in both the action-thriller F/X and the Woody Allen drama Crimes and Misdemeanors (the latter of which also featured his future Law & Order co-star Sam Waterston). In 1985, Orbach became a regular guest star on Murder, She Wrote as private detective Harry McGraw, which led to him starring in the short-lived spin-off series The Law & Harry McGraw. In 1987, he was featured in the hit film Dirty Dancing as Dr. Jake Houseman, the father of Jennifer Grey's character "Baby". He made further TV appearances on popular shows such as The Golden Girls (for which he received his first Emmy nomination[3]), Who's the Boss?, and Frasier (as a guest caller).
In 1991, Orbach starred in Disney's Academy Award-winning animated musical Beauty and the Beast, as the voice (both singing and speaking) of the French-accented candelabrum Lumière, which according to Orbach, he played "halfway between Maurice Chevalier and Pepé Le Pew".[3] At the 64th Academy Awards, Orbach performed a live-action stage rendition of the Oscar-nominated song, "Be Our Guest", that he sang in Beauty and the Beast.[14][15] He later reprised his voice role of Lumière for the film's direct-to-video sequels, multiple episodes of Disney's House of Mouse, and the previously-deleted song ("Human Again") that was added to the Beauty and the Beast 2002 IMAX re-release.[16][17] In 1992, Orbach joined the main ensemble cast of Law & Order as the world-weary, wisecracking, streetwise NYPD homicide detective Lennie Briscoe. He had previously guest-starred as a defense attorney on the series, and was subsequently cast as the new "senior detective" following Paul Sorvino's departure.[5] Orbach's portrayal of Detective Briscoe was based on his similar role from Prince of the City years before, which Law & Order creator Dick Wolfhad personally suggested to him at the time of his casting.[3]
Orbach starred on Law & Order for 12 years, ultimately becoming the third longest-serving main cast member (behind S. Epatha Merkerson and Sam Waterston) in the show's 20-year-run history, as well as one of its most popular.[18] During Orbach's tenure on Law & Order, the series won the 1997 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series among other accolades, made multiple crossover episodes with fellow NBC series Homicide: Life on the Street, and spawned a franchise that included the TV film Exiled: A Law & Order Movie, the spin-off series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Law & Order: Criminal Intent (both of which featured Orbach in guest appearances), and three video games. Orbach himself was nominated for a 2000 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (losing to James Gandolfini for The Sopranos). TV Guide named Lennie Briscoe one of their top-25 greatest television detectives of all time.[19] Also during his time on Law & Order, Orbach co-starred with Al Pacino in the independent film Chinese Coffee, which was filmed in the summer of 1997 and released three years later.[3]
== 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. Elder son Tony is a crossword puzzle constructor for The New York Times and also guest starred in the Law & Order episode "Doubles" as a reporter. Younger son Chris Orbach, who is an actor and singer, played Lennie Briscoe's nephew Ken Briscoe during the first season of 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.[1] 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.[20]
== Illness and death ==
In January 1994, less than two years into his stint on Law & Order, Orbach was diagnosed with prostate cancer.[3] He initially received radiation therapy as treatment, but by December 1994, the cancer had returned and metastasized. At that point, he went on hormone therapy, on which he remained over the next decade until the treatment ran out[clarification needed] in March 2004.[3] Following his departure from Law & Order that year, Orbach went through chemotherapy, but he ultimately succumbed to his cancer on December 28, 2004, at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York at age 69.[2] Despite being diagnosed with the cancer more than a decade before his death, Orbach's illness was not revealed to the general public until just weeks before he died.[21]Prior to his death, Orbach was signed to continue in the role of Lennie Briscoe on the new spin-off Law & Order: Trial by Jury, which was to accommodate his illness by giving him a lighter schedule than he had had on the original series, but he was only featured in the first two episodes, both of which aired following his death.[3]
The day after Orbach's death, the marquees on Broadway were dimmed in mourning, one of the highest honors of the American theatre world,[3] while NBC re-aired the Law & Order episode "C.O.D." (the last episode of the original series to feature Orbach) in honor of him. The Criminal Intent episode "View from Up Here" and the Trial by Jury episode "Baby Boom"[3] were dedicated to Orbach, and the Law & Order episode "Mammon" featured a pictorial memorial of him.
In addition to his sons, wife, and former wife, Orbach was survived by his mother and two grandchildren, Peter and Sarah Kate Orbach, children of his older son Tony. His mother died on July 28, 2012, at the age of 101.[22] His wife Elaine died in 2009 at age 69, and his former wife Marta died in 2012 at age 79. Having had perfect 20/20 vision his whole life, Jerry Orbach requested that his eyes be donated after his death.[3] 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. His 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.[3]
== Honors ==
In addition to his Tony Award and nominations, Jerry Orbach is also a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame, having been inducted in 1999.[23] In 2002, Orbach was named a "Living Landmark" by the New York Landmarks Conservancy, along with his Law & Order co-star Sam Waterston.[24] Orbach quipped that the honor meant "that they can't tear me down."[9]
On February 5, 2005, he was posthumously awarded a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series for his longtime role on Law & Order.[25] His wife Elaine accepted the award on his behalf.
On September 18, 2007, a portion of New York City's 53rd Street near Eighth Avenue was renamed 'Jerry Orbach Way' in his honor.[26]
Also in 2007, the Jerry Orbach Theatre was named for him in the Snapple Theater Center at 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 ===
After Law & Order was cancelled in 2010, executive producer René Balcer was quoted by The Wall Street Journal: "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."[27]
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."[28]
New York Times writers Ben Brantley and Richard Servero analyzed the breadth and scope of Orbach's career:
Dirty Dancing co-star Patrick Swayze memorialized Orbach after his death:
== Filmography ==
=== Film ===
Year	Title 	Role 	Notes
1955	Guys and Dolls 	Barbershop extra 	Uncredited
1955	Marty 	Ballroom extra 	Uncredited
1958	Cop Hater 	Gang Leader- "Mumzer" 	
1961	Mad Dog Coll 	Joe Clegg 	
1964	Ensign Pulver 	Unknown 	
1965	John Goldfarb, Please Come Home 	Pinkerton 	
1971	The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight 	Kid Sally 	
1972	A Fan's Notes 	Fred 	
1975	Fore Play 	Jerry Lorsey 	
1977	The Sentinel 	Michael Dayton 	
1981	Underground Aces 	Herbert Penlittle 	
1981	Prince of the City 	Det. Gus Levy 	Nominated—National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor (2nd place)
Nominated—New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor (3rd place)
1985	Brewster's Millions 	Charlie Pegler 	
1986	The Imagemaker 	Byron Caine 	
1986	F/X 	Nicolas DeFranco 	
1987	Dirty Dancing 	Dr. Jake Houseman 	
1987	Someone to Watch Over Me 	Lt. Garber 	
1987	I Love N.Y. 	Leo 	
1989	Last Exit to Brooklyn 	Boyce 	
1989	Crimes and Misdemeanors 	Jack Rosenthal 	
1991	Dead Women in Lingerie 	Bartoli 	
1991	California Casanova 	Constantin Rominoffski 	
1991	Out for Justice 	Capt. Ronnie Dozinger 	
1991	Toy Soldiers 	Albert Trotta 	Uncredited
1991	Delusion 	Larry 	
1991	Delirious 	Lou Sherwood 	
1991	Beauty and the Beast 	Lumière (voice) 	
1992	A Gnome Named Gnorm 	Stan Walton 	
1992	Straight Talk 	Milo Jacoby 	
1992	Universal Soldier 	Dr. Christopher Gregor 	
1992	Mr. Saturday Night 	Phil Gussman 	
1993	The Cemetery Club 	Unknown 	Uncredited
1996	Aladdin and the King of Thieves 	Sa'luk (voice) 	Direct-to-video
1997	Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas 	Lumière (voice) 	Direct-to-video
1998	Beauty and the Beast: Belle's Magical World 	Lumière (voice) 	Direct-to-video
1999	Temps 	Announcer 	
2000	The Acting Class 	Unknown 	
2000	Chinese Coffee 	Jake Manheim 	
2000	Prince of Central Park 	Businessmes 	
2001	The Make Big Thing 	John With - Enemies#4 (voice)	
2002	Manna from Heaven 	Waltz Contest Announcer 	
2003	Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There	Himself 	
2003	Try to Remember: The Fantasticks 	Himself 	
2004	Protesters 	Police Investigator 	
=== Television ===
Year 	Title 	Role 	Notes
1961 	Twenty-Four Hours in a Woman's Life 	Cristoff 	Television film
1967 	Annie Get Your Gun 	Charles Davenport 	Television film
1973 	Love, American Style 	Homer 	Episode: "Love and the Hoodwinked Honey"
1975 	Medical Center 	Josh 	Episode: "The Captives"
1975 	Kojak 	Brubaker 	Episode: "A Question of Answers"
1980 	Buck Rogers in the 25th Century 	Lars Mangros 	Episode: "Space Rockers"
1983 	The Magic of Herself the Elf 	King Thorn (voice) 	Television film
1983 	An Invasion of Privacy 	Sam Bianchi 	Television film
1985 	Our Family Honor 	Brian Merrick 	2 episodes
1985–1991	Murder, She Wrote 	Harry McGraw 	6 episodes
1986 	Dream West 	Capt. John Stutter 	Television mini-series
1986 	The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers 	Zachary Foxx (voice) 	7 episodes
1987 	Tales from the Darkside 	Robert 	Episode: "Everybody Needs a Little Love"
1987 	Out on a Limb 	Mort Viner 	Television film
1987 	Love Among Thieves 	Spicer 	Television film
1987–1988	The Law & Harry McGraw 	Harry McGraw 	16 episodes
1988 	Simon & Simon 	Harrison/Malcolm Stanley III 	Episode: "Ain't Gonna Get It From Me, Jack"
1989 	Perry Mason: The Case of the Musical Murder 	Blaine Counter 	Television film
1989 	The Flamingo Kid 	Phil Brody 	
1990 	Hunter 	Sal Scarlatti 	Episode: "Son and Heir"
1990 	The Golden Girls 	Glen O'Brien 	Episode: "Cheaters"
Nominated—Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series
1990 	Who's the Boss? 	Nick 	Episode: "Starlight Memories"
1990 	Kojak: None So Blind 	Tony Salducci 	Television film
1990 	In Defense of a Married Man 	Alan Michaelson 	Television film
1991 	Perry Mason: The Case of the Ruthless Reporter	Vic St. John 	Television film
1991 	Law & Order 	Frank Lehrmann 	Episode: "The Wages of Love"
1992 	Empty Nest 	Arthur 	2 episodes
1992 	Neil Simon's Broadway Bound 	Jack Jerome 	Television film
Nominated—Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie
1992 	Quiet Killer 	Dr. Vincent Califano 	Television film
1992 	Mastergate 	Clifton Byers 	Television film
1992–2004	Law & Order 	Detective Leonard W. "Lennie" Briscoe	273 episodes
Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series(posthumously)
Nominated—Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series
Nominated—Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series (1995–2004)
Nominated—Viewers for Quality Television Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Quality Drama Series (1998–2000)
1996 	Frasier 	Mitch 	Episode: "High Crane Drifter"
1996–1999	Homicide: Life on the Street 	Det. Lennie Briscoe 	3 episodes
1998 	Exiled: A Law & Order Movie 	Det. Lennie Briscoe 	Television film
1999–2000	Law & Order: Special Victims Unit 	Det. Lennie Briscoe 	3 episodes
2000–2002	Encounters with the Unexplained 	Himself, Host 	TV Documentary
2001 	Law & Order: Criminal Intent 	Det. Lennie Briscoe 	Episode: "Poison"
2001–2002	Disney's House of Mouse 	Lumière (voice) 	9 episodes
2005 	Law & Order: Trial by Jury 	D.A. Investigator Lennie Briscoe 	2 episodes