Word: mostel
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DIED. Zero Mostel, 62, comedian and actor best known for his poignant portrayal of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof; of a heart attack; in Philadelphia, where he was about to open in a new play. The son of a rabbi, Samuel Joel Mostel decided to be a painter, but supported himself with a number of odd jobs, including working as a $5-a-night stand-up comic at neighborhood parties. When he was 27, he made his professional acting debut with a series of impressions at a café and within the year was in Hollywood. Like the character...
Paper Chase. Two days later, more than 100 of his colleagues gathered at New York's Plaza Hotel for the 13th Annual International Antiquarian Book Fair. There celebrities like Zero Mostel and Jackie Onassis, substantial as morocco-bound sets, and youths, shabby as prison paperbacks, browsed through more than $2 million worth of books, manuscripts and incunabula. Among the items for sale was a two-volume set of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, inscribed by the author. The price for this piece of the true Hakenkreuz...
...paunch may protrude a bit farther stage front, but otherwise Tevye the milkman hasn't changed much since Zero Mostel created the role in 1964. Fiddler on the Roof, the longest-running show on Broadway (nearly eight years), is back from its Diaspora, and Mostel, 61, is again playing the part like a hyperthyroid zeppelin. Why did Mostel return to Anatevka? "Greed!" he bellowed at an opening-night party last week at Manhattan's Tavern on the Green, where he Zeroed in on friends and tugged at a lady's bouffant wig. Wife Kate finally...
...most effective statement made by The Front comes during the final credits when one learns that the director, Martin Ritt, the writer, Walter Bernstein, Mostel, Bernardi, and two other actors in the movie were all blacklisted in the early '50s. The real impact of the McCarthy period for a moment slips...
...involved in the blacklist turmoil failed to create a more moving film. Certainly for all of them The Front was a painful labor, but it also must have been a labor of love, filled with lofty purpose and deep emotion. Why, then, such a mediocre product? Although Allen and Mostel turn in excellent performances, neither are quite right for their roles. Allen particularly does not fit in a movie of this type. He is the classic nebbish, but the very qualities that contribute to his comic genius detract from the solemnity of the film. The mere sight of his face...