Samuel Joel “Zero” Mostel (February 28, 1915 – September 8, 1977) was an American stage
and film actor best known for his portrayal of comic characters such
as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened
on the Way to the Forum, and Max Bialystock in The Producers. He was
blacklisted during the 1950s, and his testimony before HUAC was
well-publicized. He was a Tony Award and Obie Award winner.
Biography
Early lifeMostel was born as Samuel Joel Mostel to Israel Mostel, an Eastern
European Jew, and Cina "Celia" Druchs, also from a Jewish family, who
was born in Poland and raised in Vienna. The two immigrated to the
United States (separately: Israel in 1898 and Cina in 1908), where
they met and married. Israel already had four children from his first
wife; he had four more children with Cina. Samuel, later known as
Zero, was Israel's seventh child.
Initially living in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, the family
moved to Moodus, Connecticut, where they bought a farm. The family’s
income in those days came from a winery and a slaughterhouse. The farm
did not do well. When, according to Zero, an unyielding bank president
with fierce mustache and long whip foreclosed the mortgage on the
farm, the ten Mostels trekked back to New York and settled on the
Lower East Side of Manhattan, where the boy attended public school,
his character was shaped, and his father was employed as a wine
chemist. While not at poverty level, the family had to struggle
financially. As a child, Mostel was described by his family as
outgoing and lively, and with a developed sense of humor. He showed an
intelligence and perception that convinced his father he had the
makings of a rabbi; however, Mostel preferred painting and drawing, a
passion he was to retain for life. According to Roger Butterfield, his
mother made a practice of dressing the boy in a velvet suit and
sending him to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to copy masterpieces.
Zero had a favorite painting, John White Alexander’s Study For Woman
in Black and Green, which he copied every day, to the delight of the
gallery crowds. One afternoon, while a crowd was watching over his
velvet-clad shoulder, he solemnly copied the whole painting upside
down, delighting his audience.
Already at a young age he developed the duality of character that
baffled critics years later: when alone he was studious and quiet, but
when observed he felt he had to be the center of attention, which he
invariably did through use of humor. The fact that at home he spoke
English, Yiddish, Italian and German helped him reach out to audiences
of many ethnicities in New York.
He attended Public School 188, where he had been an A student (this is
in contrast to his later claim that he was nicknamed Zero after his
grade average). He also received professional training as a painter
through The Educational Alliance. He completed his high school
education at Seward Park High, where, interestingly, his yearbook
voiced the following prophesy: “A future Rembrandt… or perhaps a
comedian?”
Mostel attended the City College of New York, a public college that
allowed many poor students to pursue higher education. Mostel belonged
to the swimming team and the R.O.T.C., where he distinguished himself
by clowning. The story goes that at the College’s Charter Day
exercises, the R.O.T.C. unit held a review in honor of the occasion.
When he was commanded by the captain to stand at attention, the future
comedian “started to crumple like an airless accordion.” “Attention!”
barked the officer, “not at ease.” “Mon capitaine,” Zero replied,
“it’s not me at ease, it’s my uniform.” Legend also has it that the
R.O.T.C. situation became so critical that on inspection days the
staff officers tried to get the youth out of sight. They attempted to
detail him on special duty. “Private Mostel, would you be so good as
to go to the gymnasium with a message for Corporal S?” they would
demand uneasily. “I gotta drill,” Zero, professing not to understand,
is supposed to have said. “But we excuse you from drill,” pleaded the
staff. “I gotta drill,” persisted Zero. “I gotta get hard. I gotta get
strong. I gotta get ready to die for dear old City College.” (See
Current Biography Yearbook, H.W. Wilson Company, 1955, p. 540.)
As only beginner classes were available in art, Zero took them
repeatedly to be able to paint and receive professional feedback.
During that time he worked odd jobs, and graduated in 1935 with a
bachelor’s degree. He then continued studying towards a masters in
arts, and also joined the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), which
paid him a stipend to teach art.
In 1939 he married Clara Sverd, and the couple moved to an apartment
in Brooklyn. The marriage did not last, however, since Clara could not
accept the many hours Mostel spent in his studio with his fellow
artists, and he did not seem to be able to provide for her at the
level she had been accustomed to. They separated in 1941 and divorced
in 1944, Clara only agreeing to the divorce in return for a percentage
of Mostel's earnings for the rest of his life.
Career
Early comic routines
Part of Mostel’s PWAP duty was to give gallery talks at New York’s
museums. Leading groups of students through the many paintings, Mostel
could not suppress his comedic nature, and his lectures became famous
not so much for their artistic content as for his sense of humor. As
his reputation grew, he was invited to entertain at parties and other
social occasions, earning three to five dollars per performance. Labor
Union Social Clubs followed, where Mostel mixed his comic routine with
social commentary. These performances would play a large role in his
eventual blacklisting in the next decade.
In 1941, the Café Society—a downtown Manhattan nightclub—approached
Mostel with an offer to become a professional comedian and play a
regular spot. Mostel accepted, and in the next few months he became
the Café Society’s main attraction. It was at the Café Society that he
adapted the stage name Zero (Zee to his friends). The press agent of
the night club prevailed upon Mostel to adopt this stage name, hoping
that it would inspire the comment: “Here’s a man who made something
out of nothing.” Thus, at the age of 27, Mostel dropped every other
job and occupation to start his show business career.
Rise
Mostel’s rise from this point on was rapid. In 1942 alone his salary
at the Café Society went up from $40 a week to $450; he appeared
on radio shows, opened in two Broadway shows (Keep Them Laughing, Top-Notchers),
played at the Paramount Theatre, appeared in an MGM movie (Du Barry
Was a Lady), and booked into La Martinique at $4,000 a week. He also
made cameo appearances at the Yiddish theatre, which style influenced
his own. In 1943, Life Magazine described him as “just about the
funniest American now living.”
In March of 1943, Mostel was drafted by the Army. His length of
service is hard to determine as conflicting accounts exist—some say
that he was released after six months due to colitis, others that he
served to the end of the war. At any rate it is apparent that he was
honorably discharged and gave the troops many months of free
entertainment through the USO until 1945.
Mostel married Kathryn (Kate) Cecilia Harkin, a Chez Paree club chorus
girl, on July 2, 1944, after two years of courtship. The marriage was
shaky at times, again mostly due to Mostel’s spending most of his time
in his art studio. Their relationship was described by friends of the
family as complicated, with many fights but mutual adoration. The
couple stayed together until Mostel’s death and had two children: film
actor Joshua (Josh) in 1946 and Tobias (Toby) in 1948.
After Mostel’s discharge from the army, his career took off again. He
appeared in a series of plays, musicals, operas and movies. In 1946 he
even made an attempt at serious operatic acting (in The Beggar's
Opera), but received lukewarm reviews. Critics saw him as a versatile
performer, who was equally adept at a Molière play as he was on the
stage of a night club.
Meanwhile, the choice of political causes Mostel was supporting earned
him surveillance by the FBI. According to his FBI file, he was seen at
many Communist Party meetings in 1941 and was active in support of
Free Earl Browder Movement.
Blacklist years and HUAC testimony
With growing popularity and many excellent reviews, Mostel’s career
nonetheless came to a complete halt during the 1950s. Seeing many of
his show business friends blacklisted and forced to name names of
supposed Communists, it came as no surprise to him that he was named,
too. On January 29, 1952, Martin Berkeley identified him to the House
Committee on Un-American Activities as having been a member of the
Communist party (Berkeley had named 160 people in all—more than any
other witness). This was enough to ruin Mostel’s career even before he
was subpoenaed to appear before HUAC, which happened on August 14,
1955.
The committee was presided over by chairman Clyde Doyle. Mostel, who
could not afford to hire a lawyer, testified before the committee on
his own. Frank Wilkinson recalled the proceedings thusly:
It began with the committee’s counsel immediately launching his
attack. “Mr. Mostel, are you or are you not a Communist?” Zero leaped
out of his chair behind the counsel’s table, knocking the microphones
to the floor, and reached for the throat of HUAC’s attorney while
shouting, “That man called me a Communist! Get him out of here! He
asked me if I’m a Communist! Get him out of here!” The committee was
roaring with laughter. They were delighted. Here they had Zero Mostel
all to themselves, on stage, in a private dining room. Zero went on
playing and parlaying with them for at least twenty minutes,
responding to their questions by reciting each amendment in the Bill
of Rights. Finally, HUAC’s lawyers cautiously said, “Mr. Mostel, we
know all about those amendments. We simply want to know are you, or
are you not, claiming the Fifth Amendment.” He didn’t ask Zero, “Are
you or are you not a Communist.” He asked him, “Are you or are you not
claiming the Fifth Amendment.” What they wanted him to say was “Yes.”
After another ten minutes of sparring, Zero said, “Yes, I’m claiming
the Fifth Amendment.” The hearings were stopped right there. The
committee’s PR guy goes to the door and opens it. He doesn’t say a
word to the crowd of reporters. He just holds up five fingers, and the
press dashes off to the telephones there in the hotel. The headlines
the next morning: “Zero Mostel Pleads Fifth Amendment at HUAC
Meeting.”
Thus Mostel refused the opportunity to redeem himself by giving the
committee more names, choosing instead not to answer any question that
may incriminate himself (a direct refusal to name names would have
allowed the committee to find him in contempt). His testimony had won
him admiration in the blacklisted community, as in addition to not
naming names he also confronted the committee on ideological matters,
something that was rarely done. Among other things, he referred to
Twentieth Century Fox as “Eighteenth Century Fox” (due to their
collaboration with the committee), and manipulated the committee
members to appear foolish.
Segment of Zero Mostel’s testimony before HUACThe admiration he
received for his testimony did nothing to take him out of the
blacklist, however, and the family had to struggle throughout the
1950s with little income. Mostel used this time to work in his studio.
Later he would say that he cherished those years for the time it had
afforded him to do what he loved most. Mostel’s appearance before HUAC
(as well as others') was incorporated into the 1972 play Are You Now
or Have You Ever Been…?
Ulysses in Nighttown and career reviva
In 1957, Toby Cole, a New York theatrical agent who strongly opposed
the blacklist, contacted Mostel and asked to represent him. The
partnership was to have the effect of reviving Mostel’s career and
making him a household name. Mostel accepted the role of Leopold Bloom
in Ulysses in Nighttown, a play based on the novel Ulysses, which he
greatly admired in his youth. It was an Off-Off-Broadway play produced
in a small Houston Street theater, but the reviews Mostel received
were overwhelmingly favorable. Most notably, Newsweek’s Jack Kroll
compared him to Laurence Olivier, writing, “Something unbelievable
happened. A fat comedian named Zero Mostel gave a performance that was
even more astonishing than Olivier’s.” Mostel received the Obie award
for best Off-Broadway performance of the 1958–59 season.
After the success of Ulysses, Mostel received many offers to appear in
classic roles, especially abroad. However, artistic differences with
the directors and the low salaries he was offered prevented these from
ever materializing. By this time the blacklist was beginning to
crumble, and in 1959, appeared twice on TV's The Play of the Week.
1960s and height of career
On January 13, 1960, while exiting a taxi on his way back from
rehearsals for the play The Good Soup, Mostel was hit by a bus and his
leg was crushed. The doctors wanted to amputate the leg, which would
have effectively ended his stage career. Mostel refused, accepting the
risk of gangrene, and remained hospitalized for four months. The
gamble paid off, but for the rest of his life the massively-scarred
leg gave him pain and required frequent rests and baths.
Later that year Mostel took on the role of Estragon in a TV adaptation
of Waiting for Godot. In 1961, he played Jean in Rhinoceros to very
favorable reviews. The New Republic’s Robert Brustein said that he had
“a great dancer’s control of movement, a great actor’s control of
voice, a great mime’s control of facial expressions.” His transition
onstage from man to rhinoceros became a thing of legend; he won his
first Tony Award for Best Actor, even though he was not in the lead
role.
In 1962 Mostel began work on the role of Pseudolus in the Broadway
musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which was to
be one of his most recognizable roles. Mostel did not originally want
to do the role, which he thought below his capabilities, but was
convinced by his wife and agent. The reviews were excellent, and,
after a few slow weeks, the show became a great commercial success,
running 964 performances and conferring on Mostel a star status (he
also won a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for this role). It
was also produced as a movie version in 1966, also starring Mostel.
On September 22, 1964, Mostel opened as Tevye in the original Broadway
production of Fiddler on the Roof. Mostel’s respect for the works of
Sholem Aleichem made him insist that more of the author's mood and
style were incorporated into the musical, and he made major
contributions to its shape. He also created the cantorial sounds made
famous in songs such as “If I Were a Rich Man.” In later years, the
actors who followed Mostel in the role of Tevye invariably followed
his staging. The show received rave reviews and was a great commercial
success, running 3242 performances, a record at the time. Mostel
received a Tony Award for it and was invited for a reception in the
White House, officially ending his political pariah status.
In 1967, Mostel appeared as Potemkin in Great Catherine, and in 1968
he took on one of his most famous roles, that of Max Bialystock in The
Producers. Mostel refused to accept the role at first, but director
Mel Brooks convinced him to show the script to his wife, who then
talked Mostel into doing it. His performance received mixed reviews,
and was not a great success at first, but the film has achieved cult
status since.
Professional relationships
Mostel had often collided with directors and other performers in the
course of his professional career. He was described as irreverent,
believing himself to be a comic genius (many critics agreed with him)
and showed little patience for incompetence. He often improvised,
which was received well by audiences but which often left other
performers (who were not prepared for his ad-libbed lines) confused
and speechless during live performance. He often dominated the stage
whether or not his role called for it. Norman Jewison stated this as a
reason for preferring Chaim Topol to him for the role of Tevye in the
movie version of Fiddler on the Roof. Mostel took exception to these
criticisms: “There’s a kind of silliness in the theater about what one
contributes to a show. The producer obviously contributes the money…
but must the actor contribute nothing at all? I’m not a modest fellow
about those things. I contribute a great deal. And they always manage
to hang you for having an interpretation. Isn’t [the theater] where
your imagination should flower? Why must it always be dull as shit?”
[1]
Other producers, such as Jerome Robbins and Hal Prince, preferred to
hire Mostel on short contracts, knowing that he would become less
faithful to the script as time went on. His larger-than-life persona,
though largely responsible for his success, had also intimidated
others in his profession and prevented him from receiving some
important roles.
In his autobiography, Kiss Me Like A Stranger, actor Gene Wilder
describes being initially terrified of Mostel. However, just after
being introduced, Mostel got up, walked over to Wilder, and planted a
big kiss on him. Wilder claims to be grateful to Mostel for teaching
him such a valuable lesson, and for picking Wilder up every day so
that they could ride to work together. He also tells the story of a
dinner celebrating the release of The Producers. Mostel switched
Wilder's place card with Dick Shawn's, allowing Wilder to sit at the
main table. Mostel and Wilder would later go on to work together in
Rhinoceros and the Letterman cartoons for the children's show The
Electric Company. The two remained close friends until Mostel's death.
Last years
In his last decade, Mostel showed little enthusiasm for artistic
theatrical progress. Rather than choosing roles that would bring him
critical acclaim or that he wanted to do, he seemed to be available
for any role that paid well. The result was a succession of movies for
which, for the first time since he had established himself as a
performer, reviews were mixed at best. Such endeavors were The Great
Bank Robbery, The Angel Levine, Once Upon a Scoundrel, and Mastermind.
This caused the devaluation of his star power: once a top-billing
actor, he now had to make do with featured billing, and his appearance
in a movie or play no longer guaranteed success.
There have been a few exceptions, however: the movie version of
Rhinoceros, The Front (where he played Hecky Brown, a blacklisted
performer whose story bears a similarity to Mostel’s own, and for
which he was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor),
and theatrical revivals of Fiddler and Ulysses in Nighttown. He also
made memorable appearances in children’s shows such as Sesame Street,
The Electric Company (for which he performed the Spellbinder in the
Letterman cartoons), and The Muppet Show, and gave voice to the
boisterous seagull Kehaar in the animated film Watership Down.
In the last four months of his life, Mostel took on a nutritionally
unsound diet (later described by his friends as a starvation diet)
that reduced his weight from 304 to 215 pounds. During rehearsals for
the play The Merchant in Philadelphia, he collapsed in his dressing
room and was taken to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. He was
diagnosed with a respiratory disorder and it was believed he was in no
danger and would be released soon. However, on September 8, 1977,
Mostel suddenly complained of dizziness and lost consciousness. The
attending physicians were unable to revive him, and he was pronounced
dead that evening. It is now believed that he suffered an aortic
aneurysm.
In accordance with his final requests, his family did not stage any
funeral or other memorial service to mark his passing. Mostel was
cremated following his death; the location of his ashes is not
publicly known.
Notes
- Mostel has the distinction of being the only guest on The Muppet Show
to die before his episode aired.
- The character in The Producers named Leopold Bloom is also the name of
Mostel’s character in Ulysses in Nighttown.
- He drank so much coffee that he was once hospitalized for caffeine
poisoning.
- The role of Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the
Forum was originally offered to
Phil Silvers, who declined, saying he
did not want to do this “old shtick”. Silvers later played Lycus in
the film version of the show. Silvers would later play Pseudolus in
the first revival of Forum and win a Tony Award himself.
- Zero Mostel is the central character of a one-man play featuring actor
Jim Brochu called ZERO HOUR which chronicles Zero Mostel's life during
McCarthyism.
- Mostel's script for Fiddler On The Roof is held at The New York
Library of The Performing Arts.[1]
Work
Stage
Cafe Crown (1942) (made some impromptu appearances on stage, but was
not officially part of cast)
Keep 'em Laughing (1942)
Top-Notchers (1942)
Concert Varieties (1945)
Beggar's Holiday (1946)
Flight Into Egypt (1952)
Lunatics and Lovers (1954) (replaced Buddy Hackett during his
vacation)
Good as Gold (1957)
Ulysses in Nighttown (1958)
The Good Soup (1960) (was replaced before opening by Jules Munshin due
to an accident which broke his leg)
Rhinoceros (1961)
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962)
Fiddler on the Roof (1964)
Ulysses in Nighttown (1974) (revival)
Fiddler on the Roof (1976) (revival)
Filmography
Du Barry Was a Lady (1943)
Panic in the Streets (1950)
The Enforcer (1951)
Sirocco (1951)
Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell (1951)
The Guy Who Came Back (1951)
The Model and the Marriage Broker (1951)
Waiting for Godot (1961)
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966)
Children of the Exodus (1967) (short subject) (narrator)
The Producers (1968)
Great Catherine (1968)
The Great Bank Robbery (1969)
The Angel Levine (1970)
The Hot Rock (1972)
Once Upon a Scoundrel (1973)
Marco (1973)
Rhinoceros (1974)
Fore Play (1975)
Journey Into Fear (1975)
Mastermind (1976)
The Front (1976)
Hollywood on Trial (1976) (documentary)
Watership Down (1978) (voice)
Best Boy (1979) (documentary) |