Interview with Theo Bikel
MOMENT INTERVIEW THEO BIKEL moment: Why don't we start with an obvious question—of all the roles you've played, what's been your favorite? Bikd: I can't name one favorite role; that would be...
...And you get my father...
...What does it do to the celebrity herself, or himself...
...So of course I went...
...He said, "What's the matter, they didn't like your reading...
...I was 14.1 studied first at Mikve Yisrael, the agricultural college, and from there went on to a kibbutz...
...Frank Sinatra as the first performer in 4000 years on top of Mt...
...Herman Wouk, who is a creative artist, is an Orthodox Jew...
...But you left Broadway...
...He said, "Why don't you put down Buko-vinian...
...He said, "Where were you born...
...From this came other roles in the West End of London, and then somebody came from America, saw me, and offered me a role on Broadway...
...He can't take the chance he'll be seen...
...What do you want me to put down...
...And I said, "Oh no, I'm not going to put that down, because the only logical answer that this question calls for is 'kike.' " To which he replied, "Please don't make trouble, I'm only a sargeant...
...So where is our royalty...
...Can you really lay away the sophistication and the veneer and become Zorba...
...Brzezinsky, 'When do we get out of here?' And he said to me, 'I've read your book...
...I get older people who say that nobody does the songs the way I do...
...You can walk away and become something because of having split with a tradition, with certain people, certain mores that you despise...
...Once for only 36 hours, when he had an operation...
...And when I came off stage, they all said, "What was this bzzzzz...
...Give me a topic...
...Now, though, I hear that they're making all kinds of cockamamy plans, with Frank Sinatra, a peace concert on the anniversary of the Sadat visit to Jerusalem, and to do it on top of Mt...
...But it's not something close to many Jews involved in your industry...
...You see inexplicable things that are clearly known to the local audience...
...I said, "O.K...
...that's easy...
...It took us forever to push our way through the courtyard and finally get into the big room where the Rebbe was holding court...
...And so I stayed...
...So I said, "No, that's not what it means, because it says over here 'birthplace,' and I already answered that...
...Nobody asked for his money back...
...The Habima refused to give me roles of any consequence...
...A Jewish person in the audience, seeing Golda bless the candles with her hands, will explain to a Gentile sitting next to him what this is all about—//he knows—and why Golda is doing that...
...In pure chronological order, then...
...I said, I don't know, they didn't ask me...
...We hope you have many many years to live, and we think it would be wise if you would give all your assets to your daughter now, with the understanding, of course, that you would have full use of them, of everything, and thereby you would save untold sums...
...Absolutely...
...Why not...
...So I made a 10 inch record, and then another, and another, and another, and the first time they moved into a new office—at the time we began, his whole operation was in one office on Bleeker street— when they moved to offices at Rockefeller Center, they were called "The House That Theo Built...
...His madness is truth...
...I talked once to Paul McCartney, I believe, who told me that he can never sit through an entire concert...
...So he said, "Well, where were they born...
...Obviously not entirely, you can't...
...My grandfather, whom I used to visit in Bukovina, in Czernowitcz, when I was six, and seven, and eight, almost every summer, was a very irreverent person...
...A human being can rise up from a brothel bed and commit the finest, noblest deed and think the finest, noblest thoughts...
...Everybody needs royalty, no matter what you call it— president, king, whatever...
...We work and live on several levels, after all...
...But the law in Great Britain says that anything given as a gift within five years of demise is exempt from the inheritance taxes...
...That was in '46 and I finished that in about a year and a bit...
...In my case it was mostly an amalgamation, a marriage of things that I admired in my upbringing, and things that I've dissented from...
...There are periods when it is faddish and fashionable to keep the Jewish flag flying, but it's not as real, genuine or meaningful, I'm afraid, as it is in the general sector...
...He was irreverent at the same time that he was deeply religious...
...And Maugham wrote back, a very short note...
...Even in London, where I was not singing at all professionally, everybody knew I sang...
...We have here in Hollywood the Performing Arts Synagogue, and sometimes when I get stuck here during the High Holidays I go, and it's interesting, I meet anybody from Walter Matthau to Henry Winkler to lesser known actors...
...in fact, we got a standing ovation...
...Maybe he should start with the burning bush...
...This got absolutely no reaction at all from the audience, and I turned around to the rest of the cast and went "bzzzzzz...
...Then it became Greater Austria, which it stayed until 1919...
...And in 1947, after the Second World war, it reverted to Russia again, which is what it is now...
...And I said, "You know, bzzzzzz— for WASP...
...It was just the right time, folksing-ing was coming in...
...It had to be examined, and that which I found useful and palatable for me had to be retained, refined, honed, whatever...
...How often do you get to Israel...
...I wanted to take Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary, an Egyptian music group, an Israeli group, and to have a concert jointly narrated by Omar Sharif and myself...
...Sometimes with dignity...
...It's not all that terrible, though...
...Zorba is not lacking in sophistication...
...A man whose madness is so intensely unmad, normal, that the rest of the world pales by comparison...
...Is that so for you...
...Zorba the Greek is somebody who I am not...
...The first professional role I ever played, incidentally, was as the Constable in a play called Tevye the Milkman, and I had twenty-nine words to say...
...There's a leak here, a hole there—you run with rubber bands, glue, whatever's handy...
...Pulling, pushing, we still couldn't get near the table where Rebbe sat...
...I'm sure it must be terrible though for Paul Newman, or Farrah Fawcett, because there, they grab, they touch...
...I went for less time than that for the funeral...
...It's not oppressive for me...
...So I said to the sargeant, "What does ethnic origin mean...
...He is more learned than he lets on...
...No such thing...
...I remember my grandfather taking me to the Vishnitzer Rebbe, a Chassidic court, which was packed like sardines...
...By the way, his Hebrew is terrific...
...I get enthusiastic and fired up with a lot of good feelings about the Jewish community, in its organized sense, and then I'm dismayed and disheartened by the fact that it's plus ca change, plus c'est la tneme chose, and back to business, and that people are more interested in the organization-perpetuating devices of membership drives, wall-to-wall carpets and all the outward trappings of organizational life, rather than the inner core of conviction, which is unrelated to dues, to membership...
...You live with it or you don't live with it...
...with your history, I'm sure you've already started digging a tunnel!'" Are Jewish audiences different from other audiences...
...And in fact I put this idea to Madame Sadat, the day after the peace signing, and while she didn't quite know who some of these people were, the idea was accepted rather nicely, and the Egyptian embassy knew very well what I was talking about...
...But you can...
...I'll tell you a tangential story...
...I needed training, and also the assurance of talent...
...Can you imagine doing it in a place where you have to import not only,the performers but also the audience...
...Now I'm trying to put together a peace concert...
...But those are people who were dedicated and devoted all along, mostly...
...I had the misfortune of being at one performance when you were doing Tevye in a tent in Massachusetts, and the thunder was so loud that it destroyed the performance, and you simply narrated the play...
...And I said, "No, it says over here 'father's birthplace, mother's birthplace.' It can't mean that...
...I know of no actor with the exception of Steve Hill who attempted to be an Orthodox Jew, and made it stick...
...I didn't buy it all lock, stock and barrel...
...It's an interesting service, although it's a little show biz: When the rabbi says "Our beloved cantor, who won an Emmy yesterday...
...I get a lot of that, I do get a lot of that...
...So I made a tape, mostly Israeli songs, and then he went around playing it to all kinds of people who'd never seen me, and came back and said, "Hey, they liked it very much, let's make a record...
...We're willing to draw up the document for an outright gift to your daughter...
...I'm not that unencumbered...
...It's from the talk shows...
...Unless there's a war, or some other disaster...
...I have also read King Lear...
...Still, I do know some people in the theater, and in films, who are very dedicated, very devoted...
...He has to come after it starts, and leave before the end...
...Because it's easy to join, it's easy to pay 200 bucks a year, and then not do much, or to get the literature and throw it in the basket...
...Agriculture...
...Finally, in a loud voice, my grandfather said, "Ach, ich hob im in der erd"—"to hell with him...
...Sometimes he would stop, for a long time, saying his daily prayers...
...But in America we live in a society that won't tolerate your being able to do anything well without forcing you to accept money for it, and calling it a career...
...The inheritance laws such as they are, some 90 percent will be forfeited in inheritance taxes, which is a terrible sum...
...Is it the Bike) family...
...In America we don't think so much of leaders, who are far more temporary here than they are in other political set-ups...
...Lear, of course...
...Let's talk about where you've been— tell us a bit of biography...
...He lays down his pen on Friday afternoon and doesn't pick it up until Saturday night when the stars begin to shine...
...Do your Jewish colleagues in the industry regard you as a freak...
...The King of England was sick and I saw people kneeling down on the pavement outside Buckingham Palace and praying for his health...
...I went down to the Los Angeles Police Department, and among the questions it asked was "ethnic origin...
...And Steve Hill lost his career...
...Usually once a year...
...and that the Philharmonic was going to play...
...And I said, "Yes, wonderful picture, 'My Father's Tallis.'" What else do you want to talk about...
...It's now Russia...
...So I left, and together with a few other actors founded the Chamber Theater, the Cameri, as it's called—which still exists...
...Do Jewish audiences relate to Tevye differently...
...Whenever Jewish organizations bemoan the fact, they are assuaged by membership drives that draw young people into the circle of their particular organization, forgetting that some of the young people who choose for one reason or another to remain outside are more valuable to the Jewish community in terms of their own thinking, their own Jewishness, than those who join...
...He said "We were there for days and days...
...No privacy, no way to blend with the scenery...
...Then we stopped at a light, and a car stopped beside us, and called out, "Was there a screening tonight...
...Dear Lord Maugham, You are getting on in years and you know that your daughter is your only heir...
...I left the kibbutz when I joined the Habima theater as a student actor...
...I came to America in '54, played my role on Broadway, in a not terribly distinguished play called "A Night in Samarkand...
...I've offered to make him a potpourri, I have other recordings of it...
...And those 29 words were held up to me as the pinnacle of aspiration, because nobody had ever been at the Habima Theater so short a time and been given words to say...
...They peg me & Super-Jew, replete with cape and flying yarmulka...
...he maintains that anything you own owns you...
...Sometimes I ad lib a word or two in Fiddler...
...It's tough, because everybody wants to get into the act, and I lose interest when that happens because there's all those cocka-mamy schemes...
...I sent everybody off stage, I grabbed the microphone from the orchestra pit, and I proceeded to tell the audience the rest of the play, everything, singing the songs all by myself, and telling them the story...
...All right, let's talk about your interactions with the organized Jewish community, and what you perceive over these last years as interesting changes and interesting gaps that still remain...
...You have to come to terms with your own Jewishness on several levels...
...So I left, and went to study at the Royal Academy of the Dramatic Arts...
...In England it wasn't thought of as a career, and it wasn't...
...On Rosh Hashanah, I read...
...My civil libertarian instinct tells me that that is not a kosher question...
...I can't play stupid games with myself, saying I really do observe the rules, there are just occasional lapses...
...I don't know who alive deserves that merit, but...
...Show business is a little more faddist than the rest of the country today...
...At the end of a concert, it takes me longer to get out of a concert hall, people come back stage and want to chat, or get an autograph, or both...
...No, he wants Bikel...
...I used to sing at parties—and I was going then to as many parties in one week as I now go to in a whole year, which is about eight...
...Sinai...
...In the entertainment field, in show business, in rock-and-roll, in movies...
...Now they no longer ask it, but in those days, they did, back in 1957...
...I think my general devotion to causes is closely related to Jewish commitment...
...At first I intensely envied him...
...And the significance would not escape him...
...First, of course, there's Tevye, which is obviously very close to me—much of Tevye is my grandfather, who was a kind of Tevye-esque character...
...And both sides are human—in fact I distrust those people of whom only the nobility is known...
...Sinai...
...He's usually very good for festivities...
...Second, I can even play bad Nazis convincingly...
...It took me some time to discover that while the societal aspects of the kibbutz wer,e very much to my liking, I had absolutely no aptitude for the work...
...As far as I know, I was the first one who had the notion...
...Sometimes...
...Sometimes, though, a human being is a result of rebellion against upbringing...
...There are certain things that are there because they are correct, and authentic, and yet are not explained—because one shouldn't have to explain everything one does on stage, any more than you do in an Italian, a French, a Japanese film...
...I rarely perform there, by the way, on the theory that there's no prophet who's a prophet in his home country or his home town...
...Once a musician banged the cymbals, right in my ear, and I said "mamzer...
...His freedom and joie de vivre...
...But at a party, a man by the name of Jack Holtzman, who had a label called Elektra Records, heard me sing, and he came to me and said, "Listen, I don't know how much what you do is visual—one is impressed by the totality of what you are—I don't know if it will work just listening to you—but would you be willing to make a tape...
...No, I had no problems...
...At the Treaty of Versailles, it became Rumania...
...I walk outside and sign six or eight autographs, big deal...
...Royalty without dignity...
...One would have to lie to say that it doesn't feed a certain ego-trip, and you have to live with it because it's part of the territory—if you wanted to be obscure you would have become an accountant...
...Well, the other day I asked Zubin Mehta if he knew anything about it, because everyone said that Zubin was involved in this...
...Probably...
...A general humanitarian commitment is a commitment to Tikun Qlam, the perfection of the world.'It doesn't say just the Jewish world...
...I find that with the passage of years, I've developed the self-image of an instant sage...
...And he said "Well, it means where were your folks born...
...There is more knowledge there, not just street knowledge...
...Since I've known you, twenty-five years now, you've been politically involved, both in general stuff—civil rights and so forth—and in Jewish activities...
...I was in Vienna, and my grandfather lived in what was known as Bukovina, which was a place that changed hands a lot...
...Once a promoter wanted to put on some concerts with me in Israel and I said forget it, it's not worth it, and I quoted that line about prophets, and he said, "Why, there's a lot of profit in it...
...I always sang, for my own amusement, for my friends, family, whatever...
...Tevye is very close to me because he is very much of what I am and what I was...
...Is it Vienna and Israel...
...You see, with other stars, there's usually some buxom blond-haired girl who tries to entice them...
...So I'm among the grand-uncles of folk music...
...They say that an actor always dreams of one particular role, which he hasn't played and quite likely won't...
...Tikun is really repair...
...But Zorba's sense of oneness with the elements, to take such joy from a glass of wine, from contact with a beautiful human being, male or female—if male, then the contact is through colloquy, if it's female, the contact is tactile as well—and to have it as if it were the only time, certainly the first time it ever happened in your life, the only time it ever mattered—that's Zorba...
...Dear Sirs, I have read your letter with keen interest...
...He just chooses to be a nature boy...
...Give me a topic, and I'm knowledgeable...
...When I came to America, I came as an actor...
...I see people by the thousands to this day filing by the tomb of Lenin, seeing his embalmed face under the glass, and shedding tears...
...It was the first coffee house of its kind, tuxedos mixed with sandals and beards—we called it the Unicorn 'cause there ain't no such thing—and so we asked for a beer and wine license, and for such a license you've got to establish your bona fides, that you're a person of probity and rectitude, so you fill out a lot of forms...
...There's a psychological need for celebrities...
...get people who offer me chicken soup...
...So people have to go in buses and look at the stars' homes, even though some of them haven't been stars' homes for a long time: "That's where Gene Kelly used to live, where Jean Harlow used to live...
...Very few of them have come to it by way of being ba'alei tshuvah...
...that's not where I come from, that's somebody whom I at first didn't quite understand...
...When did the singing start...
...I once had a coffee house here in Southern California, called the Unicorn...
...So it's a short question with a - long answer...
...That would be like identifying your favorite song, or asking somebody with ten children which one he loves most—and asking it in front of them...
...One day, at the end of one such period—it may have lasted as long as two years—the family comes into the living room, and there he is, with his t'fillin on his arm and head, praying...
...Even the younger people...
...It's a combination of all of these things, a result of a great many influences, and upbringing has a lot to do with it...
...Perfection is a bit much...
...Do you see, in the Jews in the business, the same kind of shift that one perceives in other areas of Jewish life: a trend among the younger people to take their Jewishness more seriously...
...Do they hear different things...
...There were lots of places where you could walk around, but it was like an armed camp, and I said to Dr...
...And to do it in Cairo and Jerusalem, flipping a coin for which one first, so that no one should be offended...
...But if you were to ask me what role has had the most profound influence on me, rather than the other way around, I would have to say Zorba...
...It was a funny thing, a year and a half ago at Yom Kippur, Walter Matthau read a piece, and as we were filing out, he said to me, "How come you didn't read...
...This is not an obscure business, you're in the public eye, you start worrying when they no longer ask for your autograph...
...And then I was offered roles in London, and I played a great variety of roles...
...A wonderful anecdote: Somerset Maugham got a letter when he was in his eighties, living in the south of France, from his daughter's solicitors...
...Yes...
...You couldn't get through the crowd...
...Zorba, for example, refuses to own anything...
...That marvelous program that we see on television every few years of your seder, which has become a teaching tool— that sort of thing is obviously very close to you...
...And I worked there for a couple of years, until I realized that this was all backwards, because rather than jump into fully-fledged theatrical life, I first had to assure myself of my talent against world standards...
...Before 1870, it was Russia...
...I mean, I get young people who tell me that their entire Jewish world they've gotten through my songs...
...So what does 'ethnic origin' mean...
...He's asked me to make a tape, a half hour of just that song, over and over...
...Necessary...
...And what are the personal costs of celebrity...
...Did you hear, by the way, what he said when he came out of Camp David...
...So I said, "Bukovina...
...I was born in Vienna, left Vienna— "left" is a euphemism—was caused to leave—in 1938, and went to Palestine...
...But before we left, my grandfather gave the two bottles to one of the Rebbe's people and said, "These are for the Rebbe...
...They were excited and the Israelis were excited...
...And in the middle of his prayers, without breaking his rhythm, he raises his eyes and murmurs, "Maybe this will help...
...And we turned to leave...
...First, Heinie was actually a good guy...
...I got a small role and the understudy to both male leads in "Streetcar Named Desire...
...That's also Tevye...
...Otherwise you can play silly games...
...You've done a lot of Jewish stuff independent of causes...
...With all due respect for the man's talent, of course...
...He said, Naah, lo hayah v'lo nivra...
...What accounts for the public's need for celebrities...
...I find it as boring as a farmer would find my work, when I do the same performance eight times a week...
...To a place where there are no facilities, and the security is impossible...
...Ethnic origin is a question the answer to which can be held against you—or for you, for that matter—but in either case, it is not appropriate, it's not a permissible question...
...Talk about young people not being part of Jewish life, for example...
...I very .often feel like a yoyo...
...I am, as you know, intensely Jewish, and convinced of my heritage as being something extraordinarily valuable...
...So suddenly I had a second career on my hands...
...It was a little before, we're talking about '55, '56, it was only the Weavers then...
...I've always preferred as a translation of "tikun" the more accurate word "repair...
...He died when I was about eight, the age of my own youngest boy...
...The play ran for about two and a half months, but I had terrific reviews, the critics wrote wonderful things about me, and in the meantime, I really fell in love with America...
...It takes a virgin to play a whore...
...This past year I've been there three times, because my father was very ill, and finally passed away...
...You're quite right...
...I don't separate the two...
...I don't keep the two apart...
...I figured, at that rate it will be 20 years to get to roles of consequence...
...MOMENT INTERVIEW THEO BIKEL moment: Why don't we start with an obvious question—of all the roles you've played, what's been your favorite...
...Now that's a Tevye-ism...
...Yes, your version of Karev Yom is my father's favorite song...
...It would be interesting to see people like Bob Dylan and Joan Baeztt a concert like that...
...At the same time, I cannot pretend to be a traditionalist in Jewish terms, in religious terms, in light of the fact that I neglect certain observances...
...Do you think Prime Minister Begin would attend...
...He said, "Where's that...
...I had to come in and announce to Tevye that he had to leave, it was an edict by the Czar...
...And my grandfather, who wouldn't come to such a place empty-handed, had brought two bottles of brandy as a present for the Rebbe...
...Michael Redgrave saw me in a play and told Laurence Olivier about me, and Laurence Olivier asked to see me...
...Some can't go in public places, period...
...that would be terrible...
...What pointed you in these directions...
...I admired him, and then, finally, I emulated him...
...Did it cause you problems playing a German role, as in The Enemy Below...
...Forgive me, but there are worse aspects than the facilities and the audience and the security...
...The singing...
...And they were all astonished, and just stood there and watched...
...I do see these people from time to time...
...Some do...
...I know them better...
Vol. 4 • September 1979 • No. 8
