Jerry Orbach dies

[Mog]

Jerry Orbach, the stage actor who became best known for his long-running role on TV's Law & Order, died Tuesday night after several weeks of treatment for prostate cancer; he was 69. Orbach was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year just as he had started production on the Law & Order franchise's fourth series, Law & Order: Trial by Jury, slated for broadcast in early 2005. The Bronx-born actor initially found fame on the stage, starring as the narrator in the soon-to-be long-running The Fantasticks, and then going on to star in a number of big-budget musicals for Broadway producer David Merrick. Winning a Tony award for Promises, Promises (based on the movie The Apartment), Orbach also created roles in the legendary musicals Chicago in 1975 and 42nd Street in 1980. His onscreen career, in both TV and film, started with low-key character parts, but he rose to prominence in the 80s with roles in movies such as Prince of the City, Crimes and Misdemeanors, F/X, and Dirty Dancing, in which he played the supportive father of Jennifer Grey's Baby. Orbach also provided the voice for the singing candelabra Lumiere in Disney's Beauty and the Beast, in which he sang the show-stopping "Be Our Guest" number. It was his 12-year stint as street-smart New York detective Lennie Briscoe on Law & Order, however, that would become his signature role and make him an instantly recognizable face to millions of viewers. Joining the show in its third season, he received an Emmy nomination for the part in 2000 and became the actor most readily associated with the hit New York-based show, so much so that the city of New York declared him a "living landmark" in 2002. Orbach is survived by his second wife, Elaine (whom he met while doing Chicago and married in 1979), and two sons, Chris Orbach and Tony Orbach, from his first marriage.

[Roobunny]

RIP Jerry - thanks for the superb Lennie Briscoe memories :(

[SydneyBomber]

:(

Sad news. RIP Lennie Briscoe

[viccles]

Aww thats so sad :( he was an excellent actor in Law and Order. RIP

[JUBJUB]

He was one of the best TV cops.Sad to hear he's gone.

[sandeano]

That is very sad news. Although I had become a little tired of the formulaic pattern of Law & Order, I still watched the original series mostly for Briscoe alone.

In a way I am almost shocked he has gone, as he was like a piece of old furniture that you sort of expected would be around forever. His face like a crumpled paper bag, gruff yet smooth voice and cynical smile and delivery made him a figure you could trust and sorta believe in. To my mind, as has been said here already, he was one of the best ever TV cops.

You always felt comfortable with Lenny Briscoe and with Jerry Orbach you knew that you could rely on him for a decent night's entertainment. Considering how fleeting TV fame is these days, for him to have provided such sturdiness for over a decade in the one show is a remarkable achievement.

Farewell Jerry and goodnight Lenny and thank you.

[sandeano]

Here is a nice piece from the New York Times which gives some interesting background to his Broadway and musical career. It is long, but worth a read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/29/arts/29cnd-orba.html?hp&ex=1104382800&en=473043d338c9dfe0&ei=5094&partner=homepage

December 29, 2004
Jerry Orbach, Star of 'Law and Order,' Dies at 69
By BEN BRANTLEY and RICHARD SEVERO

Jerry Orbach - who won fame on the New York stage as one of the last bona fide leading men of the Broadway musical and global celebrity on television as a New York detective on NBC's "Law & Order" - died on Tuesday night. He was 69.

The cause was prostate cancer, according to his agent, Robert Malcom.

In performances that spanned half a century, the Bronx-born Mr. Orbach came to embody two beloved New York archetypes: the musical matinee idol, to which he gave a refreshingly modern spin with his rugged and idiosyncratic persona, and the shrewd, irascible cop, a role he honed to a razor's edge as Detective Lennie Briscoe on "Law & Order."

After playing that role for 12 seasons, Mr. Orbach left the show at the end of last season with plans to star in "Trial by Jury," a spinoff that is scheduled to have its debut on NBC in the spring. His illness, which he first disclosed earlier this month, figured in the switch; ******** Wolf, the creator of the "Law & Order" programs, said the new program, on which Mr. Orbach was to appear only occasionally, was less taxing.

Whether singing "Try To Remember" as the dashing narrator of "The Fantasticks" in 1960 or trading barbs with fellow detectives and reluctant witnesses on television in recent years, Mr. Orbach exuded a wry, ragged masculinity that was all his own. As a star of musicals, he created a new kind of hero who was leagues away from suave, swaggering Adonises like John Raitt, Howard Keel and Alfred Drake (though like them, he sang in a resonant baritone). And he flourished at a time when the Broadway musical hero was fast becoming an endangered species.

In shows like "Promises, Promises," Neil Simon and Burt Bacharach's 1968 adaptation of the movie "The Apartment," and "42nd Street" in 1981, Mr. Orbach registered as a musical answer to the shaggier leading men who had begun to emerge on American movie screens, actors like Dustin Hoffman and Jack Nicholson. His rough-edged individuality may account for his endurance on the Broadway stage in an era when other promising musical actors - including Larry Kert, Robert Goulet and Robert Morse - proved unable to follow through on their breakthrough successes.

Mr. Orbach may indeed have been the last of a breed: no male star since has matched the breadth and continuity of his career in musicals. Though he originated the part of the corrupt, silver-tongued lawyer Billy Flynn in Bob Fosse's 1975 production of the musical "Chicago," Mr. Orbach was at his best as a tough cookie with a melting center.

Writing in The New York Times of "Promises, Promises," the critic Clive Barnes said of Mr. Orbach's portrayal of the haplessly ambitious, morally bewildered hero: "He makes gangle into a verb because that is just what he does. He gangles. He also sings most effectively, dances most occasionally, and acts with an engaging and perfectly controlled sense of desperation."

Yet he was equally persuasive in 1981 as the dictatorial director in David Merrick's Broadway version of the movie "42nd Street," in which he managed to instill new vitality into the hoariest of show-biz clichés. When, at the conclusion of the show's opening night performance, Merrick shocked the audience and cast by announcing that its director, Gower Champion, had died, it was Mr. Orbach who had the taste and authority to request that the curtain come down.

Mr.. Orbach's other important roles on stage included Mack the Knife in the landmark off-Broadway production of "The Threepenny Opera" in the late 1950's and El Gallo, the benevolently interactive narrator in "The Fantasticks," which was staged at the Sullivan Street Playhouse in 1960 and went on to become the longest-running musical in New York. Walter Kerr, writing about that performance in The New York Herald Tribune, said, "Mr. Orbach is no doubt on his way."

He also appeared as the misanthropic puppeteer in "Carnival" in 1961 and was nominated for a Tony award for playing Sky Masterson in the 1965 revival of "Guys and Dolls." He won the Tony for best actor in a musical for "Promises, Promises."

His film work was less gratifying, though he appeared to good advantage as Gus Levy in "Prince of the City," Sidney Lumet's biting 1981 movie about corruption in the New York City Police Department, and as Jack Rosenthal in Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors" in 1989. (His work in film also led to an unlikely friendship with the mobster Joey Gallo, after Mr. Orbach portrayed a character modeled on Gallo in the 1971 movie "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight.")

It wasn't until the 1990's, when he started appearing as Lennie Briscoe in "Law and Order," that Mr. Orbach became a familiar name throughout the country. The rough edge that distinguished him on Broadway eased his transition to character roles like Briscoe, the recovering alcoholic who seemed to greet the discovery of each episode's crime with a world-weary shrug.

Mr. Orbach died at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, said Esther Carver, a spokeswoman for the hospital.

Jerome Bernard Orbach was born in the Bronx on Oct. 20, 1935, the only child of Leon Orbach, a restaurant manager with some experience in vaudeville, and the former Emily Olexy.

The Orbachs moved to Waukegan, Ill., when Jerome was in the seventh grade. In 1952, after graduating from Waukegan High School, where he was on the football and swimming teams, he enrolled at the University of Illinois but stayed only a year. He transferred to Northwestern, where he studied drama. He remained there until 1955 but left without earning a degree.

Mr. Orbach did menial work for stock companies before being awarded small parts; later, he said that the stock experience helped him control his voice and "not to do too much with my eyebrows."

In 1955, Mr. Orbach headed to New York and found a job almost immediately as the understudy for the role of the Street Singer in an acclaimed off-Broadway production of "The Threepenny Opera." He remained with the company for three years, eventually taking on Scott Merrill's role of Mack the Knife. He studied acting with Herbert Berghof, Mira Rostova and Lee Strasberg and took singing lessons with Hazel Schweppe. After leaving "Threepenny" in 1959, he worked with stock companies in Ohio, appearing in "Mr. Roberts," "The King and I" and "Harvey."

But it was the now fabled "Fantasticks," which opened at the Sullivan Street Playhouse on May 3, 1960, that established Mr. Orbach as a star. Soon after, he moved on to Broadway in "Carnival" Frances Herridge, writing in the Mirror, called him a "rare combination of powerful male actor and singer." She continued, "Once you've seen him, you're not likely to forget him."

Mr. Orbach remained busy with varied stage work in New York: "The Cradle Will Rock" (1964), revivals of "Carousel" and "Annie Get Your Gun" in the mid-1960's; Bruce Jay Freidman's comedy of neurosis "Scuba Duba" (1967) and "6 Rms Riv Vu" (1972), among others. His films include "Brewster's Millions" (1985); "Dirty Dancing"(1987); "Last Exit to Brooklyn" (1989); and "The Adventures of a Gnome Called Gnorm" (1993). On television, he appeared on "The Shari Lewis Show," "The Jack Paar Show," "The Nurses" and "Bob Hope Presents."

Mr. Orbach married Marta Curro in 1958. They were divorced in 1975. In 1979, he married Elaine Cancialla, who survives him. He is also survived by his two sons by his first marriage, Anthony, of New Jersey, and Christopher, of Manhattan, and two grandchildren.

After appearing in "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight," Mr. Orbach received a call from Gallo. "A cop that he knew had met us and told him that he'd met the guy who supposedly played him in the movie, that he was a nice guy, not like an actor," Marta Orbach recalled shortly after Gallo was gunned down in 1972. Through the Orbachs, Gallo briefly became one of the stranger fixtures of the show-biz social scene in Manhattan and was working on a memoir with Marta Orbach at the time of his death. Gallo lived in the Orbachs' Chelsea brownstone for a month and was married there a month before his murder.

With his portrayal of Lennie Briscoe on "Law and Order," Mr. Orbach achieved a worldwide fame that had previously eluded him. He became the face and frame of a typical New York cop, and the police liked what they saw. Mr. Orbach took the role seriously, so much so that he appeared in 2001 at a demonstration where police demanded higher wages from the Giuliani administration.

"All I can do is try and represent you guys on a TV screen and make you look as good as I can," Mr. Orbach was quoted as saying in Newsday. "I could never go out and not know if I'm coming home that night the way you do."


Carla Baranauckas contributed reporting for this article.

[snap-shot]

When I first read that this morning, my heart sank. I've always been a big fan of Law and Order - all styles, but nothing went past Jerry Orbach's character. When he said he was leaving the show I was already sadden, now that he has passed - can't get any sadder than that.

All the best to his family/crew R.I.P Jerry thanks for the laughs/style you brought to Law and Order.

[Sports Capital]

Ouch. That was unexpected and a sad blow. RIP Lenny.........I mean Jerry.

[Contra Mundum]

Poor Lenny is there anyone that played the cynical and wise cop better than him. RIP Lenny

[Roobunny]

I was actually trying to decide last night (for some unknown reason) if I preferred the cynicism of Briscoe or Munch from SVU... I couldn't reach a conclusion!

[tashibatts]

Very sad.. didn't watch L&O as much as I watch SVU .. but Lennie was always a good character.


RIP Jerry:(

Go Roos

[thetigerman]

Poor Lenny is there anyone that played the cynical and wise cop better than him. RIP Lenny

He was the best tv cop ever !

Vale .. JERRY ORBACH -- you'll be forever LENNY BRISCOE
I'll miss you old fella RIP

[TheGnu]

NOT LENNY!!

Briscoe's one-liners were top shelf...this is sad news.

[Karbassiyoon]

quality actor and an integral part of law and order, RIP, thanks for the memories

[35eye]

Patrick Swayze's line to Jerry's character in Dirty Dancing went down in history, "Nobody puts Baby in the corner..."

That's how I will remember him.

RIP

[Ron]

:( :(

[Sinn]

Sad to hear, I liked him in Law and Order.

[tiger of old]

Im in shock.Jerry will go down as one of the legends in the TV for his role as a New York cop Lenny Briscoe.
A sad day for the entertainment industry.
One big loss.
R.I.P.Jerry

[The_Flying_Egg]

This sucks :(

He played the best character in one of the best shows ever

[sherb]

I was watching an episode of L & O on Foxtel last night, which was from season 2. In it, Jerry Orbach played the lawyer for the accused. It was surprising to see him in L & O playing a different role prior to joining the regular cast (which happened the following season).

S. Epatha Merkerson also appeared in an early episode of the show in a different role too.

[JUBJUB]

I was watching an episode of L & O on Foxtel last night, which was from season 2. In it, Jerry Orbach played the lawyer for the accused. It was surprising to see him in L & O playing a different role prior to joining the regular cast (which happened the following season).

S. Epatha Merkerson also appeared in an early episode of the show in a different role too.

I remember those episodes.
Ice-T,from L&O SVU,played a crook in the L&O movie called Exiled.

A lot of the cops in The Bill have played crims or victims of crime in earlier episodes of The Bill.Some with in 6 months of joining the show.

[Sports Capital]

Would've been the final audition. Probably a lot of the crims on shows like The Bill and the L&O Series are people auditioning for permanent roles.