BIKEL, THEODORE

Theodore Bikel, narrator

Folksinger; theater, film, and television actor; radio host; president of Actors’ Equity; political activist; Jewish spokesman, THEODORE BIKEL was born in 1924 in Vienna and was thirteen when his parents emigrated to Palestine. He joined the internationally famous Habima Theatre in 1943 as an apprentice actor, and a year later he became one of the cofounders of the Israeli Chamber Theatre (“Cameri”). In 1946 he entered London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, from which he graduated with honors two years later. Sir Laurence Olivier, impressed with his performance in several small London theater productions, offered him a role in his production of A Streetcar Named Desire, starring Vivien Leigh. Bikel soon took over the part of Mitch. Since then his career has flourished both on the stage and on the screen. In London he was acclaimed as the Russian Colonel in Ustinov’s The Love of Four Colonels, and on Broadway his long list of memorable performances includes Tonight in Samarkand, The Rope Dancers, The Lark, and the original production of The Sound of Music, in which he created the role of Baron von Trapp. In American national tours he has starred in Zorba and Fiddler on the Roof, playing the role of Tevye more than 1,600 times since 1967. 

Among Bikel’s most well known screen appearances are the Sheriff in The Defiant Ones (1958) - for which he received an Academy Award nomination as best supporting actor - and supporting roles in The African Queen (1951), The Little Kidnappers (1953), My Fair Lady (1964), The Blue Angel (1959), The Enemy Below (1957), The Dog of Flanders (1958), I Want to Live! (1958), The Russians Are Coming (1965), and The Little Ark (1970). Bikel’s American television career, spanning some thirty-five years, includes such characterizations as a Scottish policeman in Alfred Hitchcock Presents, a Mad Bomber, a South African Boer on the hunt in New York (Equalizer), Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Henry Kissinger in The Final Days, and the 1988 Emmywinning title role in PBS’s Harris Newmark. Bikel the celebrated and much-recorded folksinger made his concert debut at Carnegie Recital Hall in 1956 and has appeared every year since in concerts throughout North America, Europe, Israel, New Zealand, and Australia. He is also an accomplished translator of song lyrics and was a cofounder of the Newport Folk Festival.

Albums featuring this artist are available for download from ClassicsOnline.com
DIAMOND: Ahava / Music for Prayer	8.559412
HELFMAN: Di Naye Hagode	8.559440
JEWISH OPERAS, Vol. 2	8.559450
PSALMS OF JOY AND SORROW	8.559445
TOCH: Cantata of the Bitter Herbs / Jephta	8.559417