Theodore Bikel

Born in 1924 in Vienna, Austria, multitalented Theodore Bikel lived in Palestine and London before immigrating to the United States. Performing in Broadway productions and Hollywood films, he won acclaim for his great versatility as an actor and his fluency in several languages, playing, for example, a German naval officer, a Scottish police officer, a Jewish refugee, the king of Serbia, and a Greek peanut vendor. In 1958 he was nominated for an Academy Award for the film The Defiant Ones, and he won an Emmy in 1988, for his portrayal of Harris Newmark. An accomplished musician, Bikel produced and sang on several albums of Jewish folk songs and co-founded the Newport Folk Festival in 1959. Updated 2012