Lou Jacobi, the mustachioed, scene-stealing Canadian-born actor and comedian who made a film and stage career playing comic ethnic characters but was lauded for serious dramatic roles as well, died Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 95.
Jacobi made his Broadway debut in 1955 in The Diary of Anne Frank, playing a less-than-noble occupant of the Amsterdam attic where the Franks were hiding, and reprised the role in the 1959 film version. When Bosley Crowther, reviewing the movie in The New York Times, described Jacobi as "irksomely sluggish and pathetically lax as the weakling Van Daan," it was high praise.
As his career continued in New York and Hollywood, spanning five decades, Jacobi became accustomed to favorable reviews, mostly in comic roles and often when the film or play itself was less than warmly received.
When he starred in the short-lived Broadway comedy Norman, Is That You? in 1970, Clive Barnes of the Times did not care for the play, but took time to wax rhapsodic about Jacobi and his character. "Mr. Jacobi is a very funny actor who hardly needs lines to make his point," Barnes wrote. He added: "He has a face of sublime weariness and the manner of a man who has seen everything, done nothing and is now only worried about his heartburn."
The 10 Broadway plays Jacobi appeared in also included Paddy Chayefsky's Tenth Man (1959); Woody Allen's Don't Drink the Water (1966); and Neil Simon's Come Blow Your Horn (1961).
Jacobi also made 24 feature films. His supporting roles included the philosophical bartender in Irma La Douce (1963), the young hero's unsophisticated uncle in My Favorite Year (1982), a lucky florist in the Dudley Moore comedy Arthur (1981) and a middle-aged transvestite who gets caught with his hostess's clothes on in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (1972). In Barry Levinson's Avalon (1990), he played a dramatic role, one of four Russian brothers trying to build a future in Baltimore in the early 20th century.
Louis Harold Jacobovitch was born on Dec. 28, 1913, in Toronto. He began acting as a boy, making his stage debut in 1924 at a Toronto theater, playing a violin prodigy in The Rabbi and the Priest. He did play the violin, then and for most of his life.
In London, Jacobi appeared in shows including the American musicals Guys and Dolls and Pal Joey, and was part of a command performance at the London Palladium in 1952.
He made his film debut in Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary? (1953), a black-and-white British comedy with the country's blond sex symbol of the moment, Diana Dors.
In the United States, he began making guest appearances on a variety of television series, ranging from Playhouse 90 to The Man From UNCLE to That Girl, and continued to appear on series and in television movies until he was in his late 70s.
In the summer of 1976, he was the star of a CBS comedy series, Ivan the Terrible, in which he played a Russian headwaiter living with nine other people in a small Moscow apartment. He was a regular on The Dean Martin Show on NBC for two seasons in the early 1970s.
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