Fyvush Finkel

The wonderful Fyvush, born Philip Finkel, was born in 1922 at home in Brownsville, Brooklyn, the third of four sons of Jewish immigrant parents; Mary, who was a housewife from Minsk, Belarus, and Harry Finkel, who was a tailor from Warsaw, Poland.

Fyvush first appeared on the stage at the age of nine and would act for almost thirty-five years in the thriving Yiddish Theatre District on Manhattan's Lower East Side, as well as performing as a standup comic in the Catskills' Borscht Belt.

In 2008, he recalled:

"I played child parts till I was fourteen or fifteen, then my voice changed. So I decided to learn a trade and went to a vocational high school in New York. I studied to be a furrier, but I never worked at it. As soon as I graduated high school, I went to a stock company in Pittsburgh, to a Jewish theatre, and I played there for thirty-eight weeks, and that's where I actually learned my trade a little bit as an adult."

Most of us know dear Fyvush for his roles in two television programs, “Picket Fences” and “Boston Legal,” but he actually got started acting on the Yiddish stage, where he performed for twenty-five years, beginning in 1941.

Fyvush made his Broadway theatre debut in the original 1964 production of the musical Fiddler on the Roof, joining the cast as Mordcha, the innkeeper, in 1965. The production ran through July 2, 1972. Finkel then played Lazar Wolf, the butcher, in the limited run 1981 Broadway revival, and eventually played the lead role of Tevye the milkman for years in the national touring company.