Orbach, Jerome Bernard (“Jerry”)

(b. 20 October 1935 in New York City; d. 28 December 2004 in New York City), star of musical theater and dramatic television who was known in his later years for his starring role on the television program Law and Order.

Orbach was born in the Bronx, New York City. His parents were rooted in show business. He was the only child of Leon Orbach, a restaurant manager who had worked in vaudeville, and Emily (Olexy) Orbach, who occasionally sang on radio programs. During his youth Orbach and his parents frequently relocated. In the late 1940s they settled in Waukegan, Illinois. While Orbach was attending Waukegan High School, his drama teacher secured him a slot as an apprentice at the Chevy Chase Tent Theatre in Wheeling, Illinois. It was there that Orbach made his professional acting debut, as the typewriter man in Room Service.

Orbach graduated from high school in 1952, attended the University of Illinois for a year, and studied drama at Northwestern University for two years. The actors he most admired were Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift, who were winning acclaim playing rebel heroes in the movies. Orbach was determined to break into film but realized that he lacked the looks and magnetism needed for the big screen. He switched his priorities to the theater and left school eager to launch his career.

In 1955 Orbach appeared in summer stock productions of The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (1954) and Picnic (1953) at the Gristmill Playhouse in Andover, New Jersey. He then crossed the river to New York City and won a job understudying the role of the street singer in an off-Broadway revival of The Threepenny Opera. In due course Orbach was awarded the lead role of Macheath and stayed with the production until 1959. During this period he took method acting classes with Lee Strasberg, Herbert Berghof, and Mira Rostova and studied singing with Mazel Schweppe. When he ended his stint with The Threepenny Opera, Orbach returned to stock theater, completing a season in Ohio in productions of Harvey, Mister Roberts, Guys and Dolls, The Student Prince, and The King and I.

On 21 June 1958, while appearing in The Threepenny Opera, Orbach married a fellow cast member, Marta Curro. They had two children and divorced in 1975. Also during this period Orbach made his film debut in Cop Hater (1958), a low-budget crime film in which he played a street-gang leader. Orbach was cast as another criminal type in Mad Dog Coll (1961). Neither performance boded well for a sustained screen career.

In 1960 Orbach originated the role that made him a star. He played El Gallo, the suave narrator of The Fantasticks, the off-Broadway musical by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt that played for a record-breaking 17,162 performances before closing in 2002. As El Gallo, Orbach, in a booming baritone, sang, “Try to Remember,” an evocative ode that became the show’s signature number. Beginning with The Fantasticks, Orbach created a different stage musical hero. Unlike traditionally good-looking types such as John Raitt and Howard Keel, Orbach radiated a rough, sardonic manliness, a trait that served him well throughout his career. In this regard Orbach’s leading-man status paralleled the emergence of character actors such as Dustin Hoffman, Walter Matthau, and George C. Scott as movie stars.

After leaving The Fantasticks, Orbach moved to Broadway. In 1961 he made his debut playing a disillusioned puppeteer in Carnival!, an adaptation of the film musical Lili (1953). Richard L. Coe, writing in the Washington Post during the pre-Broadway run of the show, captured the essence of Orbach’s talent when he observed, “It is a fine commanding performance, but what makes the difference is that Orbach can sing, which he does splendidly.”

In 1964 Orbach was cast as Foreman in an off-Broadway revival of The Cradle Will Rock. In 1965 he won a Tony Award nomination for Best Supporting or Featured Actor in a Musical for his portrayal of Sky Masterson in a City Center revival of Guys and Dolls. In 1965 and 1966 Orbach played Jigger Craigin and Charlie Davenport, respectively, in Lincoln Center productions of Carousel and Annie Get Your Gun. After touring as Tom in The Glass Menagerie, Orbach returned to Broadway for his lone flop: The Natural Look, a comedy-drama that opened and closed on 11 March 1967. Orbach fared better in Bruce Jay Friedman’s hit off-Broadway comedy Scuba Duba (1967), in which he starred as a liberal whose wife runs off with a black skin diver.

Orbach earned his sole Tony Award, as Best Actor in a Musical, for playing Chuck Baxter, the desperate, go-getting, ethically befuddled hero in Promises, Promises (1968), a musical adaptation of the Oscar-winning classic The Apartment (1960). In 1972 and 1973 Orbach acted in the comedy 6 Rms Riv Vu (1972) on Broadway and The Rose Tattoo in Philadelphia.

In the early 1970s Orbach was cast in what would be his only leading movie role, Kid Sally Palumbo in the gangster comedy The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight (1971). His meatiest parts still were on the stage. In 1975 he created the role of shady, smooth-talking lawyer Billy Flynn in the musical Chicago. His performance earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical. While appearing in Chicago, Orbach began dating the actress and dancer Elaine Cancilla, who had replaced Chita Rivera as his costar. The couple wed on 7 October 1979 and remained together until Orbach’s death.

After touring in Neil Simon’s Chapter Two (1977) from 1978 to 1979, Orbach returned to Broadway in 1980 to play the brusque, beleaguered theater director Julian Marsh in the stage adaptation of the classic Warner Bros. film musical 42nd Street (1933). It was his biggest Broadway hit. Orbach also started to win quality, albeit supporting, film roles. With his hangdog looks and well-worn stride, Orbach was at his best playing streetwise, quick-tempered cops and robbers who oozed New York City. In Prince of the City (1981), directed by Sidney Lumet, Orbach played Gus Levy, a tough cop. It was a pivotal role because it proved Orbach was a solid dramatic screen actor.

In F/X (1986) Orbach played a particularly nasty gangster, and in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), directed by Woody Allen, he played a hoodlum who volunteers to arrange the murder of his brother’s mistress. Other roles ranged from a protective father in Dirty Dancing (1989) to an agent in Mr. Saturday Night (1992), directed by Billy Crystal. Orbach also provided the voice of Lumiere the candelabra in the animated Beauty and the Beast (1991).

Orbach had a recurring role as Harry McGraw, a crafty but petulant private eye, on the television series Murder, She Wrote and starred in a brief spinoff series, The Law and Harry McGraw (1987–1988). He earned Emmy nominations for two other television appearances: a 1990 guest-starring role on The Golden Girls and a 1992 made-for-television revival of Neil Simon’s Broadway Bound (1986).

In 1991 during the second season of the hit television series Law and Order (1990–), Orbach guest-starred as the defense attorney Frank Lehrman in an episode titled “The Wages of Love.” The following year he became a Law andOrder regular, replacing Paul Sorvino, who had decided to leave the series. Orbach played Detective Lennie Briscoe, a sarcastic, perpetually scowling cop and recovering alcoholic who was famed for the one-line quips he delivered at crime scenes. The Briscoe character not only made Orbach one of the most familiar faces on American television but also earned him celebrity status worldwide. In his role as Briscoe, a characterization similar to his performance in Prince of the City, Orbach came to represent the archetypal New York City police officer and the New York City blue-collar type who fits snugly into the ambience of an ethnic neighborhood in Brooklyn or Queens or a Long Island suburb. In 2000 Orbach earned an Emmy nomination for playing Briscoe. Two years later the New York Landmarks Conservancy named Orbach a living landmark.

In March 2004, while filming episodes of the spinoff series Law and Order: Trial by Jury (2005), Orbach announced that he no longer would be playing Briscoe. He filmed his final scenes a month later. At the time he was battling prostate cancer and reportedly was so ill that he could only whisper his lines. In December 2004 Orbach’s manager, Robert Malcolm, announced Orbach’s condition. On 28 December 2004 Orbach died of prostate cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan. That evening the lights on Broadway theaters were dimmed for one minute at curtain time in his honor. Orbach is buried at Trinity Cemetery in Manhattan.

Had his career only encompassed the stage, Orbach would rate attention as a legendary off-Broadway and Broadway musical performer. From the 1960s to the 1980s he was one of the few legitimate leading actors in the American musical theater. In the 1990s Orbach became known to millions of television viewers in an altogether different realm of the entertainment industry, playing a sharp, gritty, quintessential New Yorker.

Orbach’s involvement with specific stage shows and television series is cited in Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, The Fantasticks: The Complete Illustrated Text Plus the Official Fantasticks Scrapbook and History of the Musical (2000); and Kevin Courrier and Susan Green, Law and Order: The Unofficial Companion (2000). A cogent assessment of Orbach’s career is Tom Shales, “A Star Is Gone: With Jerry Orbach’s Death, a Light Dims on Broadway and TV,” Washington Post (30 Dec. 2004). Obituaries are in the New York Times (29 Dec. 2004) and the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post (both 30 Dec. 2004).

Rob Edelman