Publicity still from The African Queen. Pictured is Bikel, left, with Bogart in the foreground.
Publicity still of Bikel, left, and Alan Arkin from The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!
Growing up in Austria, young Theo Bikel dreamt of performing. He would achieve that goal, and more.
“I was 19 when I first performed professionally on stage, and now I’m 90,” said Bikel from Los Angeles.
But that long career might never have happened, had his family not fled their homeland in 1938.
“That’s when the Germans took over, and Austria became a strange, alien, and solemn country,” said Bikel, who recalled being beaten up at school and chased through parks. “We went from consulate to consulate and embassy to embassy to find a country that would take us.”
Before fleeing to Palestine, 13-year-old Bikel glimpsed the face behind those dark days.
“We lived on a wide thoroughfare and saw the military march through with tanks,” he recalled. “One of the vehicles was an open limousine with Hitler riding in it, as it passed right by our home.”
Bikel moved to London in 1945, and the U.S. a decade later, becoming a successful actor, folk singer, author, and lecturer, but never forgot the childhood horror.
“It certainly influenced much of my life and my dedication to human and civil rights,” he said. “I cannot bear to see injustice of any kind.”
Bikel’s greatest professional stage success came in 1967 as Tevye, the milkman in “Fiddler on the Roof,” a character he portrayed for four decades in over 2,000 performances across North America.
Bikel’s book Theo An Autobiography. Provided by Bikel.
By then, his film career was also well underway, having begun in 1951 with his first screen appearance in “The African Queen” with Humphrey Bogart.
“All my scenes were filmed on a London studio back lot,” he recalled. “I would see (Bogart) sitting in the make-up chair in the morning mumbling lines to himself. Then, half an hour later, he was on the set giving a perfect full-blown performance.”
Bikel attended the 1959 Academy Awards after he and three other cast members were nominated for performances in “The Defiant Ones.” Was there anything memorable about the ceremony?
“Yes,” he replied, “I didn’t win!”
Another choice role came in 1964 when Bikel was cast as Hungarian phonetician Zoltan Karpathy in “My Fair Lady.”
“The director wanted someone with an impeccable accent and a lot of hair, so I qualified,” said Bikel. “I had to dance with Audrey Hepburn, so I insisted they give me ballroom dancing lessons – I wasn’t going to tread on her toes!”
Currently, Bikel is making limited trips around the country to talk about his documentary on Yiddish author and playwright Sholom Aleichem (see www.bikel.com).
“Theo: An Autobiography” was also updated and re-released last summer, detailing Bikel’s life and professional career.
“I look at myself from the inside and see what I learned from my life,” he said. “Maybe I can teach others from my experiences.”
Nick Thomas teaches at Auburn University at Montgomery, Ala., and has written features, columns, and interviews for over 500 magazines and newspapers.
