Q+A: Theodore Bikel

Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2007 | 7:23 a.m.

Who: Theodore Bikel and Alberto Mizrahi

When: 7 p.m. Sunday

Where: Temple Beth Sholom, 10700 Havenwood Lane

Tickets: $40 to $100; 804-1333, ext. 104

Theodore Bikel has not merely lived life but savored it. His wealth is more in the richness of his experiences than in money in the bank.

A fine actor, he's known for his portrayals of Tevye the milkman in "Fiddler on the Roof" for almost 40 years. A folk singer, he co-founded the Newport Folk Festival. A razor-sharp intellect, he lectures on subjects as diverse as "Jewish Culture and Music," "Government and the Arts" and "Show Business."

Bikel fled Austria when he was 14 years old to escape the Nazis and arrived in Palestine before the start of World War II. In 1946, two years before the birth of Israel, he went to London to study acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

He is best known for his portrayal of Tevye in "Fiddler," a role he took over from Zero Mostel on Broadway in 1967. Before "Fiddler," Bikel originated the Broadway role of Capt. Georg von Trapp in "The Sound of Music."

During a conversation from his home in Los Angeles, Bikel recalled his film debut - as the first officer of a German warship in "The African Queen" in 1951.

"I was in a play in the West End of London with Peter Ustinov, a play ("The Love of Four Colonels") he had written," Bikel said. "John Houston came to see the play, more than once - he loved the play. He was going to direct 'The African Queen' and he went to Africa to do all the stuff that needed to be shot in Africa and then he came back to shoot all the stuff that needed to be done on the back lot in London.

"All the scenes I was in were done on the back lot. I was still in the play at the time. I'd shoot all day and do the play in the evening. I was young. I didn't mind. In fact, I wouldn't even mind now."

Bikel recalled playing chess with Humphrey Bogart. "He was very good. I say that because he beat me."

The 83-year-old actor and folk singer will be in Las Vegas on Sunday with Alberto Mizrahi, one of the leading interpreters of Jewish music. They will perform songs from "Our Song," a collection of duets they released last year. Mizrahi is hazzan, or cantor, of the historic Anshe Emet Synagogue in Chicago.

His temple in Chicago booked me into a concert about three years ago. I'm doing a concert at his temple and he's a singer, so what we did on the spur of the moment practically - he was doing one portion of the concert, I was doing one portion of the concert - so we said why don't we join forces and do a few songs together, three or four? Which we did. They liked it so much that one of the members of the temple decided to underwrite the making of a CD, which is a lot more than we did at that concert. That was the genesis of the project.

We did the recording over a year ago. It sounds great, a great echo not only in the Jewish world but in the world in general.

Yes. We are kind of an unlikely, yet a likely duo. He was born in Turkey. His mother tongue is Greek. He brought to the enterprise music from his background and I brought to the album (music) from my background. So we joined forces and did an album of duets, which took off very nicely. We've been doing several concerts, not just to promote the CD, but it was basically the material that we loved to perform. But I do a lot of solo concerts, sometimes just me with Tamara Brooks playing piano, or with a small orchestra or with a larger orchestra. That's what I do when I'm not doing plays or television or some such. I have a multiplicity of interests and I wear several hats. I do about 20 or 30 concerts a year.

Yeah. But you know you can do a concert, a one-shot deal. It doesn't necessitate too much rehearsal, although if I work with other musicians obviously it does. My own stuff is pretty well set and I have a huge repertoire to draw from. I made another album called "In My Own Lifetime," theater songs from a dozen different shows - "Zorba," "Jacques Brel," "Sound of Music."

People ask me all the time if I have a favorite song. It occurs to me it's like asking a person with 10 children which is his favorite - in front of the kids. It's tough to say. Obviously I did "Fiddler" more than anything else in my life. I played it over 2,000 times, over a period of 37 years. I go away from it to do other stuff and then I come back to it. The last time I toured in "Fiddler" was 2002. We did 64 cities in two years, eight shows a week. I was the oldest member of the cast, and I was the only one that never missed a performance.

Of course. I don't have time to contemplate not being healthy. And when I'm at home in Los Angeles I go to a trainer three times a week.

I do. It is the notion that we live in a society, especially here in America, that is multicultural, a confluence of immigrants and of immigration. Some people would maintain that what we have here or what we should have here is a melting pot. That goes exactly against my entire view of culture. A melting pot produces everything of the same color, a sort of low common denominator. I maintain that the beauty of this nation is that all the distinct particles contribute to the beauty of the whole. To me, what America is or should be is not a melting pot but a kaleidoscope. A kaleidoscope particle contributes to the beauty and once more it's a dynamic thing. You change it ever so slightly and they fall into different shapes and places.

This is what I promote, what I believe in. The fact that my particle happens to be the Jewish one. I sing Jewish songs not because I think they are better songs than those of my neighbor, I sing them because they are mine. I believe that I have something to contribute. I'm very curious about my neighbor - I'm multilingual myself. I speak five languages, I get by in couple more and I sing in 23 languages - because I'm curious about my neighbor. I want to know what they sing, and how, and I hope to make them curious about me, about my culture and roots.

But roots have a knack of serving several purposes. Some people spend their entire lives, their entire being, their entire concentration on looking backward. That's for a museum curator to do. My activity is not museumlike. I look back into the past in order to pinpoint where I am today, possibly get a little direction of where I am going. It's a question of being not static but dynamic. If you want to know what motivates me, it is precisely that. I believe in the dynamism of cultural engagement, which is what I have and what I try to get other people to believe that they have also.

A lot of things are formed by where you were and where you are. But yes, my father was a Zionist and a socialist and we lived in Vienna, in a town that was subject to bursts of anti-Semitism. I was 13 when the Nazis came in. By the time we managed to leave I was 14 years old. We had to get out of there. We were lucky enough to get one of the few visas that the British gave out. At the time Palestine was a British mandate. They gave a limited number of visas, which were turned over to the Jewish community who in turn distributed them according to seniority in the Zionist movement, and my father had been a Zionist all his life and so he was one of the few people who managed to get a visa. I got there in '38 and left in '46. It was a very interesting time. Culturally, it was exhilarating, but also a primitive frontier existence.

There were flare-ups of hostility, but not in the cities. They were in the countryside and few and far between.

I feed on optimism. Yes, I'm optimistic but I'm also a realist. I know that peace does not come about merely because you wish it. You have to work for it. You have to argue for it. You have to make sacrifices for it, and sometimes painful ones. But a mere absence of hostility is not the same as peace, just as the absence of sickness is not the same as health.

You're going to laugh when I tell you. Three days after Las Vegas Tamara Brooks and I have been invited to go to Thailand to play for the king and the queen - so that's what we're going to do.

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