米国の人気俳優、ジェリー・オーバック氏死去
米国の人気俳優、ジェリー・オーバック氏が28日夜(日本時間29日午前)、前立腺がんのためニューヨーク市内の病院で死去した。69歳。現在も放映中の米人気テレビドラマ「ロー・アンド・オーダー」に刑事役として長年出演した。 1935年10月、ニューヨーク・ブロンクス区出身。イリノイ大学とノース・ウエスタン大学で学んだ後、ニューヨークに戻り演技や歌の指導を受けた。69年、ミュージカル「プロミセス、プロミセス」でトニー賞男優賞。81年、米映画「プリンス・オブ・シティ」に出演以後、刑事役や父親役などで人気を博した。今月初めから入院していた。--一度、市バスに乗っているのを見たことあるけど、あのまんまで、眉が太くて鼻が高い普通のおじさんだった。回りの人と普通に世間話をしていた。ニューヨークの舞台人という印象が強い人で、まさか、日本でも人気があるとは知らなかった。ミュージカル、ファンタスティックスの初演でエルガヨだったそうだ。名前じゃ不明だが顔から判断してイタリア系かロシア系? 他のブロードウェイミュージカル出演は以下。「42番街」「シカゴ」「カーニバル」「三文オペラ」「ガイズアンドドールス」「シカゴ」ーーーーーーーJerry Orbach, Star of 'Law & Order,' Dies at 69By BEN BRANTLEY and RICHARD SEVERO Published: December 29, 2004erry Orbach, who won fame on the New York stage as one of the last bona fide leading men of the Broadway musical and global celebrity on television as a New York detective on NBC's "Law & Order," died on Tuesday night. He was 69.Mr. Orbach died at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, a hospital spokeswoman said.The cause was prostate cancer, his manager, Robert Malcolm, said.In performances that spanned a half century, the Bronx-born Mr. Orbach came to embody two beloved New York archetypes: the musical matinee idol, to which he gave a refreshingly modern spin with his rugged and idiosyncratic persona, and the shrewd, irascible cop, a role he honed to a razor's edge as Detective Lennie Briscoe on "Law & Order." After playing that role for 12 seasons, Mr. Orbach left the show at the end of last season with plans to star in "Law & Order: Trial by Jury," a spinoff that is scheduled to have its debut on NBC in the spring. His illness, which he made public earlier this month, figured in the switch. Dick Wolf, the creator of "Law & Order," said the new show, on which Mr. Orbach was to appear only occasionally, was less taxing.Whether singing "Try to Remember" as the dashing narrator of "The Fantasticks" in 1960 or trading barbs with fellow detectives and reluctant witnesses on television in recent years, Mr. Orbach exuded a wry, ragged masculinity that was all his own. As a star of musicals, he created a new kind of hero who was leagues away from suave, swaggering Adonises like John Raitt, Howard Keel and Alfred Drake (though like them, he sang in a resonant baritone). And he flourished at a time when the Broadway musical hero was fast becoming an endangered species. There were plans to dim the lights along Broadway in his memory last night, said Jed Bernstein, president of the League of American Theaters and Producers.In shows like "Promises, Promises" (Neil Simon and Burt Bacharach's 1968 adaptation of the movie "The Apartment") and "42nd Street" in 1980, Mr. Orbach registered as a musical answer to the shaggier leading men who had begun to emerge on American movie screens, actors like Dustin Hoffman and Jack Nicholson. His rough-edged individuality may account for his endurance on the Broadway stage in an era when other promising musical actors - including Larry Kert, Robert Goulet and Robert Morse - proved unable to follow through on their breakthrough successes. Mr. Orbach may have been the last of a breed: no male star since has matched the breadth and continuity of his career in musicals. Though he originated the part of the corrupt, silver-tongued lawyer Billy Flynn in Bob Fosse's 1975 production of the musical "Chicago," Mr. Orbach was at his best as a tough cookie with a melting center. Writing in The New York Times of "Promises, Promises," the critic Clive Barnes said of Mr. Orbach's portrayal of the haplessly ambitious, morally bewildered hero: "He makes gangle into a verb, because that is just what he does. He gangles. He also sings most effectively, dances most occasionally, and acts with an engaging and perfectly controlled sense of desperation." Yet he was equally persuasive as the dictatorial director in David Merrick's Broadway version of the movie "42nd Street," in which Mr. Orbach instilled new vitality in the hoariest of showbiz clich市. When, at the conclusion of the show's opening-night performance, Merrick shocked the audience and cast by announcing that its director, Gower Champion, had died, it was Mr. Orbach who had the taste and authority to request that the curtain come down. Mr. Orbach's other important stage roles included Mack the Knife in the landmark Off Broadway production of "The Threepenny Opera" in the late 1950's and El Gallo, the benevolently interactive narrator in "The Fantasticks," which was staged at the Sullivan Street Playhouse in 1960 and became the longest-running musical in New York. Walter Kerr, writing about that performance in The New York Herald Tribune, said, "Mr. Orbach is no doubt on his way."He also appeared as the puppeteer in "Carnival!" in the early 1960's and was nominated for a Tony Award for playing Sky Masterson in the 1965 revival of "Guys and Dolls." He won the Tony for best actor in a musical for "Promises, Promises." His film work was less gratifying, though he appeared to good advantage as Gus Levy in "Prince of the City," Sidney Lumet's biting 1981 movie about corruption in the New York City Police Department, and as Jack Rosenthal in Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors" in 1989. (His work in film also led to an unlikely friendship with the mobster Joey Gallo, after Mr. Orbach portrayed a character modeled on Gallo in the 1971 movie "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight.") It wasn't until the 1990's, when he started appearing as Lennie Briscoe in "Law & Order," that Mr. Orbach became a familiar name throughout the country. The rough edge that distinguished him on Broadway eased his transition to character roles like Briscoe, the recovered alcoholic who seemed to greet the discovery of each episode's crime with a world-weary shrug. Jerome Bernard Orbach was born in the Bronx on Oct. 20, 1935, the only child of Leon Orbach, a restaurant manager with some experience in vaudeville, and the former Emily Olexy. The Orbachs moved to Waukegan, Ill., when Jerome was in the seventh grade. In 1952, after graduating from Waukegan High School, he attended the University of Illinois, but stayed only a year. He transferred to Northwestern, where he studied drama. He remained there for about two years, but left without earning a degree. Mr. Orbach did menial work for stock companies before being awarded small parts; later, he said that the stock experience helped him learn to control his voice and "not to do too much with my eyebrows." In 1955 Mr. Orbach headed to New York and found a job almost immediately as the understudy for the role of the Street Singer in an acclaimed Off Broadway production of "The Threepenny Opera." He remained with the company for three years, eventually taking on Scott Merrill's role of Mack the Knife. He studied acting with Herbert Berghof, Mira Rostova and Lee Strasberg. After leaving "Threepenny" in 1959, he worked with stock companies in Ohio, appearing in "Mister Roberts," "The King and I" and "Harvey." But it was the now-fabled "Fantasticks" that established Mr. Orbach as a star. Soon after, he moved on to Broadway in "Carnival!" The critic Frances Herridge called him a "rare combination of powerful male actor and singer." Mr. Orbach remained busy with varied stage work in New York, including "The Cradle Will Rock" (1964), revivals of "Carousel" and "Annie Get Your Gun" in the mid-1960's, Bruce Jay Freidman's comedy of neurosis "Scuba Duba" (1967) and "6 Rms Riv Vu" (1972). His films include "Brewster's Millions" (1985), "Dirty Dancing" (1987) and "Last Exit to Brooklyn" (1989). On television he appeared on "The Shari Lewis Show," "The Jack Paar Show," "The Nurses" and "Bob Hope Presents." Mr. Orbach married Marta Curro in 1958. They were divorced in 1975. In 1979 he married Elaine Cancialla, who survives him. He is also survived by his sons by his first marriage, Anthony, of New Jersey, and Christopher, of Manhattan; and two grandchildren.After appearing in "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight," Mr. Orbach received a call from Joey Gallo, the mobster. "A cop that he knew had met us and told him that he'd met the guy who supposedly played him in the movie, that he was a nice guy, not like an actor," Marta Orbach recalled shortly after Gallo was gunned down in 1972. Through the Orbachs, Gallo briefly became one of the stranger fixtures of the showbiz social scene in Manhattan and was working on a memoir with Marta Orbach at the time of his death. Gallo lived in the Orbachs' Chelsea brownstone for a month and was married there a month before his murder. With his portrayal of Lennie Briscoe on "Law & Order," Mr. Orbach achieved a worldwide fame that had previously eluded him. He became the face of a typical New York cop, and the police liked what they saw. Mr. Orbach took the role seriously, so much so that he appeared in 2001 at a demonstration in which police officers demanded higher wages from Mayor Giuliani's administration. "All I can do is try and represent you guys on a TV screen and make you look as good as I can," Mr. Orbach was quoted as saying in Newsday. "I could never go out and not know if I'm coming home that night the way you do."