Josh Mostel | |
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Born | New York City, U.S. | December 21, 1946
Occupation | Actor |
Years active | 1971–present |
Spouses | Peggy Rajski (m. 1983;div. 1998)Kim Murdock (m. 2016) |
Parent |
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Joshua Mostel (born December 21, 1946) is an American actor with numerous film and Broadway credits. [1] The son of Zero Mostel, he is best known for his supporting roles in films such as Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), Harry and Tonto (1974), Sophie's Choice (1982), City Slickers (1991), Billy Madison (1995), and Big Daddy (1999).
Mostel was born in New York City, the son of Kathryn Celia, née Harkin, an actress, dancer, and writer, and Zero Mostel, a comic actor.[ citation needed ]
Tobias Mostel, his brother, is a painter, ceramic artist and professor of art, teaching at Florida State University and Tallahassee Community College. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]
Mostel started his career as a boy soprano at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He graduated from Brandeis University. His Broadway debut was in 1971 with Unlikely Heroes . In 1973, Mostel had one of his more notable film performances as Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar . In 1979, Mostel briefly starred in Delta House , the television version of the film Animal House ; he played Blotto Blutarsky, the brother of the character Bluto (played by John Belushi in the original film).[ citation needed ]
On Broadway, he appeared in the 1989 revival of The Threepenny Opera as Money Matthew and as the frazzled head writer in the original 1992 production of My Favorite Year . He also played the part of "the best trader on the street", Ollie, one of Gordon Gekko's traders in Wall Street .[ citation needed ]
Mostel lives in New York, with a summer home in Monhegan, Maine.[ citation needed ]
Year | Title | Role |
---|---|---|
1971 | Going Home | Mr. Bonelli |
1972 | The King of Marvin Gardens | Frank |
1973 | Jesus Christ Superstar | Herod Antipas |
1974 | Harry and Tonto | Norman Coombes |
1976 | The Money | Wheel-of-fortune operator |
Deadly Hero | Victor | |
1981 | Dead Ringer | Russell |
1982 | Fighting Back | Duster |
Sophie's Choice | Morris Fink | |
1983 | Star 80 | Private Detective |
1984 | The Brother from Another Planet | Casio Vendor |
Windy City | Sol | |
1985 | Almost You | David |
Compromising Positions | Dicky Dunck | |
Stoogemania | Howard F. Howard | |
1986 | The Money Pit | Jack Schnittman |
1987 | Radio Days | Abe |
Matewan | Mayor Cabell Testerman | |
Wall Street | Ollie | |
1989 | Animal Behavior | Mel Gorsky |
1991 | City Slickers | Barry Shalowitz |
Naked Tango | Bertoni the Jeweler | |
Little Man Tate | Physics Professor | |
City of Hope | Mad Anthony | |
1992 | Nervous Ticks | Saul Warshow |
1993 | Searching for Bobby Fischer | Chess Club Regular |
1994 | The Chase | Officer Figus |
Bye Bye America | Abe | |
City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly's Gold | Barry Shalowitz | |
1995 | The Maddening | Chicky Ross |
Billy Madison | Principal Max Anderson | |
The Basketball Diaries | Counterman | |
Let It Be Me | Jordan | |
1998 | Great Expectations | Jerry Ragno |
Rounders | Zagosh | |
Thicker Than Blood | Kendall | |
1999 | The Out-of-Towners | Dr. Faber |
Big Daddy | Arthur Brooks | |
2001 | Knockaround Guys | Mac McCreadle |
2009 | State of Play | Pete |
2016 | The Congressman | Bernie Gimpel |
2020 | Hunters | Rabbi Steckler |
Title | Dates of Production |
---|---|
Unlikely Heroes | October 26, 1971 – November 13, 1971 |
An American Millionaire | April 20, 1974 – May 5, 1974 |
A Texas Trilogy: Lu Ann Hampton Laverty Oberlander | September 21, 1976 – October 30, 1976 |
A Texas Trilogy: The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia | September 22, 1976 – October 31, 1976 |
Threepenny Opera | November 5, 1989 – December 31, 1989 |
My Favorite Year | December 10, 1992 – January 10, 1993 |
The Flowering Peach | March 20, 1994 – April 24, 1994 |
Getting Away with Murder | March 17, 1996 – March 31, 1996 |
Tallahassee is the capital city of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat and only incorporated municipality in Leon County. Tallahassee became the capital of Florida, then the Florida Territory, in 1824. In 2022, the population was 201,731, making it the eighth-most populous city in the state of Florida. The population of the Tallahassee metropolitan area was 390,992 as of 2022. Tallahassee is the largest city in the Florida Big Bend and Florida Panhandle region, and the main center for trade and agriculture in the Florida Big Bend and Southwest Georgia regions.
Jesus Christ Superstar is a sung-through rock opera with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Tim Rice. Loosely based on the Gospels' accounts of the Passion, the work interprets the psychology of Jesus and other characters, with much of the plot centered on Judas, who is dissatisfied with the direction in which Jesus is steering his disciples. Contemporary attitudes, sensibilities and slang pervade the rock opera's lyrics, and ironic allusions to modern life are scattered throughout the depiction of political events. Stage and film productions accordingly contain many intentional anachronisms.
The Producers is a 1967 American satirical black comedy film written and directed by Mel Brooks and starring Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Dick Shawn, and Kenneth Mars. The film is about a theater producer and his accountant who scheme to get rich by fraudulently overselling interests in a stage musical purposely designed to fail. They find a script celebrating Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and bring it to the stage. Because of this theme, The Producers was controversial from the start and received mixed reviews. It became a cult film and found a more positive critical reception later.
Tevye the Dairyman, also translated as Tevye the Milkman is the fictional narrator and protagonist of a series of short stories by Sholem Aleichem, and their various adaptations, the most famous being the 1964 stage musical Fiddler on the Roof and its 1971 film adaptation. Tevye is a pious Jewish dairyman living in the Russian Empire, the patriarch of a family including several troublesome daughters. The village of Boyberik, where the stories are set, is based on the town of Boyarka, Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire. Boyberik is a suburb of Yehupetz, where most of Tevye's customers live.
Samuel Joel "Zero" Mostel was an American actor, comedian, and singer. He is best known for his portrayal of comic characters such as Tevye on stage in Fiddler on the Roof, Pseudolus on stage and on screen in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and Max Bialystock in the original film version of Mel Brooks' The Producers (1967). Mostel was a student of Don Richardson, and he used an acting technique based on muscle memory. He was blacklisted during the 1950s; his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee was well publicised. Mostel later starred in the Hollywood Blacklist drama film The Front (1976) alongside Woody Allen, for which Mostel was nominated for the British Academy Film Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Jerome Robbins was an American dancer, choreographer, film director, theatre director and producer who worked in classical ballet, on stage, film, and television.
The Front is a 1976 American drama film set against the Hollywood blacklist in the 1950s, when artists, writers, directors, and others were rendered unemployable, having been accused of subversive political activities in support of Communism or of being Communists themselves. It was written by Walter Bernstein, directed by Martin Ritt, and stars Woody Allen, Zero Mostel and Michael Murphy.
Philip Loeb, was an American stage, film, and television actor, director and author, perhaps best remembered for playing Jake Goldberg in The Goldbergs. He was blacklisted under McCarthyism and committed suicide in response.
Joshua Shelley was one of the actors blacklisted by movie studios as a result of the House Un-American Activities Committee's (HUAC) investigation of the Communist Party in Hollywood in 1952. He did not begin to again work regularly in Hollywood until 1973 when his career restarted.
86th Street is a major two-way street in the Upper East Side and Upper West Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It runs in two major sections: between East End and Fifth Avenue on the Upper East Side, and between Central Park West and Riverside Drive on the Upper West Side. The western segment feeds into the 86th Street transverse across Central Park, which connects to East 84th and 85th Streets on the eastern side.
Jesus Christ Superstar is a 1973 musical drama film directed by Norman Jewison and jointly written for the screen by Jewison and Melvyn Bragg; they based their screenplay on the 1970 rock opera of the same name, the libretto of which was written by Tim Rice and whose music was composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber. The film, featuring a cast of Ted Neeley, Carl Anderson, Yvonne Elliman, Barry Dennen, Bob Bingham, Larry Marshall, Josh Mostel, Kurt Yaghjian and Philip Toubus, centres on the conflict between Judas and Jesus during the week of the crucifixion of Jesus.
Tom O'Horgan was an American theater and film director, composer, actor and musician. He is best known for his Broadway work as director of the hit musicals Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar. During his career he sought to achieve a form of "total theater" described by The New York Times as "wittily physical", and which earned him a reputation as the "Busby Berkeley of the acid set".
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is a 1966 period musical comedy film, directed by Richard Lester, with Zero Mostel and Jack Gilford reprising their stage roles. It also features Buster Keaton in his final screen role; Phil Silvers, for whom the stage musical was originally intended; and regular Lester collaborators Michael Crawford, Michael Hordern, and Roy Kinnear.
Jim Brochu is an American actor, writer, director, and playwright. He was born in Brooklyn, New York. Brochu studied at Carnegie-Mellon University and received his B.A. from St. Francis College. His stage debut was in a production of William Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. As a friend of Lucille Ball, he is the author of the unauthorized biography of Lucille Ball, titled Lucy in the Afternoon, and in this capacity, appeared on an episode of MythBusters.
Rhinoceros is a 1974 American comedy film based on the play Rhinocéros by Eugène Ionesco. The film was produced by Ely Landau for the American Film Theatre, which presented thirteen film adaptations of plays in the United States from 1973 to 1975.
Tituss Burgess is an American actor and singer. He has appeared in several Broadway musicals and is known for his high tenor voice. He is best known for starring as Titus Andromedon on the Netflix comedy series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015–2020), for which he received five Primetime Emmy Award nominations. He was also featured in Schmigadoon! (2023).
Windy City is a 1984 American drama film written and directed by Armyan Bernstein and starring Kate Capshaw, Josh Mostel and John Shea.
"Not While I'm Around" is a song from the Stephen Sondheim musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. It is a duet between Tobias Ragg and Mrs. Lovett that first appeared on Broadway in 1979. A screen adaptation for the 2007 film of the same name features Edward Sanders as Tobias and Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett. In the 2023 revival, it is sung by Gaten Matarazzo and Annaleigh Ashford. Josh Groban, who played the barber in the 2023 production, has also released his own version. Sutton Foster and Joe Locke are currently performing the song. Aaron Tveit is Sweeney.
Larry Marshall is an American actor and singer. He is known for his work in musical theatre and film.
Kate Mostel, born Kathryn Harkin (1918-1986) was an American dancer, actress and memoirist.