Nehemiah Persoff

 Nehemiah Persoff (August 2, 1919 – April 5, 2022)

Persoff was born in Jerusalem, and emigrated to the United States with his family in 1929. Persoff was drafted by the United States Army in early 1942 and served during World War II until 1945. He was assigned to an acting company to entertain troops around the world. In 1947, he was accepted into the Actors Studio, and was one of the 26 members of the beginners' class taught by Elia Kazan, along with James Whitmore and Julie Harris. He began his acting career in 1948. Among his early film roles was a part in On the Waterfront (1954), Leo the accountant in The Harder They Fall with Humphrey Bogart and Rod Steiger (1956), and the gangster boss Little Bonaparte in Billy Wilder's film Some Like It Hot (1959), and he appeared again with Steiger in Al Capone (1959). He also appeared in supporting roles in films such as The Comancheros (1961) and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965).

Persoff was also performing in small roles on television during the early 1950s. A sampling of his early parts included such shows as Goodyear Playhouse, The Philco Television Playhouse, Appointment with Adventure, Armstrong Circle Theatre, Kraft Theatre, The United States Steel Hour, The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Playhouse 90. He also played Leonid Brezhnev in the 1983 miniseries Sadat, and in 2003, he came out of retirement to appear uncredited as a rabbi, along with Tony Kushner and Maurice Sendak, in a scene of the HBO miniseries adaptation of Kushner’s Angels in America. Persoff was married from 1951 until his wife's death in 2021. He died on April 5, 2022 at the age of 102.