Vet kumen di nakht un vet zingen lyu-lyu

[sovay]

I just found out Theodore Bikel has died.

I am going to listen to a lot of Yiddish folksongs and then set about finding a copy of The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966) stat.

Comments

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Damn.

Inter alia, he was a fabulous dreadful Hungarian.

Nine

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Goodness, there's a name from my childhood! I had not realised he had done so much.

[rose-lemberg.livejournal.com]

OH NO damn

[sovay]

Inter alia, he was a fabulous dreadful Hungarian.

It's very likely that I saw him first as Karpathy, but my definitive film memory of him really does seem to be the Soviet submarine captain who wants a closer look at America and promptly grounds himself and his crew on a sandbank off Cape Ann. For similar reasons, Alan Arkin will always look to me like a harassed political officer doing everything in his power to keep an international incident from starting out of sheer accidental stupidity. (He actually spoke Russian, unlike Bikel who could just sound very fluent. I respect that. I like to know something about any language I'm singing in, but that doesn't mean I could hold conversations in all of them.)

[sovay]

Goodness, there's a name from my childhood! I had not realised he had done so much.

I grew up listening to his records and only later learned to recognize him in film and television appearances, like Worf's father on Star Trek: The Next Generation or a guest-starring rabbi on Babylon 5. See above to nineweaving: I don't know why, but he always looks to me like a character from this one goofy, humanitarian Cold War comedy. It took me years to get it fixed in my head that he made his film debut in The African Queen (1951). I kept being surprised to see him. I still think of him as a folksinger first.

[edit] I know he felt ambivalent about the role, but I've always been sorry he didn't play Captain von Trapp on film. I can't believe he was cast in My Fair Lady—in a non-singing part.

[sovay]

OH NO damn

I have three albums of his on my computer: Theodore Bikel Sings Jewish Folk Songs (1959), Theodore Bikel Sings More Jewish Folk Songs (1960), and Theodore Bikel Sings Yiddish Theatre and Folk Songs (1967). Would you like any of them? Everything else is on vinyl at my parents' house.

*HUGS*

[gwynnega]

He was in my dad's movie I Bury the Living. I'm happy to see that Spotify has a lot of his music.

[sovay]

He was in my dad's movie I Bury the Living.

I can't believe I haven't seen a movie with that title starring Theodore Bikel. Another one on the list.

I'm happy to see that Spotify has a lot of his music.

Good!

[gwynnega]

It's an excellent movie with a terrible ending. (Stephen King wrote about how bad the ending was, and he's not wrong.) Unfortunately I never got a chance to ask my dad whether the ending was his idea or if someone made him change it...

[sovay]

Unfortunately I never got a chance to ask my dad whether the ending was his idea or if someone made him change it...

Does anyone else know? Would you be able to find reference to it elsewhere?

(What goes wrong with the ending? Over-the-top or stupidly mundane?)

[gwynnega]

Maybe if I do some digging there might be an interview with the director (Albert Band) that sheds some light on it.

The ending is stupidly mundane (after a wildly over-the-top bit that I love), which is what leads me to believe it might have been a rewrite.

[sovay]

The ending is stupidly mundane (after a wildly over-the-top bit that I love), which is what leads me to believe it might have been a rewrite.

You should write it a better ending. No joke. Poem or story. (Unless you have already, and I haven't seen it.)

[edit] TCM says Albert Band had your father rewrite it. And the author of the article has access to the original script?

[gwynnega]

Somewhere I have a first draft of a poem about the film and its ending. I need to dig that out, but also I need to do some research and try to find out why that ending happened!

[edit] Hey, you found it! Somehow I knew my dad didn't write that clunker of an ending! Yay.

[sovay]

Somehow I knew my dad didn't write that clunker of an ending! Yay.

David Kalat at TCM is critical of the original ending and believes the film is stronger for the rewrite, but . . . I'd have to see it to be sure, but all signs point to him being wrong. Especially if the climax was conceived as supernatural from the beginning: you can't just yank that sort of thing out at the last minute and expect the picture not to suffer.

[gwynnega]

The ending felt obviously tacked on when I saw it. But up to that point, it's a pretty terrific film.