Zero Mostel Dies of Heart Failure at 62 (Published 1977) (2025)

Zero Mostel, the elephantine actor who became a legend on Broadway with his poignant portrayal of the woebegotten dairyman Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof,” died of cardiac arrest, last night at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. He was 62 years old.

Mr. Mostel, who lived on ‐Central Park West, was in Philadelphia for 1‐Broadway performances of Arnold Wesker's new play, “The Merchant,” The show, based on Shakespeare's “The Merchant of Venice,” was to have moved to the John F. Kennedy Center for the’ Performing’ Arts in Washington on Sept. 28 and to have arrived at the Imperial Theater on Broadway on Nov. 15.

The Actor's Actor

However, the opening of the show,.in which Mr. Mostel had the part of Shylock, was postponed after the star entered the hospital last weekend suffering from a viral infection described as an upper respiratory’ disorder.

A spokesman for the hospital said Mr. Mostel took a turn for the worse late yesterday, developed a cardiac arrest, and died as 7:47 P.M.

Marvin Krauss, general manager of “The ‘Merchant,” said later that no decision had been made on the future of the show.

“It's just a numbness now,” he said, as tributes began pouring in ‘from around the nation.

Mr. Mostel was the actor's hctor, the critic's actor and, perhaps most important, the theatergoer's actor. He made, audiences roar with laughter and cry with a sense of human frailties. He could look like a pile of tires or an elephant tiptoeing across a stage with pants on.

He had sagging jowls and a throbbing paunch, but his movements could be as elegant as a dancer'S and his face seemed to be made of rubber, flexing from toothy grin to terrible grimace, from pensive scowl to roaring lion faster than the eye could follow

He could gulp, chirp, bleep, shout lifteril thunder and whimper‐all in a singlet.. line.

His career spanned nearly four decades,.: starting as standup comic in Manhat:. tan nightclubs and encompassing: radio: fromthe smallest time to the biggest.

His career had many mishaps. He was miscast in a number of his early films, like “DuBarry Was a Lady” and “Mr Belvedere Rings the Bell,” in the 1940’s But his hits were big, especially “The Producers,” in which he portrayed.la deny perate, scheming Broadway entrepreheie out to make a flop. He also repeated his stage role for the film version Of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” and appeared in “Panic in the Streets,” “The Enforcer,” “Sirocco”, and “The Model and the Marriage Broker.'

But it was as Tevye, the earthy‐Rus sian‐Jewish dairyman in the Sholom Aleichem‐based play “Fiddler on. the Roof,” that Mr. Mostel won his greatest acclaim. The shim, which opened in 1964 went on to the lorigest Broadway run in history It played in 32 countries, in 16 languages, and, though there Were many Tevyes, Over the years in the various production versions, all were exten sions of the one created by Mr. Moati as tributes began pouring in from around the nation.

Mr. Mostel was the actor's actor, the critic's actor and, perhaps most important, the theatergoer's actor. He made audiences roar with laughter and cry with a sense of human frailties. He could look like a pile of tires or an elephant tiptoeing across a stage with pants on. He had sagging jowls and a throbbing paunch, but his movements could be as elegant as a dancer's and his face seemed to be made of rubber, flexing from toothy grin to terrible grimace, from pensive scowl to roaring lion faster than the eye could follow

He could gulp, chirp, bleep, shout like Thunder and whimper—all in a single sine.

His career spanned nearly four decades, starting as a standup comic in Manhattan nightclubs and encompassing radio, television, the movies and theater from the smallest time to the biggest.

His career had many mishaps. He was Miscast in a number of his early films, like “DuBarry Was a Lady” and “Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell,” in the 1940's. But his hits were big, especially “The Producers,” in which he portrayed a desperate, scheming Broadway entrepreneur Out to make a flop. He also repeated his stage role for the film version of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” and appeared in “Panic in the Streets,” “The Enforcer,” “Sirocco,” and The Model and the Marriage Broker.”

But it was as Tevye, the earthy Russian‐Jewish dairyman in the Sholom Aleichem‐based play “Fiddler on the Roof,” that Mr. Mostel won his greatest acclaim. The show, which opened in 1964 went on to the longest Broadway run in history. It played in 32 countries in 16 languages, and, though there were many Tevyes over the years in the various production versions, all were extensions of the one created by Mr. Mostel.

Won Tony Awards

Mr. Mostel won Tony Awards—Broadways highest honors—for his performances in three plays: “Rhinoceros,” in 1961, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” in 1963 and “Fiddler,’ in 1964.

He played Tevye only one year; after he left, the play continued for seven gears on Broadway. But because he was indelibly identified as the star, he was naturally tapped for a revival that played to packed houses for 16 weeks last year on Broadway.

In an interview at the time of the revival, Mr. Mostel talked about the challenge of Tevye. “He's one of those characters who's bottomless. In the darkest moments, he has a lightness; in the lightest moments, a darkness.”

Mr. Mostel might have been talking about himself rather than the full‐bearded milkman who carries on one‐sided dialogues with God about the problems of his family and life in an impoverished village called Anatevka in Czarist Russia.

‘Money Is Vulgar’

Mr. Mostel was believed to have been paid $30,000 a week on his 10‐city tour with “Fiddler” last year, a tour that grossed $5.2 million, but he always sidestepped talk of money. “I don't know what money is,” he once told an interviewer. “I think money is vulgar.”

He much preferred to talk about plays, characters and technique.

“I never memorize a role,” he said on another occasion. “I let the part lay in me.”

Letting the part lay in him had a special significance in his last movie role, in Woody Allen's “The Front,” which came out last year.

Mr. Mostel played a blacklisted entertainer trying to make a comeback during the McCarthy era. In despair, the character down a bottle of liquor and lumps out a hotel room to his death. To a degree, the role revealed something of the real turbulence that beset Mr. Mostel's own life and show business career.

During the early 1950's. Mr. Mostel was subpoenaed to testify before the House Committee on Un‐American Activities. He denied that he was a member of the Communist Party, but political witch hunters noted that he had sponsored the National Negro Congress and the Spanish Refugee Appeal of the Joint Anti‐Fascist Refugee Committee, and he soon found himself on entertainment blacklists.

A Hollywood film contract was canceled, doors were slammed in his face and for several years Mr. Mostel devoted himself to what he called his real loves, painting and art. He worked in a little studio on West 28th Street and produced hundreds of canvasses in what he later recalled as one of the most artistically productive periods of his life.

By 1958, he was back on Broadway and was soon soaring to critical successes.

His 1958 portrayal of Everyman in “Ulysses in Nighttown,” which was derived from James Joyce's novel “Ulysses,” won high praise but low pay.

He electrified audience in 1961 with his role in Eugene Ionesco's drama “Rhinoceros,” in which he created the illusion of changing himself from a man into a rhinoceros with such realism that theatergoers gasped.

After the success of “Fiddler,” Mr. Mostel was ranked by many critics with such greats as Bert Lahr, Groucho Marx and two of his own idols—Charlie Chaplin and W. C. Fields.

The buffoon and the savant, he could, in a grand sweeping gesture in a restuarant, butter a roll and the sleeve of his $400 suit and declare: “The freedom of any society varies proportionately with the volume of its laughter.”

Born Samuel Joel Mostel in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn—'a poor and cride‐ridden neighborhood'—on Feb. 28, 1915, he was the son of Celia (Druchs) and Israel Mostel. The next year, the family—he had five brothers and two sisters—moved to a farm in Moodus, Conn., where they “tilled the soil” for almost 10 years.

According to Mr. Mostel years later, an unyielding bank president with fierce mustache and a long whip foreclosed the mortgage on the farm and the family came back to New York, settling on the Lower East ‘Side.

His father, a rabbi, wanted the boy to be a rabbi, but his mother sympathized with his ambition to be an artist. She is said to have dressed him in a velvet suit and sent him to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to copy masterpieces.

Origins of Name

The boy attended public schools, including Seward Park High School, where he graduated near the ‘bottom of his clasi’ in 1931. The origin of the name Zero are in dispute. Some say it was a nickname acquired in school as a description of his academic performance; others say it was given to him year slater by a press agent.

In any case, he attended City College, majored in fine arts and English, was member of the swimming team and, b'cause art courses were limited in the curriculum, took the sames ones over and over, passing freshman art eight times before graduating in 1935.

He studied briefly for a master'e degree at New York University in 1936 but quit to find work. He wandered around the country and took numerous jobs as a factory worker, longshoreman, tutor, and mine worker.

For a time, he was a W.P.A. lecturer and spoke on art at the Museum of Modern Art, the Frick Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry. All the while, however, he continued to paint, sharing bathless, heatless studios with other struggling artists.

His first jobs in entertainment were often unpaid of $1‐1‐night appearances at neighborhood parties, where he did standup comic routines. His professional debut, however, came in 1942, when at the age of 27, he turned up at a Manciattan nightclub called Cafe Society Downtown and did impressions, such as the following.

Charles Boyer—'Let me run through your hair, Hedy—barefoot.”

Senator Polltax T. Pellegra, an isolationist—'What the hell was Hawaii doing in the Pacific Ocean, anyway?”

Within three weeks of his first nightclub appearance, Mr. Mostel was signed up for a radio program, “The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basic Street,” and soon was on Broadway in a vaudeville show, “Keep ‘em Laughing.” Audiences howled and critics cheered.

In the summer of 1942, he went to Hollywood and made a couple of films, which brought him huge earnings but no critical acclaim.

The following year, he was drafted into the Army. After World War II, he played nightclubs, had theater roles, went on the radio and on Television and made some movies, moving from one medium to another in a wide variety of roles.

He was earning as much as $5,000 week when the Red scare interrupted his career in the 1950's. “It was so goddam stupid,” he said of his blackballing. “My politics are my business. Besides, what sabotage could actors be accused of—giving acting secrets to the enemy?”

Mr. Mostel and his wife, Kathryn, former Radio City Music Hall Rockette who he married in 1944, had two sons, Joshua and Tobias. The couple lived for years in a 10‐room apartment overflowing with books and art work.

When hi returned to Broadway in the revival of “Fiddler” last year, critics did not merely review his performance. They celebrated it.

“Mr. Mostel has no real right to be charming,” said Clive Barnes’ The Times. “But he could charm te birds off the’ trees in a deserted aviary. He is the kind of monster you would unavailingly search Loch Ness for, and, in passing, make into a legend.”

1‐Abeles Zero Mostel in Eugene lonesco's “Rhinoceros,” in 1961

Friedman‐Abeles In “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” 1963.

Graphic Host Inc. Appearing as Tevye In “Fiddler on the Roof,” a 1965 musical