NEW YORK — Toronto-born actor and comedian Lou Jacobi has died.
The mustachioed scene-stealing Jacobi made a career of playing comic ethnic characters on stage, screen and television, but was lauded for his dramatic roles as well. He died Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 95.
Jacobi made his Broadway debut in 1955 as Mr. Van Daan in The Diary of Anne Frank, and reprised the role in the 1959 film. Other film roles included the philosophical bartender Moustache in Irma La Douce (1963), and a florist in the Dudley Moore comedy Arthur (1981).
Born Dec. 28, 1919, as Louis Harold Jacobovitch, Jacobi studied acting as a youth and made his stage debut in 1924 at Toronto’s Princess theatre, playing a violin prodigy in The Rabbi and the Priest.
After working as the drama director at a Toronto Young Men’s Hebrew Association, Jacobi tried his luck in London. He appeared in the musicals Guys and Dolls and Pal Joey, and was part of a command performance at the London Palladium in 1952.
In 1999, he was inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame. Jacobi’s wife, Ruth Ludwin, died in 2004. He is survived by a brother and a sister in Toronto.
Jacobi made his film debut in Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary? (1953), a black-and-white British comedy with the country’s sex symbol of the day, Diana Dors.
He began making guest appearances on U.S. television series, including Playhouse 90, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and That Girl, and continued to appear on television into his late 70s.
The 10 Broadway plays Jacobi appeared in included Paddy Chayefsky’s Tenth Man (1959); Woody Allen’s Don’t Drink the Water (1966); and Neil Simon’s Come Blow Your Horn (1961).
Jacobi’s successful comedy recordings include Al Tijuana and His Jewish Brass and The Yiddish Are Coming! The Yiddish Are Coming!
“As you make your way through life, sometimes you happen upon people who know how to be happy,” film critic Roger Ebert wrote in 1999 when Jacobi received his star on Canada’s Walk of Fame.
“I look at Lou, and I’m not afraid to be 85, if I can get there in Lou’s style.”