Movie Musings: Disney and More

Jerry Orbach: He’s Our Guest

He was a performer of Broadway, Television, and Film and his debonair smile helped create the souls of the characters he portrayed from Jake Houseman (father of Baby Houseman) in Dirty Dancing (1987) to Detective Lennie Briscoe on Law & Order (1990-2010). On the Broadway stage, he received a total of four Tony Award Nominations (and won one) for a variety of leading male roles. And in later movies, he even provided the voice of the beloved candelabra from Beauty and the Beast (1991). Through every role he played, Jerry Orbach never ceased to entertain audiences with his own unique definition of charm.

Jerome Bernard Orbach was born in the Bronx, New York on October 20th, 1935. He was the only child of Leon Orbach, who was a restaurant manager and vaudevillian performer, and Emily, who was a radio singer and a greeting card manufacturer. Throughout his childhood, he moved very often with his folks, from Mount Vernon, New York, Wilkes-Bare, Nanticoke, and Scranton, Pennsylvania, Springfield Massachusetts, and Waukegan, Illinois. Young Jerry attended Waukegan High School and graduated in 1952 at the age of 17 because he was fortunate enough to skip two grades in elementary school due to a high IQ. Although he played on the high school football team, he learned about acting in a speech class and decided to pursue it full-time. The summer after he graduated high school, he worked at the theatre of Chevy Chase Country Club in Wheeling, Illinois and later enrolled at Northwestern University in Chicago. He left Northwestern University before his senior year and moved to New York City in 1955 to pursue acting full-time and study at the Actor’s Studio under Lee Strasberg. He found himself a home in a high-rise on 53rd Street off of 8th Avenue in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan and was a regular at some of the Italian restaurants nearby. (In 2007, the intersection of 53rd Street and 8th Avenue was named in honor of him).

It didn’t take long for Jerry Orbach to find success. The same year he moved to New York, he landed three different roles in the off-Broadway revival of The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht. Five years later, he got his first major role as El Gallo in the original off-Broadway Production of The Fantasticks. (I once had the privilege of seeing an off-Broadway revival of “The Fantasticks,” in the Jerry Orbach Theatre in 2011). Orbach made his official Broadway debut in 1961 in the musical Carnival! (the stage version of the film Lili, which starred Leslie Caron.) He received his very first Tony Award Nomination for the role of Sky Masterson in a revival of Guys and Dolls in 1965. In 1968, he starred in the musical Promises, Promises which was based on the 1960 film The Apartment. In this show, Jerry Orbach recreated the role of Chuck “C.C.” Baxter which was originated by Jack Lemmon in the film version and Orbach was awarded his first and only Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical as well as a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical. Orbach later originated the roles of Billy Flynn in Chicago in 1975 and Julian Marsh in 42nd Street in 1980 and both roles earned him two more Tony Award Nominations.

While he was on Broadway, he also made some uncredited appearances in the film version of Guys and Dolls (1955) and Marty (1955) which won the Best Picture Oscar that year, and in Ensign Pulver (1964), the sequel to Mister Roberts (1955). He played the Gang Leader “Mumzer,” in the movie Cop Hater (1958) and Joe Clegg in Mad Dog Coll (1961). In the 1980s, he transitioned to Television and Film full-time. He landed a recurring role as Detective Harry McGraw on the murder-mystery/drama series Murder, She Wrote (1984-1996) which starred Orbach’s good “Broadway” friend, Angela Lansbury. His first appearance on the show was so well-received, that it led the creation of a short-lived spin-off series called The Law and Harry McGraw (1987-1988). In 1987 he was cast as Dr. Jake Houseman in “Dirty Dancing,” and three years later, in 1990 made a guest appearance on NBC’s The Golden Girls (1985-1992) which reunited him with former “Threepenny Opera,” co-star, Beatrice Arthur. The appearance earned him his first of Three Emmy Nominations. In 1991, he was hired by the Walt Disney Studios to provide the voice of Lumiere in “Beauty and the Beast,” which reunited him with Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Potts. Both he and Lansbury reprised their roles for the direct-to-video sequels to the film, Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas (1997), and Beauty and the Beast: Belle’s Magical World (1998). Orbach also lent his voice to the character of Sa’Luk in Aladdin and the King of Thieves (1996), the direct-to-video sequel to Aladdin (1992), and provided the voice of Pierre the Bird at the Enchanted Tiki Room (Under New Management) Attraction which opened at Walt Disney’s Magic Kingdom in Disney World in 1998 and closed in 2011. 

After lending his voice to “Beauty and the Beast,” he was cast in the role with which he would be most often identified: Detective Lennie Briscoe on Law & Order (1990-2010). He was on the show for 12 of its 20 year-run on television and in 2000, he earned his third Emmy nomination in the category of Best Actor in a Drama Series. He also became the show’s third longest-serving main cast member as well as one of its most popular just behind S. Epatha Merkerson and Sam Waterston, with whom Jerry Orbach had previously worked with on Woody Allen’s Crime and Misdemeanors (1989). Both of his children guest-starred on the show. His older son, Anthony “Tony” Orbach, guest-starred in the “Doubles” episode of the show as a reporter, and his younger son, Chris Orbach, guest starred as his Lennie Briscoe’s nephew, Ken Briscoe, on the first season of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (1999-present).

Jerry Orbach tragically died of prostate cancer on December 28th, 2004 in Manhattan, New York at the age of 69. Many of his close friends attended the memorial service including his “Law & Order,” co-stars, S. Epatha Merkerson, Chris Noth, and Angela Lansbury. Lansbury also spoke at the funeral, saying “….to have Jerry on the set with me, it was like a breath of Broadway. Jerry was a warm and accessible person, so kind and generous-hearted. I’m so very proud to have known Jerry and to have been a part of his circle.” Jerry Orbach will always be remembered by adults as Detective Lennie Briscoe on “Law and Order,” but to kids and kids at heart, he will always be the voice of Lumiere in “Beauty and the Beast.”