Lou Jacobi
1913–2009
Lou Jacobi, a sad-faced longtime character actor acclaimed for playing both comic ethnic stereotypes and serious dramatic roles, made his Broadway debut in 1955 in The Diary of Anne Frank. He won rave reviews as the pathetic weakling Hans Van Daan, who shares the Amsterdam attic where the Frank family is hiding. Jacobi played the same role in the 1959 film version, and went on to appear in nine other Broadway plays, including Paddy Chayefsky’s Tenth Man in 1959 and
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Neil Simon’s Come Blow Your Horn in 1961.
Toronto native Louis Harold Jacobovitch made his stage debut at a local theater in 1924 and later worked as a stand-up comic “in Canada’s equivalent of the Borscht Belt,” said The New York Times, entertaining at weddings and bachelor parties. Moving to London, he appeared in the American musicals Guys and Dolls and Pal Joey, and made his film debut in the British comedy Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary? with Britain’s “blond sex symbol of the moment, Diana Dors.” After settling in the U.S., he appeared in several TV series ranging from Playhouse 90 to The Man From UNCLE. In 1976, he starred as a Russian headwaiter “living with nine other people in a small Moscow apartment” in the CBS comedy series Ivan the Terrible. His film credits include Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex and Barry Levinson’s Avalon.
The late critic Clive Barnes once panned a short-lived Broadway comedy that Jacobi starred in, but nevertheless was taken by Jacobi’s aura. “He has a face of sublime weariness,” Barnes wrote, “and the manner of a man who has seen everything, done nothing, and is now only worried about his heartburn.”
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