Alan Arkin
Alan Wolf Arkin (March 26, 1934 – June 29, 2023) was an American actor and filmmaker. In a career spanning seven decades, he received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Tony Award as well as nominations for six Emmy Awards.
Alan Arkin
June 29, 2023 (aged 89)
Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Los Angeles, California, U.S.
- Actor
- filmmaker
1951–2023
-
Jeremy Yaffe(m. 1955; div. 1961)
-
Barbara Dana(m. 1964; div. 1994)
-
Suzanne Newlander(m. 1996)
- David I. Arkin (father)
- Joseph Wortis (uncle)
- Avi (cousin)
Arkin performed in the sketch comedy group The Second City before acting on the Broadway stage, starring as David Kolowitz in the Joseph Stein play Enter Laughing in 1963, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play. He returned to Broadway acting in the comedic play Luv (1964), and directed Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys (1971), for which he received a Tony Award nomination.
Arkin won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as a foul-mouthed grandfather in Little Miss Sunshine (2006).[1] He was Oscar-nominated for his roles in Russians Are Coming (1966), The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1968), and Argo (2012). He also acted in Wait Until Dark (1967), Inspector Clouseau (1968), Popi (1969), Catch-22 (1970), The In-Laws (1979), Edward Scissorhands (1990), The Rocketeer (1991), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (2001), Get Smart (2008), Going in Style (2017), and Dumbo (2019). Arkin also directed three films, including the two comedy films Little Murders (1971) and Fire Sale (1977).
His television roles included Leon Felhendler in Escape from Sobibor (1987), and as Harry Rowen in The Pentagon Papers (2003) for which he earned Emmy nominations respectively for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie and Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie. Arkin was voiced as Schmendrick in The Last Unicorn (1982), as J. D. Salinger in the animated series BoJack Horseman (2015–16), and as Wild Knuckles in Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022). From 2018 to 2019 Arkin starred in the Netflix comedy series The Kominsky Method, earning two consecutive nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.[2]
Early life and education[edit]
Alan Wolf Arkin was born in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, on March 26, 1934, the son of teacher, painter, writer and lyricist David I. Arkin (1906–1980) (co-writer of the hit Three Dog Night song "Black and White"), and his wife, Beatrice (née Wortis) (1909–1991), a teacher. The family lived in Crown Heights.[3] He was raised in a Jewish family with "no emphasis on religion".[4] His grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Ukraine, Russia, and Germany.[5][6][7][8] His parents moved to Los Angeles when Alan was 11,[5] but an 8-month Hollywood strike cost his father his job as a set designer. During the 1950s Red Scare, Arkin's parents were accused of being Communists, and his father was fired when he refused to answer questions about his political ideology. David Arkin challenged the dismissal, but he was vindicated only after his death.[9]
Arkin, who had been taking acting lessons since age 10, became a scholarship student at various drama academies, including one run by the Stanislavsky student Benjamin Zemach, who taught Arkin a psychological approach to acting.[10] Arkin attended Los Angeles State College from 1951 to 1953. He also attended Bennington College.[11]
Musical career[edit]
With Erik Darling and Bob Carey, he formed the folk group The Tarriers, in which Arkin sang and played guitar. The band members co-composed the group's 1956 hit "The Banana Boat Song", a reworking, with some new lyrics, of a traditional, Jamaican calypso folk song of the same name, combined with another titled "Hill and Gully Rider".[100] It reached No. 4 on the Billboard magazine chart the same year as Harry Belafonte's better-known version.[12] The group appeared in the 1957 Calypso-exploitation film Calypso Heat Wave, singing "Banana Boat Song" and "Choucoune". Arkin was a member of The Tarriers when they recorded "Cindy, Oh Cindy", which also charted.[101]
From 1958 to 1968, Arkin performed and recorded with the children's folk group The Baby Sitters.[102] He also performed the role of Dr. Pangloss in a concert staging of Leonard Bernstein's operetta Candide, alongside Madeline Kahn's Cunegonde.[103] In 1985, he sang two selections by Jones and Schmidt on Ben Bagley's album Contemporary Broadway Revisited.[104][105][106]
Arkin was the author of many books.[143] These include:
