Askin is alive, well, and if I could meet any one celebrity for an extended period of time it would probably be him. Are you familiar with his life?
He is one of the few bonafide stars from the Berlin cabaret scene of the 1930s still alive. Like Robert Clary and John Banner from the series, he was a Jew who had to flee the Nazis; his parents were sent to Theresienstadt (“the Paradise ghetto”) and later to Auschwitz, where they died.
Anyway, I could go on and on about him, but you can read a short bio of him on his official web page (yes, Leon Askin has a web page): http://askin.at
When he was almost 90, after a career in which he worked with everybody from Billy Wilder to the Monkees, Leon returned to Austria (his homeland) and played King Lear (in a wheelchair). He currently lives in a maximum security retirement home for Jewish actors (its guarded by machine gun toting guards due to the Aryan resurgence).
Speaking of Charles Nelson Reilly, incidentally, a friend of mine recently saw his one man show, LIFE OF REILLY, in NYC and said it was one of the funniest live shows he’s ever seen. Reilly reminisces about the major and minor celebrities he’s known and on being one of the few visible queers in the TV world for many years.
Speaking of, I’ve seen CNR and some woman on TATTLETALES, the husband-wife game hosted by Bert Convy in the 70s, on the Game Show Channel. Anybody know if he was married?
An unfortunate passing but he had a good life: James Gregory, who played Inspector on Barney Miller and was on every other series made before 1980, died last month in Arizona. He was 90 and retired.
Zsa Zsa has I believe actually outlived her three sisters, although I can never remember the name of the fourth one. There’s Zsa Zsa, Eva, Magda and…the other one. According to her husband and granddaughter, the coma story was false. And she’s suing her hairdresser, despite the fact that her bullet-proof hair is probably the only thing that saved her.
An interesting thing about Vigoda is that he didn’t become an actor until he was 50. He was cast from a cattle call by Coppola in GODFATHER I strictly because he looked like what Coppola thought an aging 2nd tier gangster should look like. In one interview I read with him years ago he talked about going from obscurity to Godfather to Barney Miller to camp icon, etc., and was asked “are you resentful of not getting more respect?” to which he basically balked. “Driving a cab through Brooklyn, working in a convenience store part time for minimum wage, those are jobs where you get no respect- when I was in my fifties for the first time I had a secretary and people helping me with appointments- I’m the luckiest SOB on earth”.
Not to pick on you, MsRobyn, but I found it interesting that you made this statement. I’m curious as to what made you think an Jewish person can’t be from Italy, if this was in fact what you thought. I was always under the impression Italy had a fairly significant Jewish population.
Again, I’m not nitpicking, I’m just very interested in your thought process on this one.
The CNR ghost show I was thinking of pre-dates Match Game.
What about Brett Somers? Was she in anything besides The Odd Couple and game shows? The Pigeon Sisters. . . dead or alive I wonder. And what about that other game show/Odd Couple celebrity Jaye P Morgan? Whosedead says she’s still kicking, but did she do any other acting?
::Goes off singing “Happy and peppy and bursting with love” to herself::
I am very well aware that there are Italian Jews. However, Abe Vigoda isn’t one of them. This site gives his religion as Jewish, along with his co-star Hal Linden. It’s at the bottom of the page, in the “Jews in Blue” section.
Wait a second. Now I’m confused. Why isn’t Abe Vigoda one of them? Because he’s not a native of Italy? (i.e. he was born in New York City). Can’t one of Italian (or German or Mexican or whatever) heritage refer to oneself (and be referred to) as “Italian” without being a native citizen of the country?