Nehemiah Persoff was an actor and painter from the United States. In a career spanning more than 50 years, beginning after WWII, he appeared in over 200 television shows, films, and plays.
Nehemiah Persoff, a well-known actor, has died at the age of 102.
Nehemiah Persoff, a character actor whose gravelly voice and aptitude for evoking a sense of foreboding heightened his depictions of a variety of nasty characters, most notably a half-dozen Prohibition-era criminals, died on Tuesday in San Luis Obispo, California. He was 102 years old.
Joey Persoff, his grandson, stated the cause was heart failure.
Mr. Persoff was one of television’s most famous personalities, by face if not by name, for decades, having appeared on hundreds of series since the late 1940s. He usually played a supporting role, sometimes benevolent, sometimes villainous, but always with an ambiguous foreign accent, according to his knack for dialect.
He was a regular on shows including “Gunsmoke,” “The Twilight Zone,” “Route 66,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “Mission: Impossible,” “Hawaii Five-O,” and “Columbo” in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and he continued into the 1990s with appearances on “Law & Order” and “Chicago Hope.”
Mr. Persoff, a native of Jerusalem who immigrated to the United States when he was nine years old, was a loving father of four who was married to the same woman for seven decades and became an exceptional painter in retirement.
In the famous Billy Wilder comedy “Some Like It Hot,” his outsized spoof of a mobster, Little Bonaparte, may have been his most remembered supporting performance (1959). Film aficionados frequently quote two of his lines from that film.
In one, addressing a mob gathering disguised as an opera lovers’ conference, he says: “In the last fiscal year we made a hundred and twelve million dollars before taxes … only we didn’t pay no taxes!”
Nehemiah Persoff Age, Family, and Early Life
Nehemiah Persoff was born on August 2, 1919, in Jerusalem, Palestine. He immigrated to the United States with his family in 1929 and graduated from the Hebrew Technical Institute in 1937.
Persoff was drafted into the US Army in early 1942 and served until 1945 during World War II.
Which school and college did he go to?
There are no details on the education of Nehemiah Persoff.
He might have completed his study in his hometown. The high school he went to and the university he attended are all under review.
Nehemiah Persoff Career, What was his profession?
He was assigned to an acting group that was responsible for entertaining troops all across the world. He worked as a subway electrician after the war, maintaining signals while pursuing his playing career in New York theater. Nehemiah was accepted into the Actors Studio in 1947, and along with James Whitmore and Julie Harris, he was one of the 26 participants of Elia Kazan’s beginners’ class. In 1948, he began his acting career.
Early film roles included the driver in On the Waterfront (1954), Leo the accountant in The Harder They Fall (1956) with Humphrey Bogart and Rod Steiger, and the gangster boss Little Bonaparte, a parody of Little Caesar, in Billy Wilder’s film classic Some Like It Hot (1959). He also appeared with Steiger in Al Capone (1961). (1959). He also acted in films such as The Comancheros (1961) and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1963). (1965).
He also acted in films such as The Comancheros (1961) and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1963). (1965). Persoff played the father of Barbra Streisand’s character in the 1983 film Yentl. He played Papa Mousekewitz in the American Tail animated film series and in the comedy picture Twins (1988). Ted Post’s last film was 4 Faces (1999), which was also his last.
Nehemiah Persoff Net Worth, How much did he earn?
The details on the net worth and income stats of Nehemiah Persoff were never made clear to the public.
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Nehemiah Persoff Wife, Was he married? Any children?
Thia Persov, his wife whom he married in 1951, died of cancer in 2021. They had four children together.
Is he available on any kind of social media platform?
We did a quick search for the social handle of Nehemiah Persoff. But we weren’t able to find him on any social sites.
Body Appearance of Nehemiah Persoff’s Height, Weight
| Height | N / A |
| Hair color | White |
| Eye color | Dark brown |
| Weight | N / A |
| Body type | Fit |
| Sexual orientation | Straight |
Interesting facts about Nehemiah Persoff’s which you should be known
| Nationality | American |
| Ethnicity | White |
| Age | 102 |
| Relationship status | Married |
| Spouse | Thia Persoff |
| Children | 4 |