Abraham Sofaer

Abraham Sofaer

Birth : 1896-10-01, Rangoon, Burma. [now Yangôn, Myanmar]

Death : 1988-01-21

History

​From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.   Abraham Sofaer (October 1, 1896 – January 21, 1988) was a stage actor of Burmese-Jewish descent who became a familiar supporting player on film and television in his later years. He was born in Rangoon, Burma (now Yangon, Myanmar). Sofaer's strong features and resonant voice complemented the many exotic character parts he played. He began his acting career on the London stage in 1921, but soon was alternating between London and Broadway. By the 1930s, he was appearing in both British and American films. Among his more prominent performances were the dual role of the Judge and Surgeon in Powell and Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death (1946) and St. Paul in Quo Vadis (1951). He also appeared on television from its earliest days in the late 1930s and on radio. Although his film appearances diminished after the 1950s, he continued to have guest roles on dozens of major U.S. television series throughout the 1960s, including Star Trek ("Charlie X"), The Twilight Zone ("The Mighty Casey"), Lost in Space ("The Flaming Planet") and The Outer Limits ("Demon with a Glass Hand"), until retiring in the mid 1970s. He may be best-remembered for his recurring role as Hadji, the master of all genies, on I Dream of Jeannie. Sofaer married Psyche Angela Christian, with whom he had two sons and four daughters. He died in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, as the result of congestive heart failure in 1988. The noted jurist of the same name is the son of one of the actor's cousins. Description above from the Wikipedia article Abraham Sofaer, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Profile

Abraham Sofaer

Movies

Chisum
Cattle baron John Chisum joins forces with Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett to fight the Lincoln County land war.
Justine
Proprietor
In Alexandria, in 1938, Darley, a young British schoolmaster and poet, makes friends through Pursewarden, the British consular officer, with Justine, the beautiful and mysterious wife of a Coptic banker. He observes the affairs of her heart and incidentally discovers that she is involved in a plot against the British, meant to arm the Jewish underground in Palestine. The plot finally fails, Justine is sent to jail and Darley decides to return to England.
Che!
Pablo Rojas
Biography of Argentinian revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, who helped Fidel Castro in his struggle against the corrupt Batista regime, eventually resulting in the overthrow of that government and Castro's taking over of Cuba. The film covers Guevara's life from when he first landed in Cuba in 1956 to his death in an ambush by government troops in the mountains of Bolivia in 1967.
Head
Swami
In this surrealistic and free-form follow-up to the Monkees' television show, the band frolic their way through a series of musical set pieces and vignettes containing humor and anti-establishment social commentary.
Journey to the Center of Time
Dr. (Doc) Gordon
Scientists must prove their time travel experiments can produce results, so their funding won't be cut off. They push their equipment, and travel 5000 years into the future, where they encounter aliens who are looking for a planet to colonize.
The Greatest Story Ever Told
Joseph of Arimathaea
From his birth in Bethlehem to his death and eventual resurrection, the life of Jesus Christ is given the all-star treatment in this epic retelling. Major aspects of Christ's life are touched upon, including the execution of all the newborn males in Egypt by King Herod; Christ's baptism by John the Baptist; and the betrayal by Judas after the Last Supper that eventually leads to Christ's crucifixion and miraculous return.
4 for Texas
Pulaski
In the 1870s, two rival businessmen, Zack Thomas and Joe Jarrett, on a stagecoach heading to Galveston, Texas, must pull together to protect $100,000 from an outlaw named Matson. Once in Galveston, however, their rivalry continues, as Thomas joins up with Elya Carlson and Jarret with Maxine Richter. But Matson is still on the loose, and a scheming banker threatens both Thomas and Jarrett.
Twice-Told Tales
Prof. Pietro Baglioni
3 horror stories based on the writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne. In the 1st story titled "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment", Heidegger attempts to restore the youth of three elderly friends. In "Rappaccini's Daughter", a demented father is innoculating his daughter with poison so she may never leave her garden of poisonous plants. In the final story "The House of the Seven Gables", The Pyncheon family suffers from a hundred year old curse and while in the midst of arguing over inheritance, a stranger arrives.
Captain Sindbad
Galgo
After completing his voyages Sindbad the Sailor and his hearty crew have come home to find a palace coup d'etat has occurred and his home city is being run by a brutal dictator played by Pedro Armendariz. He's got designs on the beautiful young princess, Heidi Bruhl both lustful and political.
Taras Bulba
The Abbot
Ukraine, 16th century. While the Poles dominate the Cossack steppes, Andrei, son of Taras Bulba, a Cossack leader, must choose between his love for his family and his folk and his passion for a Polish woman.
Hitler
Morris Kaplan
Richard Basehart stars as one of the most influential and one of the most reviled men in history in this probing psychological study of a man who nearly gained dominance over the entire western world--at the cost of millions of lives--Hitler.
The Sad Sack
Hassim
Private Meredith Bixby is so out of step in the Army that his six weeks of planned basic training has now stretched to 17 months. After he loses a tank, WAC Major Shelton, a psychologist, is assigned to make a good soldier out of him. She requests Corporal Dolan and Private Stan Wensalawsky to help with the training. Dolan and Stan both have scores to settle with Bixby and their "guidance" leads to more mishaps. Sergeant Pulley has them shipped out to Morocco. On leave in North Africa, Bixy wanders alone into a bar, has a few Moroccan Delights, which he thinks are malted milks, and becomes convinced that exotic singer-dancer Zita is THE girl for him.
Omar Khayyam
Tutush
Omar Khayyam was one of the greatest Persian poets. He was also a brilliant mathematician. Though his quatrains were written in the 11th century, they are still popular the world over. The details of his life are unknown, so this movie invents a biography for him and includes in it his real achievements - the invention of a new calendar and the penning of those epigrammatic poems. This film has him romancing a sultan's bride and foiling the assassin sect's plot to kill the sultan's son.
Not One Shall Die
David Lessing
A short film by the United Jewish Appeal, directed by David Lowell Rich and starring Guy Madison, Felicia Farr and Agnes Moorehead, made by the core crew of many Columbia noirs, including cinematographer Burnett Guffey, art director Cary Odell, editor Al Clark, set decorator Frank Tuttle, and composer Morris Stoloff.
The First Texan
Don Carlos - magistrate
After arriving in Texas to escape a scandal back east, lawyer Sam Houston just wants to hang out his shingle, keep a low profile, and stay out of any political intrigue. However, when President Jackson personally orders him to lead the fight for Texan independence, he overcomes his reluctance to become involved and leads his compatriots to a string of victories over the Mexican army.
Bhowani Junction
Surabhai
Anglo-Indian Victoria Jones seeks her true identity amid the chaos of the British withdrawal from India.
Out of the Clouds
The Indian
A day following workers at an airport
Elephant Walk
Appuhamy
Colonial tea planter John Wiley (Peter Finch), visiting England at the end of World War II, wins and weds lovely English rose Ruth (Dame Elizabeth Taylor) and takes her home to Elephant Walk, Ceylon, where the local elephants have a grudge against the plantation. Ruth's delight with the tropical wealth and luxury of her new home is tempered by isolation as the only white woman in the district; her husband's occasional imperious arrogance; a mutual physical attraction with plantation manager Dick Carver (Dana Andrews), and the hovering, ominous menace of the hostile elephants.
The Naked Jungle
Incacha
The Leiningen South American cocoa plantation is threatened by a 2-mile-wide, 20-mile-long column of army ants.
His Majesty O'Keefe
Fatumak, Medicine Man
Men steal for it. Nations go to war for it. The it is oil - and it grows on trees. Coconut oil is the precious lifeblood of 1870s South Seas traders. And lots of real blood will be spilled to get it! Screen royalty Burt Lancaster ist His Majesty O'Keefe in this last of three adventures that (along with The Flame and the Arrow and The Crimson Pirate) blew a revitalizing wind into the sails of the swashbucker genre. Action, cunning and derring-do are watchwords of the title seafarer as he befriends, defends and ultimately rules the islanders of exotic Yap. Lensed on gorgeus Fiji locations, grandly scored by Robert Farnon and rousingly directed by Byron Haskin, His Majesty O'Keefe delivers heroics of regal proportions.
Judgment Deferred
Chancellor
A group of very strange men, refugees and casualties of the war, rally round when one of their number is framed by a drug racketeer. Co-opting a well-known journalist to their cause, they scheme to bring the racketeer to justice in a home-made "trial" in the crypt of a ruined church.
Quo Vadis
Paul
After fierce Roman commander Marcus Vinicius becomes infatuated with beautiful Christian hostage Lygia, he begins to question the tyrannical leadership of the despotic emperor Nero.
Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
Judge
Pandora Reynolds is a woman who has never fallen in love – but one who men kill and die for. When she meets dashing and mysterious ship's captain Hendrik van der Zee, he pushes her to commit the ultimate act of love.
Cairo Road
Commandant
A police chief stationed in Egypt sets out to crack down on drug traffickers along the frontiers. With his assistant, he attempts to block the smugglers' passage along the notorious Cairo Road route into the country.
Christopher Columbus
Luis de Santangel
Christopher Columbus overcomes intrigue at the Spanish court and convinces Queen Isabella that his plan to reach the East by sailing west is practical.
Calling Paul Temple
Dr. Charles Kohima
Paul Temple is called in to help Scotland Yard track down a serial killer who has murdered several wealthy women.
The Ghosts of Berkeley Square
Benjamin Disraeli
The ghosts of two stupid 18th-century officers are doomed to haunt a Berkeley Square mansion until the unlikely event of a reigning monarch paying the house a visit. It will take more than 200 years... Based on the novel "No Nightingales" by Caryl Brahms and S.J. Simon.
Dual Alibi
French Judge
A French PR man (Terence de Marney) and his girlfriend (Phyllis Dixey) steal a lottery ticket from twin trapeze artists (Herbert Lom), prompting murder.
Dim'at Ha'Nehamah Ha'Gedolah
Directed by Joseph Lejtes.
A Matter of Life and Death
The Judge
When a young RAF pilot miraculously survives bailing out of his aeroplane without a parachute, he falls in love with an American radio operator. But the officials in the other world realise their mistake and dispatch an angel to collect him.
Freedom Radio
Heini
Hitler's doctor is gradually realising that the Nazi regime isn't as good as it pretends to be when his friends start to "disappear" into the camps. His wife is courted by the party and accepts a political post in Berlin. Meanwhile Dr Karl decides to try to do something to counteract the Nazi propaganda and with the help of an engineer and a few friends he sets up the Freedom Radio to counteract the Nazi propaganda.
Crook's Tour
Ali
Charters and Caldicott are touring the Middle East. After visiting Saudi Arabia they find themselves in Bagdad where they are mistaken by a group of German spies for the messengers who are to carry a song record by beautiful singer La Palermo which contains secret instructions of the German Intelligence. Realizing their error, the German spies follow Charters and Caldicott to Istanbul and Budapest, trying to eliminate them and retrieve the record.
Rembrandt
Dr. Menasseh
This character study joins the painter at the height of his fame in 1642, when his adored wife suddenly dies and his work takes a dark, sardonic turn that offends his patrons. By 1656, he is bankrupt but consoles himself with the company of pretty maid Hendrickje, whom he's unable to marry. Their relationship brings ostracism but also some measure of happiness. The final scenes find him in his last year, 1669, physically enfeebled but his spirit undimmed.
The House of the Spaniard
Vidal
A man ignores a warning to stay away from a sinister house on marshland near Liverpool; when someone drowns close by, he finds the evidence doesn’t add up…
Things to Come
The Jew (uncredited)
The story of a century: a decades-long second World War leaves plague and anarchy, then a rational state rebuilds civilization and attempts space travel.
Nell Gwyn
(uncredited)
King Charles II first meets Nell Gwyn after seeing her do a turn at Drury Lane. They soon become close, the King preferring her feisty irreverent company to that of the aristocratic French Duchess of Portsmouth. Nell becomes his most loyal subject, while ever-ready to take the Duchess down a peg. But the actress can never hope to be fully accepted by the King's circle despite his constant attentions.
The Admiral's Secret
Don Pablo y Gonzales
A retired Admiral steals jewels and is pursued by Spanish bandits.
The Wandering Jew
Zapportas (Phase IV)
Old Jerusalem: Matathias, spiteful over his lover's illness, spits on Jesus along the road to Calvary, and is cursed to live endlessly until His return. The Crusades, 1150: Matathias, now an anonymous knight, competes for glory in combat and for the wife of a soldier. Palermo, 1290: Matteos Battadios witnesses the death of his young son, leading to conflict with his wife over whether to take comfort in Christianity. Seville, 1560: Dr Matteos Battadios dedicates himself to the treatment and comfort of the poor, but his life and work are endangered by the arrival of the Spanish Inquisition.
High Finance
Myers
Self-made businessman Sir Grant Rayburn is obsessed with making money to the exclusion of all else. He shows little interest in his daughter Jill and is irritated when she falls in love with, and wishes to marry, a young man named Tom. Sir Grant does not believe Tom is a suitable match for Jill as he does not come from a moneyed background. He suspects that Tom is a chancer with an eye on access to Jill's money....
Karma
Holy Man
The simple plot has the maharani (Devika Rani) fall in love with the neighbouring prince (Rai) despite her father's disapproval. It is presented as an Orientalist fantasy with a, by Indian standards, scandalously prolonged kiss. It was described as 'a sort of American romance done against an Indian background'.
Ask Beccles
Baki
A man steals a priceless diamond, but returns it when an innocent man is arrested for the theft.
The Flag Lieutenant
Meheti Salos
A Lieutenant is wrongly accused of cowardice
The Flying Squad
Li Yoseph
The officers of the Flying Squad attempt to track down a drug-smuggling gang.
The House Opposite
Fahmy
A Police Officer pursues a gang of blackmailers.
Stamboul
Mahmed Pasha
In the lead-up to the First World War, a French military attaché falls in love with the wife of a prominent German in Stamboul in the Ottoman Empire
Dreyfus
Dubois
In 1894, French officer Alfred Dreyfus is wrongly convicted for the treasonous acts of another man, Major Esterhazy. When investigations begin into the dubious evidence used in the trial, an institutional coverup begins, aided by fears of army disgrace and anti-Semitic paranoia against Dreyfus. But a determined group, headed by prominent author Émile Zola, leads a mounting public call to reopen the Dreyfus case.