Nehemiah Persoff
Birth : 1919-08-02, Jerusalem, Palestine Mandate
Death : 2022-04-05
History
Nehemiah Persoff (born August 2, 1919) was a former American film and television character actor. He was born in Jerusalem, Palestine Mandate.
Born in what is now part of Israel, Persoff emigrated with his family to the United States in 1929. He began to take an interest in acting in the 1940s, and after serving in the Army during World War II, he began to pursue his acting career in the New York Theater. In 1947, he was accepted into the Actor's Studio and eventually began appearing in films.
His film credits include: On the Waterfront, Some Like It Hot, Al Capone, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Voyage of the Damned, The Comancheros, Yentl (portraying Barbra Streisand's character's father), Twins and the American Tail (animated-film series) (voiced, "Papa Mousekewitz").
Persoff appeared in such television series as, Five Fingers ("The Moment of Truth"), The Big Valley ("Legend of a General", Parts I & II, episode), The Twilight Zone ("Judgment Night" episode), Alfred Hitchcock Presents ("Heart of Gold" episode), The Untouchables, Naked City, The Legend of Jesse James, Gunsmoke, The Wild Wild West, Hawaii Five-O, Ellery Queen ("The Adventure of the Pharaoh's Curse" episode), Mission: Impossible (3 episodes), Adam-12 ("Vendetta" episode), Charlie's Angels, Hunter, Columbo, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Magnum, P.I., Law & Order and Chicago Hope.
In the mid-1980s, Persoff began to pursue painting, specializing in watercolour. This was at a time when health problems forced him to decrease his acting workload.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Nehemiah Persoff, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Self - Interviewee
Boris Karloff: The Rest of the Story takes a deeper look at the life and career of Boris Karloff, from 1931 to 1969, exploring films such as The Ghoul, The Walking Dead (1936), Charlie Chan at the Opera (1936), the Mr Wong series, The Climax (1944), Lured (1947), The Strange Door (1951), Grip of the Strangler and Corridors of Blood(1958), The Comedy of Terrors (1963), The Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968), the Mexican quartet, some of his major TV appearances (The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., Wild Wild West, I-Spy) as well as taking a deep look at his often ignored Broadway career in the 1940s and 50's. There is also much time devoted to Karloff's more personal side and his relationship with his daughter, Sara.
Self
Tony Curtis, the man who influenced Elvis Presley and James Dean. A sex symbol, a matinee idol, a powerful and magnetic actor, Tony Curtis was the original movie star.
A southern pastor under fire, a father with an addicted son, an SS man in South America and a holocaust survivor in four tales, portrayed by the same actor.
Papa Mousekewitz (voice)
Follow the clues to fun and excitement as the beloved little mouse takes on a big monster in this charming, full-length adventure. When a ferocious, mouse-nabbing creature puts fear into the hearts of New York City's rodents, Fievel and his friends team up with a reporter to chase after the scoop of the century and -- just maybe -- get a close-up look at the bad guy himself!
Papa Mousekewitz (voice)
Fievel and his friend Tony Toponi find a map that they believe points to a treasure buried somewhere beneath Old New York, and the plucky rodent is determined to find it. However, what he discovers under the city is a tribe of Native American mice who were driven underground by prejudiced European immigrants.
Papa Mousekewitz (voice)
Some time after the Mousekewitz's have settled in America, they find that they are still having problems with the threat of cats. That makes them eager to try another home out in the west, where they are promised that mice and cats live in peace. Unfortunately, the one making this claim is an oily con artist named Cat R. Waul who is intent on his own sinister plan.
Mitchell Traven
Julius and Vincent Benedict are the results of an experiment that would allow for the perfect child. Julius was planned and grows to athletic proportions. Vincent is an accident and is somewhat smaller in stature. Vincent is placed in an orphanage while Julius is taken to a south seas island and raised by philosophers. Vincent becomes the ultimate low life and is about to be killed by loan sharks.
Rabbi
Jesus, a humble Judean carpenter beginning to see that he is the son of God, is drawn into revolutionary action against the Roman occupiers by Judas -- despite his protestations that love, not violence, is the path to salvation. The burden of being the savior of mankind torments Jesus throughout his life, leading him to doubt.
Papa Mousekewitz (voice)
A young mouse named Fievel and his family decide to migrate to America, a "land without cats," at the turn of the 20th century. But somehow, Fievel ends up in the New World alone and must fend off not only the felines he never thought he'd have to deal with again but also the loneliness of being away from home.
Rebbe Mendel
Rebbe Mendel is a single father who teaches the Talmud, a sacred text of Judaism, to the boys of his small Polish town. Behind closed doors, he also instructs his daughter, Yentl, despite the fact that girls are forbidden to study religious scripture. When Yentl's father dies, she still has a strong desire to learn about her faith -- so she disguises herself as a male, enrolls in a religious school, and unexpectedly finds love along the way.
Mr. Ellison
Centers on the events leading up to the cataclysmic 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington, with the story beginning on the day volcanic activity started on March 20, 1980, and ending on the day of the eruption, May 18, 1980.
Doctor Fisher
Workaholic attorney Bob O'Hara is devastated when his wife dies suddenly. However, she returns to haunt him in order to persuade him to slow down, watch his own health, and renew relationships with his two grown children.
Ashmed Amad
A criminology professor uses scientific methods, advanced computer technology, his expertise in chess, and the leg work of several of his students to track down a crazed killer in San Francisco.
Prof. Leo Tedeschi
A small town becomes gripped by an ethical debate when the community discovers a moody, egotistical scientist is experimenting with DNA and the creation of new life.
Josef Stalin
Though visibly frail and weary, President Franklin D. Roosevelt runs for a precedent-setting fourth term. He also oversees plans for the D-Day Invasion and engages in tempestuous summit meetings with his wartime allies Stalin and Churchill.
Herod Antipas
Re-created Biblical tableaux mixed with interviews.
Baron Von Steuben
This sequel to "The Bastard" continues the saga of Philip Kent, the illegitimate son of an English nobleman, who has renounced his patrician birthright to become a Colonial soldier fighting for America's independence, befriending a Southern aristocrat and his earthy buddy to help thwart a plot to assassinate George Washington. (Episodes 3 and 4 of the Kent Chronicles miniseries.)
Malimar
Daniel is thrown into the lion's den for his part in a plot, and the rest is the familiar Bible story.
Charles Frohman
Four women intimate with the showman tell his life story.
Earl Stone
Returning from prison after serving ten years on trumped-up charges, a freelance writer tries to uncover the truth behind a homicide involving the son of a U.S. senator in this pilot for a prospective series.
After the death of his parents, millionaire playboy Jack Cole is framed on charges of embezzlement. In prison, Cole learns various tricks of the criminal trade - lockpicking, safecracking, electronic surveillance, etc. Upon his release, Cole uses his wealth and his newly learned talents to help others, leaving his calling card, a "sword of justice", at the scene.
Mort Logan
Farmer struggles to keep food on the table, and regain his son who has joined a gang of marauding city-folk during the world's worst famine.
Herr Hauser
A luxury liner carries Jewish refugees from Hitler's Germany in a desperate fight for survival.
Rudenko
The story of Francis Gary Powers, a U-2 pilot for the CIA who was shot down in his spy plane over Russia, captured and imprisoned.
Doctor Gubner
Mental patient Arnold Masters, hospitalized for a murder he didn't commit, learns astral projection--the art of leaving one's physical body and transporting the soul someplace else--from a fellow inmate. Upon his release, Arnold uses his new powers to bump off the people he holds responsible for his arrest, his mother's death while he was imprisoned and the price of meat! Lt. Morgan and Lt. Anderson are the cops on his trail, while his caring shrink, Dr. Scott, tries to prevent any more deaths.
Dr. Duchesnes
The disease: incurable. The odds: insurmountable. But Eric will not surrender! An unforgettable true drama of a young man's fight for hope, for love, for life. A two-hour special adapted from Doris Lund's best-seller "Eric."
Dr. Edward Klein
Who is the father of Ann Collins’ baby? Her husband had a vasectomy years ago. And Ann hasn’t been with another man. Even more mysterious: as the baby grows inside her, Ann begins to change. She is beset by strange illnesses, pours tablespoons of salt on her food, turns the thermostat to 50 degrees, speed-reads academic tomes. But much bigger shocks are yet to come. Barbara Eden stars in this hypnotic, swiftly paced blend of horror and sci-fi from Richard Matheson, the popular and prolific writer who also penned the novel I AM LEGEND and several notable THE TWILIGHT ZONE scripts.
Nick Fortis
A thinly-disguised version of the life of Marilyn Monroe, detailing her ups and downs in life and how her erratic behavior contributed to her deteriorating career.
Dr. Van Helsing
This 1973 Canadian TV movie adaptation of DRACULA played on CBC's Purple Playhouse program. Norman Welsh plays the vampire count that resembles Stoker's original vision for the character.
Champagne Joe Carroll
After a policeman is murdered in an ambush, rumors surface that he was on the take. His widow sets out to catch the killers and clear her husband's name.
Delia Peletier has been paid to have a child for a wealthy man who wants an heir. She has the baby and turns it over to her "employer," but subsequently decides she wants the child back. She hires three men to kidnap the child. The quartet hides out in the house of Bernard Lapin, a nuclear scientist they believe to be away on business. Lapin returns, however, and becomes romantically involved with Delia. Meanwhile, her three kidnappers turn on her when they learn she actually wants the child and not the ransom money as she claimed.
Artie Moreno
The name Michael O'Hara has become synonymous with law enforcement. There have been three generations of Michael O'Haras and all have been exemplary policemen. When Michael O'Hara III's child was born he was told that they would not be able to have any more children, and there has always been a Michael O'Hara, so he named his child Michael O'Hara IV despite the fact that she is a girl. Now Mike has a tendency to get involved with police matters and not always with good results, which annoys her father. And despite being told repeatedly to stay out of it, she continues her amateurish detective activities.
Amadeo Montoya
Before going off to World War II, Frank Arnold (Richard Crenna) relocates his wife, Ann (Claire Bloom), and son, Joshua (Richard Thomas), to New Mexico. Joshua has a difficult time fitting in, finding himself a minority in a predominantly Latino community, and his mother doesn't fare much better, treating her loneliness with increasing quantities of alcohol. At length, Joshua makes some friends and begins to adjust, but bad news from overseas threatens to spoil what he's accomplished.
Berisha
Mrs. Emily Pollifax of New Jersey goes to the CIA to volunteer for spy duty, being in her own opinion, expendable now that the children are grown and she's widowed. And being just what the department needed (someone who looks and acts completely unlike a spy), she's assigned to simple courier duty to pick up a book in Mexico City. But when the pickup doesn't go as planned, Mrs. Pollifax finds herself handcuffed to a handsome stranger on a plane bound for an Albanian prison. And it's up to her to get them out.
Dr. Salazar
A married couple struggle with the realities of their imperfect marriage as they fight to save and rehabilitate their teenage daughter from a life of drug addiction and ultimate committal to a mental ward.
Santillo
The Marshal of Santa Fe returns home to find his town almost wiped out by Mexican bandits and enlists the help of a young Mexican boy and his mother to track them down.
Lieutenant Crawford
A runaway truck containing the corpse of a slain gang leader rolls into a California nightclub owned by Johnny Cain, a hard bitten former free-lance adventurer. The gang threatens to kill Johnny, unless he solves the murder. The CIA also investigates - because it turns out that the slaying was part of a long-range Communist plan to take over the crime syndicate. Cain's search for clues leads him into a maze of beautiful girls, mysterious Oriental statues and murderous spies.
Capt. Kramer
Two American POWs break out of a Japanese jungle prison camp with their captors' secret decoding device and try to reach freedom despite being slowed by an opportunistic sea captain, his pretty daughter, and a black marketeer.
Captain Malcione
The story concerns young David Jones, who travels to Italy during his vacation to work with his uncle, Max, an archaeologist who raises ancient artifacts from the ocean floor. One of Max's divers is killed and the site becomes suspect--especially after several of the artifacts disappear; they know these will be sold illegally to rich collectors. When word gets out that these items have disappeared, other men are endangered on the site, and, indeed, someone tries to kill Dave. Helping Dave and his uncle is a young Italian boy named Augusto Donato, who tells Dave to call him "Gus." Dave teaches him to dive and in return Gus helps Dave spy on several of the suspects and also helps save his life when Dave is attacked.
August Best
An American agent is assigned to track down a renegade Soviet spy who is building an atomic device in Los Angeles and plans to destroy the city with it.
Prof. Carl Melnicker
One by one members of a special project team are being killed by telekinesis - the ability to move things with the power of the mind alone. The race is on to determine which of the remaining team members is the murderer and to stop them.
Pizzuco
Set in Sicily, this violent crime drama tells the tale of an Italian cop who heads to a small island town to look into the death of a construction supplier. Once there he is shocked by the influence the Mafia has over the people and even himself.
Lt. Dow Reeves
When four geologists who form a combine of five industrial companies turn up dead, the race is on to determine whether the culprit is a group of high-powered industrial interests or the government. A trouble-shooter is hired to find a net of deadly intrigue and treachery. The prize: a field to be leased to private industry by the state.
Skoda
A dying marshal deputizes a drifter to deliver the two killers in his custody to prison. However, the new deputy must elude a pair of bounty hunters who want to deliver the prisoners themselves to collect the reward and would think nothing of killing the deputy to get them.
Georgi
When some priceless Macedonian treasures are swiped, lawyer Falk arrives to get to the bottom of things.
Shemiah
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.
Ben Sawyer
A man refuses to believe that pilot error caused a fatal crash, and persists in looking for another reason. Airliner crashes near Los Angeles due to unusual string of coincidences. Stewardess, who is sole survivor, joins airline executives in discovering the causes of the crash.
Under Secretary Segura
Bob Hope becomes surrogate father to a baby found abandoned at the United Nations. Director Jack Arnold's 1964 comedy also stars Yvonne De Carlo, Robert Sterling, John McGiver and Lilo Pulver.
Capt. Van Ryn
Three soldiers in Korea go through inner torment when they're ordered to execute an enemy soldier.
Graile
Texas Ranger Jake Cutter arrests gambler Paul Regret, but soon finds himself teamed with his prisoner in an undercover effort to defeat a band of renegade arms merchants and thieves known as Comancheros.
Bruno Everard
A European circus family is torn apart by greed and jealousy.
Dan, Starret's Foreman
Blaise Starrett is a rancher at odds with homesteaders when outlaws hold up the small town. The outlaws are held in check only by their notorious leader, but he is diagnosed with a fatal wound and the town is a powder keg waiting to blow.
Benito Mussolini
As the Salo Republic crumbles around him, Mussolini, along with his mistress and several of his ministers flee with retreating Nazi soldiers, but are caught at the town of Dongo by red partisans. All are brutally executed without trial.
Johnny Torrio
In this unusually accurate biography, small-time hood Al Capone comes to Chicago at the dawn of Prohibition to be the bodyguard of racketeer Johnny Torrio. Capone's rise in Chicago gangdom is followed through murder, extortion, and political fraud. He becomes head of Chicago's biggest "business," but moves inexorably toward his downfall and ignominious end.
Don Panta
A young Venezuelan idealist flees his native land to escape a revolution. Hoping to find peace, he goes to the mountains and the forests of the Amazon. There he encounters Rima, the Bird Girl, an orphan living a life of nature, who is feared by a local jungle tribe.
Little Bonaparte
Two musicians witness a mob hit and struggle to find a way out of the city before they are found by the gangsters. Their only opportunity is to join an all-girl band as they leave on a tour. To make their getaway they must first disguise themselves as women, then keep their identities secret and deal with the problems this brings - such as an attractive bandmate and a very determined suitor.
Pablo
During the Spanish Civil War, an American allied with the Republicans finds romance during a desperate mission to blow up a strategically important bridge.
Pinelli
Director Charles Lederer's 1959 musical stars James Cagney as an unscrupulous longshoreman who'll resort to every dirty trick in the book to win his union's presidency.
Vincente (The Powder Monkey)
Two men are released from the Arizona Territorial Prison at Yuma in 1898. One, the Dutchman, is out to get both gold and revenge from the people of a small mining town who had him imprisoned unjustly. The other, McBain, is just trying to go straight, but that is easier said than done once the Dutchman involves him in his gold theft scheme.
Albert Legros
Twenty-year-old Joseph and his sixteen-year-old sister Suzanne live in the merciless conditions of an intemperate foreign land with their widowed mother. Their mother attempts to exert a hold on her children by involving them in the family's run-down rice plantation. However the siblings seek liberation, and look for this in their romantic lives. Suzanne becomes involved with Michael and Joseph finds a love interest in Claude.
Leon
A rookie New York cop has to deal with juvenile delinquents, his superiors, and blame for the suicide of a woman who jumped to her death while he was in her apartment.
Sfc. Lewis
In Korea, on 6 September 1950, Lieutenant Benson's platoon finds itself isolated in enemy-held territory after a retreat. Soon they are joined by Sergeant Montana, whose overriding concern is caring for his catatonic colonel. Benson and Montana can't stand each other, but together they must get the survivors to Hill 465, where they hope the division is waiting. It's a long, harrowing march, fraught with all the dangers the elusive enemy can summon.
Police Officer
Mayerling is the name of a notorious Austrian village linked to a romantic tragedy. At a royal hunting lodge there, in 1889, Crown Prince Rudolf--desperate over his father's command to put away his teenage mistress, the Baroness Marie Vetsera--shot her to death and killed himself. The misfortune may indeed have been a murder-suicide, but perhaps it was a political assassination, or even the result of a lunatic family vendetta: scholarship is still catching up with the facts.
Eugene 'Gene' Conforti
In 1953, an innocent man named Christopher Emmanuel "Manny" Balestrero is arrested after being mistaken for an armed robber.
Kicks Johnson
An ex-football brute (Anthony Quinn) and his beatnik gang take a rich girl (Carol Ohmart) and her boyfriend hostage (Arthur Franz) at a jazz joint.
Leo
Jobless sportswriter Eddie Willis is hired by corrupt fight promoter Nick Benko to promote his current protégé, an unknown Argentinian boxer named Toro Moreno. Although Moreno is a hulking giant, his chances for success are hampered by a powder-puff punch and a glass jaw. Exploiting Willis' reputation for integrity and standing in the boxing community, Benko arranges a series of fixed fights that propel the unsophisticated Moreno to #1 contender for the championship. The reigning champ, the sadistic Buddy Brannen, harbors resentment at the publicity Toro has been receiving and vows to viciously punish him in the ring. Eddie must now decide whether or not to tell the naive Toro the truth.
D'Arnault-Olivier
The son of a French aristocrat is accused of stealing his father's money and of stealing his step-sister's heart.
Cab Driver (uncredited)
Terry Malloy dreams about being a prize fighter, while tending his pigeons and running errands at the docks for Johnny Friendly, the corrupt boss of the dockers union. Terry witnesses a murder by two of Johnny's thugs, and later meets the dead man's sister and feels responsible for his death. She introduces him to Father Barry, who tries to force him to provide information for the courts that will smash the dock racketeers.
The Critic
Marty Pilletti is a 36-year-old butcher who lives with his mother, who is always asking him why he doesn't find a nice girl and get married. The truth is Marty is lonely and would like nothing better, but he has low self-esteem and admits to his mother that he's ugly and no one wants him. He's tired of going to the Saturday night dance with his buddies and then going home more depressed than he was when the evening started. But at one of those dances he meets Clara. They have a great deal in common but Marty will have to overcome peer pressure if he and Clara are to have a relationship.
