Picket Fences star Philip “Fyvush” Finkel died on Sunday at his home in Manhattan.
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The son of Jewish immigrants from Poland and Russia, Finkel was born in Brownsville, Brooklyn in 1922 and began his entertainment career at age 9 on the Yiddish stage, for which he adopted the stage name Fyvush Finkel.
He broke into the mainstream in 1964 with the national production of “Fiddler on the Roof”, playing the part of Mordcha the innkeeper.
After appearing in a small role in Sidney Lumet’s 1990 film Q&A, Kelley cast Finkel on Picket Fences, which ran from 1992 to 1996.
Finkel made a late-career switch to television, winning an Emmy for his performance as a lawyer in the series Picket Fences, but also found time for an Off-Broadway show about Finkel’s Follies, about his time in Yiddish Theatre, and returned to Broadway in a short-lived revival of Café Crown, set in the same mileu. Over the years he refined his act as a singer, dancer and comedian in the Jewish theatre as well as a stand-up comedian.
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Finkel was married for 61 years to Trudi Lieberman until her death in 2008. He is survived by his two sons, a brother, three grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.
