Sam Levene

Sam Levene was a Broadway, film, radio and television actor as well as a director. In a career spanning over five decades, he originated some of the most legendary comedic roles in American theatrical history, including Nathan Detroit, the craps-shooter extraordinaire, in the 1950 original Broadway production of Guys and Dolls (1950), Max Kane, the hapless agent, in the original 1932 Broadway production of Dinner at Eight (1932); Patsy, a professional if not always successful gambler, in the longest running and original Broadway production of Three Men on a Horse (1935); Gordon Miller, the shoestring producer, in the original Broadway production of Room Service (1937); Sidney Black, a theatrical producer, in Moss Hart's original Broadway production of Light Up the Sky (1948), Horace Vandergelder, the crotchety merchant of Yonkers, in the premier UK production of Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker (1954), a play that became the basis for the musical Hello Dolly, Lou Winkler, a businessman in the original Broadway production of Fair Game (1957) a comedy by Sam Locke that Larry Gelbart attributed its 217-performance run mostly to the performance and drawing power of Sam Levene who starred in the comedy with Ellen McRae, a 25-year ingenue making her Broadway debut and who later changed her name to Ellen Burstyn; and Al Lewis, the retired vaudevillian, in the original Broadway production of The Sunshine Boys (1972), Neil Simon’s salute to vaudevillians opposite Jack Albertson as Willie Clark, a role Levene performed 466 times on Broadway, first with Jack Albertson until October 28, 1974 and later opposite Jack Gilford, October 30, 1974 until February 10, 1975. In 1984, Levene was posthumously inducted in the American Theatre Hall of Fame and in 1998, Sam Levene along with the original Broadway cast of the 1950 Guys and Dolls Decca cast album posthumously inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.