Alvin Epstein

 ( 20th-century American Male Actors ) 

Alvin Epstein (May 14, 1925 – December 10, 2018) was an American actor and director. He was a founding member of both the American Repertory Theater and Yale Repertory Theatre. He was particularly admired for his performances in the plays of Samuel Beckett. He also served as Artistic Director at the Guthrie Theater.

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Life and career Born in the Bronx, Epstein was the son of Harry Epstein, a physician, and his wife Goldie Epstein (née Rudnick). He graduated from the High School of Music & Art in Manhattan and the Queens College, City University of New York. After serving in the United States Army during World War II in Germany, he studied dance in New York with Martha Graham and mime in Paris. His early performances in New York City included appearing in mimes with Marcel Marceau. In 1956 he made his Broadway theatre debut as the Fool in Orson Welles’ 1956 production of William Shakespear's King Lear. That same year he portrayed the slave Lucky in the Broadway premiere of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.

Epstein continued to appear in many productions of Beckett's plays, including Clov, the servant, in the United States premiere of Endgame in 1958. He portrayed two more characters in that play during his career: Hamm, Clov’s tyrannical blind master, in a 1984 Off-Broadway production that he also directed, at the Samuel Beckett Theater; and Hamm’s aged father, Nagg, who lives in a garbage can, performed at the Irish Repertory Theatre in Manhattan in 2005 and again, in 2008, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

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Credits

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Film

Narrator

Bookseller

Uncle Alfred

Leonard Carver

Otto Zurmer

Preston Brooks

Man With Nose Bleed

Mortimer

Old Man

Old Man

Erik Erikson

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Television

1956	Omnibus		Segment: Androcles and the Lion
1959	The Further Adventures of Ellery Queen	Elwood Parker	Episode: "The Paper Tigers"
1960	Armstrong Circle Theatre	Reinhard Heydrich	Episode: "Engineer of Death: The Eichmann Story"
1961	Naked City	Elliot Kesbek	Episode: "The Fault In Our Stars"
1961	Play of the Week	Lucky	Episode: "Waiting for Godot"
1961	Play of the Week	Camille	Episode: "Therese Raquin"
1961	Great Ghost Tales	Dr. Kaplan	Episode: "Who Is the Fairest One of All?"
1963	The Doctors	Philip Manning
1964	Mr. Broadway	Chauvigny	Episode: "Maggie, Queen of the Jungle"
1969	NET Playhouse	Ensemble Member	Episode: Story Theatre
1986	Doing Life	Lou Rosenberg
1990	Law & Order	Dr. Chester	Episode: "Prescription for Death"
2004	Law & Order	Stuart Rubin	Episode: "City Hall"
2012		Harold Lassiter	Episode: "Lessons Learned"
My America	Elderly Veteran	Episode: "Roosevelt Island"

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External links

Categories: 20th-century American Male Actors, 1925 Births, 2018 Deaths, American Male Film Actors, American Male Stage Actors, American Male Radio Actors, American Male Television Actors, Queens College, City University Of New York Alumni

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