Join SAG-AFTRA along with other unions on Sunday, October 6, as we gather to honor the legacy of the late Theodore Bikel, celebrating his profound contributions to labor, the arts and his lasting impact on the creative community.
There will be a ceremonial unveiling of "Theodore Bikel Square" outside SAG-AFTRA Plaza, followed by a special reception and musical performance inside SAG-AFTRA Plaza dedicated to his memory marking the centennial of his birth. This celebration serves as a heartfelt tribute to a remarkable artist whose work transcended generations and left an indelible mark on the world of labor, music, film, and theater.
This event is made possible by the support of the Office of Los Angeles Councilwoman 5th District Katy Yaroslavsky, SAG-AFTRA, the Actors Federal Credit Union and the Theodore Bikel Legacy Project, as we celebrate his lasting impact on the creative community.
When: Sunday, October 6 at 2 p.m. PT
Where: SAG-AFTRA Plaza, 5757 Wilshire Blvd at 677-699 South Curson Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90036
Theodore Bikel Square is the intersection of Curson Ave. & Wilshire Blvd by the A.W. Ross Statute.
Parking: Please park in the SAG-AFTRA Plaza garage off of Curson Ave. and bring your parking ticket for validation.
RSVP: Deadline to RSVP below is Tuesday, October 1.
Questions? Reach out to LARSVP@sagaftra.org.
IMPORTANT NOTE: This event is by invitation only and there is very limited space. Please do not share the registration link or event information.
About Theodore Bikel
Theodore Bikel, president of the Actors’ Equity Association from 1973 to 1982 and of the Associated Actors and Artistes of America from 1987 to 2015, died July 21, 2015 at 91.
The late SAG-AFTRA President Ken Howard said, “Theo Bikel was a masterful actor whose indelible performances on stage and screen are eclipsed only by his contributions to the quality of life of his fellow performers. He was a man of the world in the highest sense, and his was a life fully lived. He used his time on this earth — nearly a century — well and unselfishly, and remained throughout his life committed to artistry, activism, inspiration and achievement.”.
Born in Vienna on May 2, 1924, Bikel wore many hats in his long and generous life: award-winning actor of stage, screen and television, musician, singer (in 21 languages), songwriter, author, teacher, labor leader and humanitarian.
On Broadway, he was the original Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music. For lovers of the 1964 film My Fair Lady with Audrey Hepburn, Bikel was a Hungarian phonetics expert who attempts to unmask Eliza Doolittle as a fraud — and fellow Hungarian. In 1967, he first played the lead role of Tevye in the original national touring company of Fiddler on the Roof and went on to play the role in subsequent productions more than any other actor — over 2,000 performances. Television viewers saw him play comedy and drama in multiple categories of programming from the 1950s to the 2000s: classic mystery dramas Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone; westerns Wagon Train, Rawhide, Gunsmoke; crime series Columbo, LA Law, Law & Order and Murder, She Wrote; science fiction shows Star Trek: The Next Generation, Babylon 5 and a poignant serio-comic turn in two episodes of All in The Family.
Bikel’s first union involvement came with Actors’ Equity, which he joined in 1954. He was active in the Equity strike in 1960 and elected to the Equity Council in 1962. He became Equity’s first vice president in 1964, ascending to the presidency nine years later.
President Jimmy Carter appointed him to a five-year term on the National Council on the Arts in 1977. He was a vice president of The International Federation of Actors/ Fédération Internationale des Acteurs (FIA) from 1981-1991, a board member of Amnesty International, and senior vice president of the American Jewish Congress.
Bikel received numerous honors in his later years: a Doctor of Fine Arts from the University of Hartford in 1992, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997, and Doctor of Humane Letters from Seton Hall University in 2001. The spring of 2005 brought more accolades to Bikel: That April he received a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame in the Live Performance category, located at 6233 Hollywood Blvd. He was also paid tribute to in the Congressional Record on May 3 and was awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters from Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles two weeks later. The AFL-CIO convention in September 2009 honored Bikel with a resolution for his accomplishments as “the epitome of a Renaissance Man. Not content with a robust and diverse résumé as a multi-hyphenate performer, Theodore Bikel also leads a life committed to social justice.”
It was an enviable career with Bikel always in demand. As he told the Jewish Daily Forward in 2013, “I was never at a loss for work, for what to do next. I never had to wait for the telephone to ring to offer me a job. It’s been a good life.”
Bikel was widowed in 2012 when his third wife, conductor and music teacher Tamara Brooks, passed away suddenly. He is survived by his wife, journalist Aimee Ginsburg, who he married in 2013, sons Robert and Daniel, and a grandson, Wolfram.