Jerry Orbach

News Obituary Article

JERRY ORBACH: 1935-2004 AN APPRECIATION: The pivotal co-star who always stole the show

By JILL VEJNOSKA

Nobody put Jerry in the corner.

Jerry Orbach was one of the unlikeliest leading men in history. Born in the Bronx to a pair of performers, the actor with the Vaselined hair and the droopy-featured face only a basset hound's mama could love spent his adolescent years in Illinois. But the Broadway song-and-dance man turned latter-day TV icon always sounded like a guy from the streets of New York. With a slightly nasal, world-weary voice perfectly pitched for making wry observations and wisecracking asides, he should never have played anything other than the other guy --- the work buddy or second-best friend.

Instead, when Orbach left us Tuesday at age 69 after a brief battle with prostate cancer, he was right where he'd seemingly always been in his show-business career: at center stage.

You don't die more in the middle of things than did Orbach, whose new television series, "Law & Order: Trial by Jury," was slated to join the NBC schedule later this season. A representative of the show told The Associated Press Wednesday that Orbach is expected to appear in early episodes of the third spin-off of "Law & Order," the book-'em-and-cook-'em drama about cops and D.A.'s that arguably started the whole procedural series phenomenon in 1990.

Orbach was to have returned as Lennie Briscoe, the sardonic, street-smart detective he played to pithy perfection for 12 years on "Law & Order." It was to have been a secondary role (having retired from the NYPD, Briscoe now would take on investigating tasks for the D.A.'s office), but, really, who among us was dumb enough to believe that?

He'd been quietly stealing the show --- every show he'd ever been in --- practically since 1960, when he appeared (where else?) off-off-Broadway as the narrator in a new show called "The Fantasticks." It went on to run for 42 years, and Orbach --- who began and ended each show by warbling the haunting "Try to Remember" --- went on to star in numerous Broadway musicals, including "Chicago," "42nd Street" and "Promises, Promises," for which he won a Tony.

His movie roles ranged from Lumiere, the candelabra kids instantly loved in "Beauty and the Beast," to the inherently decent doctor dad who heard Patrick Swayze pronounce "Nobody puts Baby in the corner" at the end of 1987's "Dirty Dancing."

Swayze became an overnight sensation, but it was Orbach who waltzed off with enduring fame, thanks in no small part to "Law & Order."

And vice versa.

If the show seems likely to stay around forever, if only in reruns, much credit goes to Orbach, who gave "L&O" personality and a heart where it was supposed to have none. Cases, not characters, were what viewers were supposed to become invested in, which may explain why Orbach's two predecessors on the beat (George Dzundza, Paul Sorvino) were quickly gunned down to little viewer outrage.

Nobody knew what we were missing until Briscoe showed up with a work ethic as old-fashioned as his short-sleeved white shirts and an endless stream of irresistibly bad puns. Some of it was good writing, sure, but mostly it was Orbach's inimitable delivery and great sense of knowing where he and Briscoe belonged at all times.

Center stage.

© 2004 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution