Alan Arkin, who won a Tony Award for his first Broadway lead role, was nominated for an Academy Award for his first feature film, and has since had a long and varied career as a character actor who specializes in comedy. was The drama star died Thursday in San Marcos, Calif., at the age of 89.
His son, Matthew Arkin, said Arkin died at home after suffering from heart disease.
Arkin is novice to show business when he starred in Joseph Stein’s 1963 Broadway comedy Enter Laughing, an adaptation of Carl Reiner’s semi-autobiographical novel about a boy who fell in love with the Bronx stage. It didn’t matter. He has toured and recorded with the folk music troupe The Taliers, and has appeared on Broadway with the famous improvisational comedy troupe Second City. However, he was still not well known.
He did not remain obscure for long.
With a cast that included high-profile professionals like Sylvia Sidney and Vivian Blaine, Mr. Arkin stole the show and won the hearts of critics. “‘Enter Laughing’ is wonderfully funny, and so is Alan Arkin, who stars in it,” Howard Taubman wrote in The New York Times.
Arkin won a Tony Award. The show ran for a year and made him a star.
Critics were frenzied again, and Mr. Arkin returned to Broadway in 1964 as the Misfit in Mike Nichols’ Murray Sisgal’s absurd farce Muv-Luv, starring Eli Wallach and Ann Jackson. joined the work. . A two-time Broadway winner, it was a confident Arkin who moved from the stage to the screen in 1966.
“I never had any doubts about being in a movie,” he told the Daily News a year later. “I knew I had to do it because I had no other choice.”
A full obituary will be published shortly.
Former New York Times arts editor Robert Burkvist died in January.
