Broadway to honour Theodore Bikel, star of stage and screen, by dimming its lights on Friday

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Broadway theatres will dim their marquee lights on Friday night in memory of Theodore Bikel, who starred on Broadway as Capt. Georg von Trapp in the original 1959 production of “The Sound of Music” and portrayed Tevye in many stage productions of “Fiddler on the Roof.”

The Broadway League says the lights will be dimmed for one minute at 7:45 p.m. Bikel, a two-time Tony Award nominee, died Tuesday of natural causes in Los Angeles. He was 91.

Among his film roles, he played the grumpy Soviet submarine captain in the Oscar-nominated 1966 Cold War comedy “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming.”

A prolific recording artist, the Austrian-born Bikel helped found the Newport Folk Festival in 1959 and also was president of Actors’ Equity Association from 1973-1982.