Is an Emmy Worth a 51-Year Wait? Ask Fyvush Finkel

Fyvush Finkel says he never would have changed his name-- even if he had been asked. Nor would he have altered his nose, which distinguishes a face that can call up a rainbow of emotions with the speed of a photographer’s flash. And when he won the Emmy Award last week as best supporting actor in a dramatic series for his portrayal of Douglas Wambaugh, the crafty but good-hearted lawyer on CBS’ “Picket Fences,” Finkel stood his ground.

“I don’t care how much time they gave me,” he said of the 30-second limit imposed on winners for their acceptance speeches, gloriously shaking his award off the Richter scale. “I waited 51 years to get on this stage!”

Over lunch this week at the commissary at Fox--the studio where “Picket Fences” is filmed--Finkel, who turns 72 next month, was still exulting, invariably punctuating sentences with deep, melodic laughs as he told jokes or when the likes of Mel Brooks stopped at his table.

“I waited a long time for recognition,” explained the actor, a great-grandfather, in the company of his wife Trudy, to whom he’s been married for 47 1/2 years.

His wait exceeds the longevity of the 46-year-old Emmys. A son of East European immigrants, Finkel has been in show business since age 9, starting out in Yiddish theater around the corner from his house in Brooklyn, when a boy soprano was needed. That, of course, was years before TV. After graduation from high school, where he learned a furrier’s trade, he went on the Yiddish theater circuit.

“I stayed in the Yiddish theater till I was 43 years old. When I left it, I was a star.”

He was not the romantic lead--”I never got the girl,” he explained. At 6-foot-3, he was supposed to play villains, but Finkel insisted on the role of a comedian, who came on stage wearing white socks, the comic’s trademark, which itself provoked laughter. He segued to American theater with “Fiddler on the Roof.” A baritone, Finkel was in the road company for more than 12 years, graduating from the role of the innkeeper at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in 1966 (a role he reprised on Broadway in 1970) to the butcher, to Tevye.

He played the owner of the “Little Shop of Horrors” Off-Broadway for five years in the 1980s, and starred in both Off-Broadway and Broadway productions of “Cafe Crown,” a revival about Yiddish theater. Finkel won an Obie in 1989.

Movie credits include “Brighton Beach Memoirs” and “Seize the Day.” He also did commercials, played the Florida condo and Catskills circuits, occasionally appeared on a soap.

“It’s the biggest miracle in the world, getting a TV series at my age,” said Finkel, who allows that he’s “shrunk an inch” with age. “It’s happened for other actors but I’m talking of myself-- that’s the point.”

And he did it without an audition, which for Finkel has special meaning.

“Picket Fences” executive producer David Kelley rented the 1990 movie “Q & A,” in which Finkel had a brief cameo as a lawyer defending a gangster. “I just took one look at him and knew that was Wambaugh,” said Kelley, taking a phone break from his writing. “I was looking for a character, a real character, that I could give legitimate, serious debate to, and yet, you could get a sense of comedy from him at the same time.

“Wambaugh was written as probably a grittier and tougher character, maybe a less redeeming character,” Kelley says, “and then, when we melded it with Fyvush, we had to adjust it. Fyvush’s own personality pervaded the character of Wambaugh, a person who really loves life. We had contemplated this as a man who really had a lot of scar tissue and maybe was angry at the world. Well, that’s not Fyvush.”

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Not now anyway. But there was a time, long before “Fiddler,” when Finkel yearned for Broadway.

In 1952, he tried out for a role in Cole Porter’s “Can-Can” and, after a call-back audition, was told Porter wanted to see him. “So you’d think it was in the bag. He said, ‘Mr. Finkel’--I’ll never forget it--’you’re a great artist. I go to see the Yiddish theater sometimes, because that’s where I get my ideas for my music’--because most of his music is in a minor key. ‘And you are so wonderful, but unfortunately I can’t seem to find a part (for you).’

“I turned white and green and blue,” Finkel said. “I couldn’t eat for a week. I said, ‘To hell with them! I’m not going to audition anymore.’ Then in 1965, I had to audition for ‘Fiddler.’ ” He laughed. “When an actor makes a statement, that doesn’t mean he’s going to stick to it.”

Finkel had been up for the Emmy last year; it went to Chad Lowe of ABC’s “Life Goes On.” “Inwardly I was (disappointed) but the smile remained,” he recalls. “What are you going to do? Ninety percent of the critics said I would get it. This time, we came to the ceremony”--he had started to say “service”--”and we decided (that) no matter what happens, we’re going to enjoy ourselves. To be nominated is an honor but winning is an even bigger honor.”

Ironically, the episode that helped Finkel win the Emmy resulted from some complaints that his lawyer character played into an anti-Semitic stereotype of an ambulance chaser. So by way of an answer, Kelley wrote an episode in which the rabbi of Wambaugh’s temple wanted to revoke his membership, claiming Wambaugh was an embarrassment to Judaism. The show pointed out that while Wambaugh may be a “hustler”--distributing cards that say “reasonable doubt for a reasonable fee”--he is a good Jew and a good man, who defends some who can’t afford to pay.

“Wambaugh is an intellect, “ Finkel said, savoring the word. “He knows the law. He might be eccentric, but only in the courtroom. At home he’s a good father, a good husband, but when he enters that courtroom he’s a madman sometimes. He twists around the judge, the D.A., his own witness sometimes. You can’t fool him.”

As for the actor, he says he’s “getting the offers you never even dreamed before. Movies, guest shots on other shows, commercials. All in one week they came. . . .”

“Do you know Mr. Mel Brooks?” Finkel asked his interviewer as the director approached to offer congratulations on the Emmy.

“Did you see his revue ‘Finkel’s Follies’ (at the Westwood Playhouse in 1990)?” Brooks asked. “My wife (Anne Bancroft) and I went backstage; it was sensational.”

“There was no pretense about it,” Finkel said. He could say the same of himself.

* “Picket Fences” begins its third season at 10 tonight on CBS (Channels 2 and 8).