Actor is an appropriate title for a biopic of Paul Muni, for in the early days of the talkies he was considered one of the best, an actor with a capital A. Much of that reputation came on the back of his performances in a trio of Warner Brothers biopics, The Story of Louis Pasteur, The Life of Emile Zola and Juarez. So much so that when Columbia Pictures filmed a biopic of Frederic Chopin, A Song to Remember focused on Muni’s character of Professor Elsner instead of the composer. Similarly, Actor concentrates its story on Muni’s father, who Muni proclaims after winning his Oscar, was an actor… an ACTOR!

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Cue flashback. Somewhere in the backwoods of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Favel Weissenfreund and his heavily pregnant wife Salche are singing for their supper. Shortly after their performance, their third son Meshilem is born. Within a few years he is put to work, shaking the tambourine to collect money for his family’s troupe of ‘tingle-tangle’ players.  Yet pickings are slim, encouraging Favel to seek fame and fortune in America. When he is unable to secure a union ticket to perform in New York, the family heads west.

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Sporadically, Actor returns to the adult Paul Muni in Hollywood, where he is portrayed by famed choreographer Michael Kidd. Unobtrusively reminding the viewer that this is Muni’s biopic after all, these few short scenes feature one of the film’s highlights, an amusing depiction of studio heads trying to think of a new name for the latest signing. For the most part though, Actor remains an enchanting portrait of turn of the century Yiddish theatre.

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This musical was the final production of PBS’s Hollywood Television Theatre, a series of original stage plays adapted for the small screen. Written by the playwrighting team of Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, whose first stage success ‘Inherit the Wind’ starred Paul Muni, the biopic is based on Lawrence’s biography ‘Actor: The Life and Times of Paul Muni’.​