David Opatoshu

David Opatoshu, born David Opatovsky on January 30, 1918, in New York, New York, was an American actor whose career spanned stage, film, television, and radio across more than five decades. He died on April 30, 1996.

Opatoshu began his professional life in the Yiddish theater before joining the national tour of Golden Boy in 1938, where he played the role of Mr. Carp. His Broadway debut followed in 1940 with the play Night Music. During World War II he served with the Army Air Forces in the South Pacific, and his experiences there became the basis for Between Sea and Sand, a collection of short stories he wrote in Yiddish and published in 1946. After the war he returned to New York and built a career across multiple entertainment platforms simultaneously, working in radio, theater, television, and film.

His Broadway career extended from 1940 through 1969 and included productions such as Silk Stockings (1955), Once More, With Feeling (1958), The Wall (1960), Bravo Giovanni (1962), Lorenzo (1963), and Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? (1969). His film work began even earlier, with The Light Ahead in 1939, a picture directed by Henry Felt and Edgar G. Ulmer that was filmed entirely in Yiddish. He appeared as homicide detective Sgt. Ben Miller in Jules Dassin's 1948 film noir The Naked City, produced by Mark Hellinger, and took a small uncredited role in Dassin's subsequent film Thieves Highway. In 1953 he appeared in Henri Verneuil's Public Enemy Number One, and in 1958 he played a supporting role in The Brothers Karamazov alongside William Shatner.

Opatoshu became widely recognized for his portrayal of the Irgun leader in Otto Preminger's 1960 film Exodus, a fictional character whose role was based on Menachem Begin's involvement with the Irgun and who served as the estranged uncle of the protagonist Ari Ben Canaan. He played the father of Benny Rampell, uncredited, in The Cardinal (1963), and in 1965 appeared in Tarzan and the Valley of Gold as the film's supervillain. The following year he portrayed Herr Jacobi in Alfred Hitchcock's Torn Curtain (1966), playing one of the figures who assist Paul Newman and Julie Andrews in escaping from East Germany. In 1967 he played Morris Kolowitz, father of the main character, in Carl Reiner's directorial debut Enter Laughing. He later wrote the screenplay for Romance of a Horsethief (1971), adapting a novel by his father, Joseph Opatoshu. In 1977 he portrayed Menachem Begin in the television film Raid on Entebbe, which dramatized the July 4, 1976, rescue of hostages at Entebbe Airport in Uganda.

Opatoshu's television career began in 1949 and continued into the 1980s. In 1963 he co-starred with James Doohan in the Twilight Zone episode "Valley of the Shadow," and the following year guest-starred in The Outer Limits episode "A Feasibility Study." In 1965 he appeared in a Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea episode and in the two-part Man from U.N.C.L.E. episode "The Alexander the Greater Affair." His most recognized television role came in 1967 when he played Anan 7 in the original Star Trek episode "A Taste of Armageddon," reuniting him with his Brothers Karamazov co-star William Shatner. In 1969 he appeared in episodes of Hawaii Five-O, Ironside, and Mannix. His subsequent television work included appearances on Daniel Boone (1970), Kojak, The Bionic Woman (1977), Little House on the Prairie (1978), Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1981), and the 1981 miniseries Masada. In 1986 he played an Iranian ambassador in the TV thriller Under Siege, and in 1989 he guest-starred as the Tenctonese ex-slave Paul Revere in the Alien Nation episode "Night of the Screams." In 1991 he received an Emmy Award for his guest appearance in "A Prayer for the Goldsteins," an episode of the ABC series Gabriel's Fire.

On June 10, 1941, Opatoshu married Lillian Weinberg, a psychiatric social worker. They had one child together, screenwriter Danny Opatoshu. Lillian Opatoshu died on May 13, 2000.