Hal Linden

Hal Linden, born Harold Lipshitz on March 20, 1931, in the Bronx, New York City, is an American actor, television director, and musician whose career has spanned stage, screen, and television from the 1950s through the 2000s. The youngest son of Frances (née Rosen) and Charles Lipshitz, a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant who owned a printing shop, Linden grew up with an older brother, Bernard, who became a professor of music at Bowling Green State University. He attended Herman Ridder Junior High School and the High School of Music and Art before studying music at Queens College, City University of New York. He subsequently enrolled at Baruch College and then City College of New York, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in business.

Before pursuing acting, Linden built a career as a musician and singer. Drawn to big band music from an early age, he adopted his stage name after spotting the word "Linden" on a water tower in Linden, New Jersey, while riding a bus from Philadelphia to New York, concluding that "Swing and Sway with Harold Lipshitz" was not a workable billing. During the 1950s he toured with Sammy Kaye, Bobby Sherwood, and other big bands, playing saxophone and clarinet in addition to singing. In 1952 he enlisted in the United States Army, was stationed at Fort Belvoir, and performed with the United States Army Band. While stationed there, he attended a touring production of Guys and Dolls in Washington, D.C., an experience that redirected his ambitions toward acting. He was discharged in 1954 and subsequently worked in summer stock and off-Broadway productions before making his way to Broadway.

Linden's Broadway career extended from 1956 to 2001 and encompassed a wide range of productions. He replaced Sydney Chaplin in Bells Are Ringing in 1958, and in 1962 he was cast as Billy Crocker in an off-Broadway revival of Cole Porter's Anything Goes. During the 1960s, when stage work was scarce, he dubbed English dialogue for foreign films, recorded voiceover work for commercials, sang jingles, and performed in industrial musicals including Diesel Dazzle in 1966. His Broadway credits include The Pajama Game, The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window, Happy Birthday, Mr. Abbott!, and the play Three Men on a Horse. His most celebrated stage role came in 1971, when he portrayed Mayer Rothschild in the musical The Rothschilds, a performance that earned him the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. In 2001, he returned to Broadway to lead the production of The Gathering at the Cort Theater, taking on a role that Theodore Bikel had originated off-Broadway.

Linden became most widely recognized for his work in television, particularly as the title character in the ABC police sitcom Barney Miller, which premiered in 1975 and ran until 1982. He played Captain Barney Miller of the 12th Precinct in Greenwich Village, a role he later described as simultaneously his most irrational decision and one of his best. The performance earned him seven Primetime Emmy Award nominations and four Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy Series. Concurrent with Barney Miller, he served as narrator and host of the ABC children's programs Animals, Animals, Animals and FYI, winning two Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Individual Achievement for his hosting work on FYI in 1984 and 1985. In 1995, he received a third Daytime Emmy Award for his 1994 guest appearance as Rabbi Markovitz on CBS Schoolbreak Special.

Following Barney Miller, Linden appeared in several television films, among them I Do! I Do! and Starflight: The Plane That Couldn't Land, both in 1982 and 1983 respectively. In 1985 he portrayed studio head Jack L. Warner in the television biopic My Wicked, Wicked Ways: The Legend of Errol Flynn. The following year he led the NBC series Blacke's Magic, playing Alexander Blacke, a magician who solves crimes alongside his father, played by Harry Morgan; the series was canceled after 13 episodes. In 1988 he co-starred in the romantic comedy A New Life, directed by Alan Alda. He later headlined the ABC comedy-drama series Jack's Place from 1992 to 1993, in which he played a retired jazz musician operating a restaurant, and appeared in the CBS sitcom The Boys Are Back in 1994. In 1997 he played Ebenezer Scrooge in the annual Madison Square Garden production of A Christmas Carol, and in 1999 he appeared in The Rockford Files: If It Bleeds... It Leads. Guest roles in the 2000s included appearances on Touched by an Angel, The King of Queens, Gilmore Girls, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and Hot in Cleveland. He also narrated episodes of Biography and The American Experience and voiced the character Eli Selig on the animated series The Zeta Project. In 2002, Linden received a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars. He released his first album of pop and jazz standards, It's Never Too Late, in 2011.