Howard Da Silva

Howard Da Silva, born Howard Silverblatt on May 4, 1909, in Cleveland, Ohio, was an American actor, director, and writer whose career spanned stage, film, television, and radio. The son of Bertha and Benjamin Silverblatt, a dress cutter, he was raised in a household of Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire, and his mother was a women's-rights activist. Before pursuing acting, he worked as a steelworker. He trained at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and studied with Eva Le Gallienne beginning in 1928 at the Civic Repertory Theatre. He adopted the surname Da Silva for professional purposes, though the name is sometimes rendered as De Silva in error.

Da Silva's Broadway career extended from 1930 to 1969 and encompassed both dramatic and musical productions. Among his earliest notable stage credits was the role of Larry Foreman in the original 1938 production of Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock. He went on to originate the role of Jud Fry, the psychopathic farmhand, in the landmark 1943 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! He also portrayed Jack Armstrong, Abraham Lincoln's brawling friend, in the 1939 stage production of Robert Sherwood's Abe Lincoln in Illinois, a role he reprised for the 1940 film adaptation. Additional Broadway appearances included Burning Bright, The Zulu and the Zayda, the play Alice in Wonderland, and the play Dear Jane.

His performance as Ben Marino, the Tammany Hall opponent, in the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Fiorello! earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical in 1960. In 1961, Da Silva directed Purlie Victorious, written by Ossie Davis. He also contributed to Broadway as a book writer, further demonstrating the range of his theatrical involvement.

Da Silva originated the role of Benjamin Franklin in the musical 1776, which opened on Broadway in 1969. Four days before the production's official opening, he suffered a minor heart attack but declined medical attention until after the critics' performances had concluded. Once those performances were complete, he went directly to the hospital and took a leave of absence. His understudy, Rex Everhart, assumed the role and performed on the original cast recording. Da Silva recovered in time to reprise the role for the 1972 film version of 1776 and appeared on that film's soundtrack album.

His film career encompassed more than fifty features. Several of his early roles were in noir films in which he frequently played villains, including Eddie Harwood in The Blue Dahlia and the sadistic Captain Francis Thompson in Two Years Before the Mast, both released in 1946. Other film roles included a leading mutineer in The Sea Wolf (1941), a bartender opposite Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend (1945), and the half-blind criminal Chicamaw "One-Eye" Mobley in They Live by Night (1949). He appeared in two separate film adaptations of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: as garage owner George Wilson in the 1949 version starring Alan Ladd, and as gambler Meyer Wolfsheim in the 1974 version starring Robert Redford. His performance as Dr. Swinford in David and Lisa (1962) earned him a BAFTA nomination for Best Foreign Actor. He portrayed Franklin D. Roosevelt in The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (1977) and Hollywood studio head Louis B. Mayer in Mommie Dearest (1981). His final screen appearance was in Garbo Talks (1984), directed by Sidney Lumet, in which he played a New York photographer fascinated with Greta Garbo.

Da Silva's television work was extensive, though it was interrupted by the entertainment industry blacklist that followed his March 1951 testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, during which he repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment rights. His completed lead performance in Slaughter Trail was reshot with actor Brian Donlevy. He found no feature film work until 1961 and had significant gaps in his television career as well, with no work between 1951 and 1959, when he appeared in The Play of the Week, and another gap until a 1963 episode of The Defenders. That appearance, produced by Herb Brodkin, helped end his blacklist period; Brodkin later paired Da Silva with William Shatner in the television series For the People, in which Da Silva played district attorney Anthony Cleese. He also appeared in The Outer Limits episode "I, Robot" (1964) as the defense attorney representing a robot, and guest-starred on programs including Ben Casey, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Fugitive, Mannix, Kung Fu, and Archie Bunker's Place. He portrayed Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in the television docudrama The Missiles of October (1974). For his performance as Eddie in the Great Performances production Verna: USO Girl (1978), alongside Sissy Spacek, he received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Performance by a Supporting Actor in a Comedy or Drama Special. He also recorded narration for episodes of the British television series Doctor Who broadcast in the United States in 1978.

Da Silva appeared in 26 episodes of the CBS Radio Mystery Theater between July 1974 and February 1977. He released an album of political songs and ballads, Politics and Poker, on Monitor Records. During the 1930s and early 1940s, he performed summer stock with the Group Theatre, founded by Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford, and Lee Strasberg, at the Pine Brook Country Club in Nichols, Connecticut. Howard Da Silva died on February 16, 1986.