Martin Balsam

Martin Henry Balsam (November 4, 1919 – February 13, 1996) was an American actor born in the Bronx borough of New York City to Lillian (née Weinstein) and Alberto Balsam, a shampoo manufacturer, both of Russian Jewish descent. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School, where he participated in the drama club, and later studied at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School under German director Erwin Piscator. His professional debut came in August 1941 in a production of The Play's the Thing in Locust Valley, the same year he began his Broadway career. He subsequently served in the United States Army Air Forces from 1941 to 1945, reaching the rank of Sergeant and operating as a radio operator aboard a B-24 in the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations.

Following his military service, Balsam resumed his acting career in New York. Between 1947 and 1949, he was a resident member of the Town Hall Players, a community-sponsored summer stock company in West Newbury, Massachusetts. In early 1948, director Elia Kazan selected him as a member of the newly formed Actors Studio, an association that would shape his career for decades. Columnist Earl Wilson dubbed him "The Bronx Barrymore" in recognition of his consistent presence on the New York stage.

Balsam's Broadway career spanned from 1941 to 1977 and included appearances in Camino Real, The Wanhope Building, Macbeth, Cold Storage, and The Shock of Recognition, among other productions. His most celebrated stage achievement came in 1968, when he won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his performance in the 1967 Broadway production of Robert Anderson's You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running.

His film debut came with an uncredited role in Kazan's On the Waterfront in 1954, in which he played a Port Authority official investigating mob involvement in waterfront unions. His breakthrough arrived with 12 Angry Men (1957), where he played Juror #1 under director Sidney Lumet, a collaborator with whom he would work again on The Anderson Tapes (1971) and Murder on the Orient Express (1974). In 1960, he took on one of his most iconic screen roles as private detective Milton Arbogast in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. That same year he began work in Italian cinema, starring in Luigi Comencini's Everybody Go Home, and he went on to appear in several poliziottesco films throughout the 1970s, looping his own lines for English-language export versions. He maintained close ties to Italy throughout his life, eventually starring in the Italian-produced television series Ocean and La piovra.

Among his many other notable film roles, Balsam played Hollywood agent O.J. Berman in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), Bernard B. Norman in The Carpetbaggers (1964), and Lieutenant Commander Chester Potter in The Bedford Incident (1965). He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Arnold Burns in A Thousand Clowns (1965). He appeared as Colonel Cathcart in Catch-22 (1970), as Admiral Husband E. Kimmel in Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), as Mr. Green in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974), as Signor Bianchi in Murder on the Orient Express (1974), and as Howard Simons in All the President's Men (1976). He also appeared in both the original Cape Fear (1962) and Martin Scorsese's 1991 remake, alongside Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum. Prior to the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Balsam recorded the voice of the HAL 9000 computer, but director Stanley Kubrick ultimately replaced him with Douglas Rain, feeling Balsam sounded too colloquially American.

On television, Balsam performed in dramatic anthology series beginning in 1948 and appeared across numerous series including The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Fugitive, and Dr. Kildare, on which he played Dr. Milton Orloff from 1963 to 1966. He starred as Murray Klein on the All in the Family spin-off Archie Bunker's Place for two seasons beginning in 1979, and returned for a guest appearance in the show's fourth and final season. He also played Dr. Rudy Wells in the 1973 TV movie pilot that launched The Six Million Dollar Man, though he did not continue in the role for the series.

In his personal life, Balsam married actress Pearl Somner in 1951; they divorced three years later. His second marriage, to actress Joyce Van Patten, lasted from 1958 to 1962 and produced a daughter, actress Talia Balsam. He married his third wife, Irene Miller, in 1963, and they had two children, Adam and Zoe Balsam, before divorcing in 1987. In addition to his Tony and Academy Awards, Balsam received nominations for the BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award, and Emmy Award. He died of a stroke on February 13, 1996, in Rome, Italy, at the age of 76, and is interred at Cedar Park Cemetery in Emerson, New Jersey.