Martin Gabel

Martin Gabel (June 19, 1911 – May 22, 1986) was an American actor, film director, and film producer born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Rebecca and Isaac Gabel, a jeweler. Both parents were Jewish immigrants. Gabel's Broadway career spanned four decades, from 1934 to 1974, and he won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play in 1961.

Gabel's early professional work included radio, where he played Neil Williams, a newspaper reporter, on the comedy serial Easy Aces during the mid-to-late 1930s. His association with Orson Welles began when he portrayed Javert in Welles's six-part radio adaptation of Les Misérables in 1937, after which he became an original member of the Mercury Theatre repertory company. On stage with that company, Gabel played Cassius in Caesar in 1937, a modern-dress adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy staged as an anti-fascist production, and starred as Danton in Danton's Death in 1938. On radio, he took the role of Professor Van Helsing in "Dracula," the debut episode of The Mercury Theatre on the Air in 1938.

Among Gabel's most recognized radio work was his role as narrator and host of the CBS Radio broadcast on May 8, 1945, of Norman Corwin's dramatic poem On a Note of Triumph, which commemorated the end of World War II in Europe. The broadcast drew such a large audience that CBS, NBC, Blue, and Mutual networks aired a second live production on May 13. Columbia Masterworks subsequently released an album of the May 13 production. The broadcast later became the central subject of the Academy Award-winning short film A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin, released in 2005 on the 60th anniversary of the original program.

On Broadway, Gabel starred in the comedy Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, playing Irving LaSalle during its 1955–1956 run, and won his Tony Award for his portrayal of Basil Smythe in Big Fish, Little Fish in 1961. He played Professor Moriarty in Baker Street in 1965 and took the role of Stephen A. Douglas in The Rivalry. Additional Broadway credits include Sheep on the Runway, in which he played Joseph Mayflower, and In Praise of Love, where he appeared as Mark Walters. He also appeared in The Survivor and served as producer on Once More, With Feeling during its 1958–1959 run.

Gabel directed one film, The Lost Moment, in 1947. His screen appearances were relatively few but included a substantial supporting role as crime boss Tomas Rienzi in Richard Brooks's Deadline U.S.A. (1952), starring Humphrey Bogart, and a Russian spy in The Thief (1952) alongside Ray Milland, in which a studio error resulted in his name being misspelled in the credits as "Martin Gable." He played a mob figure in the Frank Sinatra film Lady in Cement (1968) and appeared alongside Sinatra again in Contract on Cherry Street and The First Deadly Sin. Gabel played businessman Mr. Strutt in Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie (1964) and a psychiatrist in Billy Wilder's The Front Page (1974), which starred Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon.

On television, Gabel was a frequent guest panelist on the CBS Sunday night game show What's My Line?, on which his wife, actress Arlene Francis, served as a regular panelist. The two married on May 14, 1946, in a private ceremony held in the chambers of Judge Alexander MacLeod at his courthouse in Paterson, New Jersey, with Louis Calhern and James M. Cannon in attendance. They had one son, Peter.

Gabel had been suffering from cancer and was paralyzed by May 1986. He suffered a heart attack on May 22, 1986, at his Park Avenue apartment in Manhattan and was pronounced dead at New York Hospital–Cornell Medical Center at the age of 74. Francis was present at the time of his death.