Paul Sand

Paul Sand, born Pablo Sanchez on March 5, 1932, in Santa Monica, California, is an American actor and comedian of Russian Jewish and Mexican American ancestry. His father, Ernest Rivera Sanchez, worked as an aerospace tool designer, and his mother, Sonia Borodiansky, also known as Sonia Stone, was a writer. Sand's performance training began at age eleven, when he joined Viola Spolin's Children's Theatre Company. He later attended Los Angeles State College before relocating to Paris at eighteen, where he encountered Marcel Marceau. Marceau was sufficiently impressed by Sand's abilities to invite him to join his touring mime troupe.

Sand returned to North America and in 1960 became a cast member of The Second City improvisational comedy troupe in Chicago, joining alongside Alan Arkin and others in the company, which had been founded the previous year. His Broadway career spanned from 1961 to 1971 and included credits in From the Second City, The Star-Spangled Girl, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Paul Sills' Story Theatre. In 1966, between those Broadway engagements, he co-starred with Linda Lavin and Jo Anne Worley in the off-Broadway production The Mad Show, which was inspired by Mad Magazine.

Sand's Broadway work earned him significant recognition in 1971. He received the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play for his role in Paul Sills' Story Theatre, and he received two Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Performance, honoring his work in both Story Theatre and Metamorphosis. Valerie Harper, who had been cast as Rhoda Morgenstern on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1970, was among his fellow cast members in Story Theatre. Sand himself appeared in the eleventh episode of that series' first season, playing Robert C. Brand, a tax auditor who falls in love with Mary Richards.

MTM Enterprises subsequently produced the sitcom Friends and Lovers, in which Sand portrayed Robert Dreyfuss, a double bass player in the Boston Symphony Orchestra whose romantic pursuits meet with little success. The series premiered in the fall of 1974 but was cancelled in January 1975 after fifteen episodes had been filmed, despite receiving some favorable reviews and decent ratings. In the fall of 1986, Sand joined the cast of the NBC sitcom Gimme A Break, starring Nell Carter, alongside comedian Rosie O'Donnell, as the show entered its sixth year on prime-time television.

Sand's film work includes appearances in The Hot Rock with Zero Mostel, The Second Coming of Suzanne alongside Sondra Locke, and The Main Event, which starred Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal.