Leo Fuchs (May 15, 1911 – December 31, 1994) was a Polish-born American actor.[1] According to YIVO, he was born Avrum Leib Fuchs in Warsaw;[2] according to Joel Schechter, he was born in Lwów, Galicia, then Poland, now called Lviv, Ukraine.[3]
Fuchs performed in many Yiddish and English plays and movies throughout the mid-twentieth century, and was famed as a comic, a dancer, and a coupletist. He wrote much of his own material and toured widely.
Fuchs was born into a Yiddish theatrical family: his father, Yakov Fuchs, was a character actor; his mother, Róża Fuchs (Ruzha Fuchs),[4] was "a leading lady of the musical theatre who perished in the Holocaust of the 1940s,"[5] shot dead by Nazi Germans.[6] He began acting (in Polish) when he was five years old, and was praised when he performed at the Warsaw cabaret Qui Pro Quo when he was 17.[3]
His American debut was at the Second Avenue Theater in the Yiddish Theater DistrictinLucky Boy with Moishe Oysher in 1929.[7] He moved to New York City in 1935.[2] In his prime, he was known as "The YiddishFred Astaire",[8][9] appearing both on Broadway and in film. In 1936, he married fellow actor Mirele Gruber and toured with her through Poland for a year. In 1937 he made two movies, the short I Want to Be a Boarder (in which he sang his famous song Trouble) and I Want to Be a Mother with Yetta Zwerling. In 1940 he starred in Amerikaner Shadkhen (American Matchmaker).[10] He divorced in 1941[7] and later married Rebecca Richman.
Starting in the 1960s, Fuchs performed in English-language plays and television,[2] as well as Hollywood films, including The Story of Ruth (1960).[1] Two of his best-known roles were in The Frisco Kid (1979), in which he played with Gene Wilder, and as Hymie Krichinsky in the film Avalon (1990).[3][1] He died in Los Angeles in 1994.[2]
Friedman, Jonathan C. Rainbow Jews: Jewish and Gay Identity in the Performing Arts. Plymouth, UK: Lexington, 2007.
Lugowski, David. "'Pintele' Queer: The Performance of Jewish Male Heterosexuality in Yiddish American Cinema of the Great Depression." In Griffin, Sean. Hetero: Queering Representations of Straightness. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2009. 53–70.
Schechter, Joel. Messiahs of 1933: How American Yiddish Theatre Survived Adversity through Satire. Philadelphia, PA: Temple UP, 2008.
