Jerome Bernard Orbach was an American actor and singer, described at the time of his death as "one of the last bona fide leading men of the Broadway musical and global celebrity on television" and a "versatile stage and film actor". Orbach's professional career began on the New York stage, both on and off-Broadway, where he created roles such as El Gallo in the original off-Broadway run of The Fantasticks and became the first performer to sing that show's standard "Try to Remember". Nominated for multiple Tony Awards, Orbach won for his performance as Chuck Baxter in Promises, Promises. In his career, Orbach played supporting roles in films such as Prince of the City, Dirty Dancing and Misdemeanors and Disney's Beauty and the Beast, he made frequent guest appearances on television, including a recurring role on Murder, She Wrote as private detective Harry McGraw. However, he gained worldwide fame for his starring role as NYPD Detective Lennie Briscoe on the long-running NBC crime drama Law & Order.
Orbach was born on October 20, 1935, in the Bronx, the only child of Emily, a greeting card manufacturer and radio singer, Leon Orbach, a restaurant manager and vaudeville performer. His father was a Jewish emigrant from Germany. Orbach stated, his mother, a native of Luzerne County, was a Roman Catholic of Polish-Lithuanian descent, Orbach was raised in her faith. Throughout his childhood, the Orbach family moved living in Mount Vernon, New York. Orbach attended Waukegan High School in Illinois and graduated in 1952, he began learning acting in a speech class. The summer after graduating from high school, Orbach worked at the theatre of Chevy Chase Country Club of Wheeling and enrolled at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in the fall. In 1953, Orbach enrolled at Northwestern University. Orbach left Northwestern before his senior year and moved to New York City in 1955 to pursue acting and to study at the Actors Studio, where one of his instructors was the studio's founder, Lee Strasberg.
Orbach was an accomplished Broadway and off-Broadway actor. His first major role was El Gallo in the original 1960 cast of the decades-running hit The Fantasticks, Orbach became the first to perform the show's signature song and pop standard "Try To Remember", he starred in The Threepenny Opera, Carnival!, the musical version of the movie Lili, in a revival of Guys and Dolls, Promises, the original productions of Chicago, 42nd Street, a revival of The Cradle Will Rock. Orbach made occasional film and TV appearances into the 1970s and appeared as a celebrity panelist on both What's My Line? and Super Password. In the 1980s, Orbach shifted to TV work full-time. Prominent roles included tough, corrupt NYPD narcotics detective Gus Levy in Sidney Lumet's Prince of the City, he portrayed gangsters in both the action-thriller F/X and the Woody Allen drama Crimes and Misdemeanors. In 1985, Orbach became a regular guest star on Murder, She Wrote as private detective Harry McGraw, which led to him starring in the short-lived spin-off series The Law & Harry McGraw.
In 1987, he was featured in the hit film Dirty Dancing as Dr. Jake Houseman, the father of Jennifer Grey's character "Baby", he made further TV appearances on popular shows such as The Golden Girls, Who's the Boss?, Frasier. In 1991, Orbach starred in Disney's Oscar-winning animated musical Beauty and the Beast, as the voice of the French-accented candelabrum Lumière, which according to Orbach, he played "halfway between Maurice Chevalier and Pepé Le Pew". At the 64th Academy Awards, Orbach performed a live-action stage rendition of the Oscar-nominated song, "Be Our Guest", that he sang in Beauty and the Beast, he reprised his voice role of Lumière for the film's direct-to-video sequels, multiple episodes of Disney's House of Mouse, the previously-deleted song, added to the Beauty and the Beast 2002 IMAX re-release. In 1992, Orbach joined the main cast of Law & Order during its third season as the world-weary, wisecracking NYPD homicide detective Lennie Briscoe, he had guest-starred as a defense attorney on the series, was subsequently cast as the new "senior detective" following Paul Sorvino's departure.
Orbach's portrayal of Briscoe was based on his similar role from Prince of the City years before, which Law & Order creator Dick Wolf had suggested to him at the time of his casting. Orbach starred on Law & Order for 11-and-a-half seasons becoming the third longest-serving main cast member in the show's 20-year-run history, as well as one of its most popular. During Orbach's tenure on Law & Order, the series won the 1997
"Stryderman" is the lead single from recording artist Tinchy Stryder's second studio album, Catch 22. The single was released on 20 July 2008; the single was included on BBC Radio 1's C Playlist and debuted at number 73 on the UK Singles Chart, becoming Stryder's first single to chart on the UK Singles Chart. Gavin Martin of The Mirror gave the song the following review: "Wearing his mean, East London street cred on his sleeve, aka Kwasi Danquah III, is an independently-marketed star who's built a reputation selling own-brand T-shirts, appearing on Mike Skinner records, has the support of rap power broker DJ Tim Westwood. So far, so predictable, an impression compounded by the workaday sound - dirty buzz bass to the fore, standard ghetto superhero boasting. Easy, Stryder." Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics
Mont Ventoux Hill Climb is a car and motorcycle hillclimbing race course near Avignon in France. The course, up Mont Ventoux, starts from the village of Bédoin and rises 5,289 feet for 13.4 miles, to the observatory at the summit, for an average gradient of 7.4%. In 1970: "Andre Willem of Belgium was killed June 20 in practice for the Mont Ventoux Hill Climb near Carpentras, his Lotus Formula 3 car slid off the road and struck a tree." A shortened version of the course was used in 1976. A revival meeting called "Ronde du Ventoux" was held in 2009. Key: R = Course Record. European Hill Climb Championship Championnat de France de la Montagne Daily Telegraph: History in French