System Mechanic - Clean, repair, protect, and speed up your PC!Jack Gilford, Actor
July 25, 1907 - June 04, 1990
He was born Jacob Gellman in Manhattan, New York on July 25, 1907 and raised in Brooklyn, the son of an immigrant Jewish couple. His father, a furrier, divorced his mother who then moved to a tough section of Brooklyn and supported her family by working as a bootlegger. Jack attended Commercial High School there. He was quite talented at mimicry and at the insistence of his mother he auditioned for various talent shows. In 1934, Gilford won an amateur-night contest, launching a career that would span 5 1/2 decades. His comedy act was highlighted by impressions of such celebrities as Laurel & Hardy, not to mention such intangibles as the sound of chicken soup coming to a boil. Eventually he was discovered by comedian Milton Berle, which led to touring the vaudeville circuit in the company of Berle, Ina Ray Hutton, Jimmy Durante and Elsie Janis. In 1940 he made his Broadway debut in “Meet the People”. His movie debut came in "Hey Rookie" (1944) in a Specialty Act.
Gilford's career came to an abrupt halt in the early 1950s, when he and his actress wife Madeline Lee were blacklisted for allegedly harbouring "leftist" views. While Lee all but disappeared from show business, Gilford was able to make a slow comeback as a character actor in such Broadway plays as The Diary of Anne Frank, Romanoff and Juliet and The Beauty Part. Gilford returned to films in the 1960s, appearing in Mr. Buddwing (1965), A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum (1966, repeating his Broadway role as Hysterium), Enter Laughing (1967) and They Might Be Giants (1971). While he excelled at comedy parts, Gilford was surprisingly proficient at drama as well. In 1973, he received an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Jack Lemmon's frantic business partner in Save the Tiger.
During this second phase of his Hollywood career, Gilford occasionally returned to Broadway in productions ranging from Cabaret to The Sunshine Boys. He was also a regular on several TV series, including The David Frost Revue (1972), Friends and Lovers (1974) Apple Pie (1978) and The Duck Factory (1984). Among his last film roles was melancholy senior citizen Bernie Lefkowitz in the two Cocoon films. In 1976, Jack and Madeline Gifford joined forces with their long-time friends Zero and Kate Mostel to pen their joint autobiography, 170 Years in Show Business. He also appeared in TV movies including: "Hotel" (1982); "Hostage Flight" (1985) and "Young Again" (1986). He guested on such series as: "Twilight Zone"; "Car 54, Where Are You?"; "Get Smart"; "Soap"; "Taxi"; "Night Court" and "The Golden Girls."
He may be best remembered for a series of popular Cracker Jack commercials of the 1960's, for which he won a Clio award. He died of stomach cancer on June 4, 1990 in New York, New York at age 82.
