By Arney Rosenblat

 

When Zero Mostel starred in Rhinoceros on Broadway, a critic remarked how realistic he was as a human being in the 1st Act-

 

Drama Desk winner Jim Brochu, who both wrote and performs Zero Hour, seemingly channels the roaring bellowing rhinoceros Sam "Zero"Mostel, a complex man that used humor both as a piercing weapon and a protective wall.

 

What makes the revival of Zero Hour, beautifully directed by stage and screen actress Piper Laurie, spotlighting the life of Zero Mostel, so timely for audiences today is the nearly 10 year swatch of time between 1947 and 1956. This is when political repression and government scare tactics spawned a  communist witch-hunt that destroyed the lives of thousands of individuals and gave birth to the infamous Hollywood Blacklist in which Mostel too was innocently caught up. 

 

It is also fun to cross-reference the many entertainer names that you know, or at least heard of, and how they fit into the Mostel life narrative, i.e. Lucille Ball, Ring Lardner,Jr., Jack Gilford, Burgess Meredith, Hal Prince, Steven Sondheim, Larry Gelbart, George Abbott, Phil Silvers, Jerome Robbins, Elia Kazan.

 

It was his mother, Cina, who sparked Mostel's interest in the arts, particularly painting, which was always his first love and Mostel described himself as a "painter who did comedy to buy more paint."

 

It was the press agent, Ivan Black, for the club Cafe Society where Mostel's comedy career took off, who gave him the nickname "Zero" as Mostel was always saying that his average grade at school was zero. Moreover, he started from nothing. It was also at the Cafe Society where Mostel met his second wife and life companion Kate, "She came from a dysfunctional family.  That's why she fell in love with me.  I was a dysfunctional family all by myself."

 

With the rise of fascism in the forties, Mostel. like thousands of others in America at the time was drawn to the tenets of socialism.  "Socialists weren't fighting America.  We were fighting fascism." Then the government that had always been supportive of the artist community under Franklin Delano Roosevelt began to change.  "Once they gave me paint, now they give me paranoia."  As he watched the Blacklist era evolve, Mostel observed that it was "the subtlest and most insidious of all exterminations...It was an intellectual final solution."

 

  Jim Brochu                                                           Photo credit: Stan Barouh)

 

When it finally became Mostel's turn in the barrel after receiving a subpoena from the House Un-American Activities Committee, he tried his best to use stoic humor to deal with the ordeal. Afterwards he said "You can't imagine what it was like.  Why were they going after actors?  What did they think we were doing - giving acting secrets to the Russians."  The result for Mostel was ten years in limbo.

 

To counter the impact of the blacklist, a group of actors came together under the direction of Burgess Meredith renting a tenement on the lower East Side where they put on plays, one of which being James Joyce's Ulysses in Nighttown in which Mostel played Leo Bloom. He became so caught up in the Joyce language and poetry that he'd make the lines resound and the tenement would almost shake to its foundations Meredith called it "Zero Hour."

 

Mostel's life and career finally started back on track after Leo Kerz offered him a role in the Ionessco play Rhinoceros "the absurd leading the absurd." This was followed with a leading role in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and then the leading role of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. One of Mostel's bitterest regrets was that he didn't have the opportunity to play Tevye in the subsequent film.

 

Following his run of hit plays, Mostel portrayed the role of Max Bialystock in the landmark film, The Producers, which Mostel actually hated saying he looked like a "beached whale" in it. Mostel felt the role was one of the tragedies of his life that after 15 Broadway shows, 25 movies and 5,000 paintings, he'd be forever remembered as "the fat guy" from the Producers.

 

However, one of the highlights of his life occurred in 1965 during the run of Fiddler on Roof when he and his wife Kate received an invitation from President and Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson requesting their presence at a state dinner for the Prime Minister of Israel.  Zero Mostel had gone from blacklist to the White House in 10 years.

 

Off Broadway Play

Theatre at St. Clement's

423 W. 46th Street

www.thepeccadillo.com

866-811-4111

Closing date: July 9