Entertainment
Jerry Adler, ‘Sopranos’ and ‘The Good Wife’ actor who spent decades backstage on Broadway, dies at 96
Jerry Adler, who spent decades behind the scenes of storied Broadway productions before pivoting to acting in his 60s, has died at 96.
Adler died Saturday, according to a brief family announcement confirmed by the Riverside Memorial Chapel in New York. Adler “passed peacefully in his sleep,” Paradigm Talent Agency’s Sarah Shulman said on behalf of his family. No immediate cause was given.
Among Adler’s acting credits are “The Sopranos,” on which he played Tony Soprano adviser Hesh Rabkin across all six seasons, and “The Good Wife,” where he played law partner Howard Lyman. But before Adler had ever stepped in front of a film or television camera, he had 53 Broadway productions to his name — all behind the scenes, serving as a stage manager, producer or director.
He hailed from an entertainment family with deep roots in Jewish and Yiddish theater, as he told the Jewish Ledger in 2014. His father, Philip Adler, was a general manager for the famed Group Theatre and Broadway productions, and his cousin Stella Adler was a legendary acting teacher.
“I’m a creature of nepotism,” Adler told TheaterMania in 2015. “I got my first job when I was at Syracuse University and my father, the general manager of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, called me (because) there was an opening for an assistant stage manager. I skipped school.”
After a long theater career, which included the original production of “My Fair Lady” and working with the likes of Marlene Dietrich, Julie Andrews and Richard Burton, among many others, Adler left Broadway during its 1980s slump. He moved to California, where he worked on television productions like the soap opera “Santa Barbara.”
“I was really getting into the twilight of a mediocre career,” he told The New York Times in 1992.
But the retirement he was contemplating was staved off when Donna Isaacson, the casting director for “The Public Eye” and a longtime friend of one of Adler’s daughters, had a hunch about how to cast a hard-to-fill role, as The New York Times reported then. Adler had been on the other side of auditions, and, curious to experience how actors felt, agreed to try out. Director Howard Franklin, who auditioned dozens of actors for the role of a newspaper columnist in the Joe Pesci-starring film, had “chills” when Adler read for the part, the newspaper reported.
So began an acting career that had him working consistently in front of the camera for more than 30 years. An early role on the David Chase-written “Northern Exposure” paved the way for his time on a future Chase project, “The Sopranos.”
“When David was going to do the pilot for ‘The Sopranos’ he called and asked me if I would do a cameo of Hesh. It was just supposed to be a one-shot,” he told Forward in 2015. “But when they picked up the show they liked the character, and I would come on every fourth week.”
Films included Woody Allen’s “Manhattan Murder Mystery,” but Adler was perhaps best known for his television work. Those credits included stints on “Rescue Me,” “Mad About You,” “Transparent” and guest spots on shows ranging from “The West Wing” to “Broad City.”
He even returned to Broadway, this time onstage, in Elaine May’s “Taller Than a Dwarf” in 2000. In 2015, he appeared in Larry David’s writing and acting stage debut, “Fish in the Dark.”
“I do it because I really enjoy it. I think retirement is a road to nowhere,” Adler told Forward, on the subject of the play. “I wouldn’t know what to do if I were retired. I guess if nobody calls anymore, that’s when I’ll be retired. Meanwhile this is great.”
Adler published a memoir, “Too Funny for Words: Backstage Tales from Broadway, Television and the Movies,” last year. “I’m ready to go at a moment’s notice,” he told CT Insider then, when asked if he’d take more acting roles. In recent years, he and his wife, Joan Laxman, relocated from Connecticut back to his hometown of New York. Survivors include his four daughters, Shulman said.
For Adler, who once thought he was “too goofy-looking” to act, seeing himself on screen was odd, at least initially. And in multiple interviews with various outlets, he expressed how strange it was to be recognized by the public after spending so many years working behind the scenes. There was at least one advantage to being preserved on film, though, as he told The New York Times back in 1992.
“I’m immortal,” he said.
Kid Cudi is spilling how his relationship with marijuana has shifted after a past of heavy addiction.
In a recent chat with People, the rapper opened up about his readmission to rehab back in November 2024, which he also shared in his book Cudi: The Memoir.
“I just was in this place where I was abusing it,” Cudi said. “I was really abusing it. I was smoking maybe 15 blunts a day, wake up in the mornings, get high. It truly ruled my life.”
Cudi, whose real name is Scott Mescudi, revealed that he even got sober for two months before he restarted taking it in moderation.
“And now I just get after it at night or on the weekends when I have the free time and I’m just relaxing, but I’m not smoking nowhere near as much weed as I was smoking before,” he detailed.
“A joint lasts me all day, damn near. So my relationship has changed with that in a major way. And I’m just more interested in being sober a lot more and being more present.”
Cudi added that cutting back has improved his acting. “Because in this movie, I cried a handful of times and it was easy to get there because I was sober,” he said. “There’s no way I could have done this if I was high as s***.”
- Proposed regulation caps student, exchange visas at four years max.
- Media visas may shrink to 240 days or 90 days for Chinese nationals.
- About 1.6 million foreign students are currently in the US on F visas.
The Trump administration aims to tighten the duration of visas for students, cultural exchange visitors and members of the media, according to a proposed government regulation issued on Wednesday, part of a broader crackdown on legal immigration.
President Donald Trump, a Republican, kicked off a wide-ranging immigration crackdown after taking office in January.
The latest move would create new hurdles for international students, exchange workers and foreign journalists who would have to apply to extend their stay in the US rather than maintain a more flexible legal status.
The proposed regulation would create a fixed time period for F visas for international students, J visas that allow visitors on cultural exchange programs to work in the US, and I visas for members of the media.
Those visas are currently available for the duration of the program or US-based employment.
There were about 1.6 million international students on F visas in the US in 2024, according to US government data.
The US granted visas to about 355,000 exchange visitors and 13,000 members of the media in fiscal year 2024, which began on October 1, 2023.
The student and exchange visa periods would be no longer than four years, the proposed regulation said. The visa for journalists – which currently can last years – would be up to 240 days or, in the case of Chinese nationals, 90 days. The visa holders could apply for extensions, the proposal said.
The Trump administration said in the proposed regulation that the change was needed to better “monitor and oversee” the visa holders while they were in the United States.
The public will have 30 days to comment on the measure, which mirrors a proposal put forward in 2020 at the end of Trump’s first term in office.
NAFSA, a non-profit organisation representing international educators at more than 4,300 institutions worldwide, opposed the 2020 proposal and called on the Trump administration to scrap it.
The Democratic administration of then-President Joe Biden withdrew it in 2021.
The Trump administration has increased scrutiny of legal immigration, revoking student visas and green cards of university students over their ideological views and stripping legal status from hundreds of thousands of migrants.
In an August 22 memo, US Citizenship and Immigration Services said it would resume long-dormant visits to citizenship applicants’ neighbourhoods to check what it termed residency, moral character and commitment to American ideals.
Meghan Markle is branded confused for trying to hold onto her Royal status.
The Duchess of Sussex, who is currently toy enjoying the success of her lifestyle show titled ‘With Love, Meghan,’ is accused of using her Royal ties to gain fame.
Royal author Ingrid Seward tells The Sun: “What she’s trying to do, I feel, is divorce herself from who she is for this particular show, and yet at the same time, she’s using who she is, because otherwise no one would be remotely interested in watching it, and Netflix wouldn’t have made it. She’s trying to have it both ways… and she can’t.”
This comes as Meghan admitted the importance of her presence on social media.
Meghan told Bloomberg Originals: “And I’m really intentional in using it as a platform to share joy and to have fun as well. So I get to play and explore – I play in public.”
“I waffle with some of my choices before I make them,” Meghan continued. “I’m generally very decisive, but social media is a great barometer for me, because putting out a video of myself, nine months pregnant, was a really big choice.
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