{"id":872373,"date":"2025-09-12T00:13:24","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T05:13:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/12\/jerry-adler-actor-on-the-sopranos-the-good-wife-and-rescue-me-dies-at-96\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T00:13:24","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T05:13:24","slug":"jerry-adler-actor-on-the-sopranos-the-good-wife-and-rescue-me-dies-at-96","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/12\/jerry-adler-actor-on-the-sopranos-the-good-wife-and-rescue-me-dies-at-96\/","title":{"rendered":"Jerry Adler, Actor on \u2018The Sopranos,\u2019 \u2018The Good Wife\u2019 and \u2018Rescue Me,\u2019 Dies at 96"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\n\tJerry Adler, the behind-the-scenes Broadway<\/a> veteran who served as the stage manager on the original\u00a0My Fair Lady\u00a0<\/em>before acting on such shows as\u00a0The Sopranos<\/a><\/em>,\u00a0The Good Wife<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Rescue Me<\/em>, died Saturday in New York City, a publicist said. He was 96.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tA Brooklyn native who didn\u2019t become an actor until he was 62 \u2014 despite being related to famed acting teacher Stella Adler \u2014 Adler played Herman \u201cHesh\u201d Rabkin, consigliere to James Gandolfini<\/a>\u2018s mob boss Tony, on HBO\u2019s\u00a0The Sopranos<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe also was the boorish law partner Howard Lyman on CBS\u2019\u00a0The Good Wife<\/em>, and on FX\u2019s\u00a0Rescue Me<\/em>, he recurred as NYFD station chief Sidney Feinberg.<\/p>\n

\n\tViewers know Adler as Rabbi Alan Schulman on CBS\u2019 Northern Exposure<\/em>, the handyman Mr. Wicker on NBC\u2019s\u00a0Mad About You\u00a0<\/em>and Moshe and the father of Jeffrey Tambor\u2019s Maura Pfefferman on Amazon\u2019s Transparent<\/em>. He also played a spry Holocaust survivor on the final season of Comedy Central\u2019s Broad City<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tAdler was a student at Syracuse University in 1950 when his father, Philip, then the GM of the Group Theatre working on the Carol Channing<\/a> musical\u00a0Gentlemen Prefer Blondes<\/em>, called to offer him a job as assistant stage manager. \u201cI\u2019m a creature of nepotism,\u201d Adler admitted<\/a> in a 2015 interview for the website TheaterMania.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe followed with gigs as stage manager, production manager or production supervisor on a 1952 revival of\u00a0Of Thee I Sing<\/em>, directed by George S. Kaufman and starring Jack Carson; 1956\u2019s\u00a0My Fair Lady<\/em>, starring Julie Andrews, then a very nervous 19, and Rex Harrison; 1966\u2019s\u00a0The Apple Tree<\/em>, directed by Mike Nichols<\/a> and starring Alan Alda and Barbara Harris<\/a>; and 1967\u2019s\u00a0The Homecoming<\/em>, written by Harold Pinter.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlong the way, he also was backstage for the original productions of\u00a0Annie\u00a0<\/em>and Hal Holbrook<\/a>\u2018s\u00a0Mark Twain Tonight!<\/em>, helped Zero Mostel evade a subpoena from the House Un-American Activities Committee and worked with the likes of Arthur Miller, Marlene Dietrich, Orson Welles, Angela Lansbury<\/a>, John Gielgud, No\u00ebl Coward, Joan Rivers<\/a>, Jerry Lewis<\/a>, Jack Benny, Milos Forman<\/a>, Richard Rodgers, Liv Ullmann and Richard Burton.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe had a great story about Katharine Hepburn portraying Coco Chanel on Broadway in 1969.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe opened cold in New York City, and they were building the Uris across the street from the theater<\/a>,\u201d he told the\u00a0Hartford Courant\u00a0<\/em>in 2011. \u201cShe had this little quiet song to her father, and during the first matinee, you could hear them banging away from across the street. I knew she was really pissed off, so at the end of the show when she came offstage, she asked me to come to her dressing room, where she told me to go across the street and tell them they should stop work when she sings that one song because it\u2019s too noisy.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSo I went over to the engineering hut, got a hold of the boss and said I was the stage manager of the show across the street starring Katharine Hepburn and she would like to stop work on the building when she sings this song. They thought I was a [expletive] lunatic.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSo I go back to her and tell her it\u2019s impossible and then she goes out, goes across the street, gets in one of those open construction elevators and arranges with the workers herself on every floor that when I come out of the stage door and give them the signal, they stop work and then restart when I come out again. They did that at every matinee for her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAdler also directed a handful of Broadway shows.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe was a stage manager on the soap opera Santa Barbara\u00a0<\/em>in Los Angeles when he took a call from a friend, Donna Isaacson, who was casting the 1992 Joe Pesci film\u00a0The Public Eye<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMy friend wanted me to meet with the director [Howard Franklin], and the first thing he said to me was how much I reminded him of his father,\u201d he recalled<\/a> in 2015. \u201cI was actually surprised. I\u2019d never acted before. I\u2019d never entertained the idea of acting; it was an unusual thing. But I was getting ready to retire from the production end, anyway. So it became kind of interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile that film was a postproduction, Adler appeared onscreen for the first time on a 1991 episode of the Gary David Goldberg<\/a> sitcom\u00a0Brooklyn Bridge\u00a0<\/em>on CBS and later landed regular roles on three other short-lived series: ABC\u2019s\u00a0Hudson Street<\/em>, starring Tony Danza, and The WB\u2019s\u00a0Alright Already\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Raising Dad\u00a0<\/em>(as Carol Leifer and Bob Saget<\/a>\u2018s father, respectively).<\/p>\n

\n\tAdler also would go on appear on the big screen in\u00a0Manhattan Murder Mystery\u00a0<\/em>(1993),\u00a0Getting Away With Murder\u00a0<\/em>(1996),\u00a0In Her Shoes <\/em>(2005), Synecdoche, New York\u00a0<\/em>(2008) and\u00a0A Most Violent Year <\/em>(2014).<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou know what\u2019s interesting?\u201d he said<\/a> in a 2017 interview. \u201cYou spend your whole career backstage. Nobody knows who you are or even knows your name. They don\u2019t know anything about you. And then you do a television show and suddenly you\u2019re a celebrity and everyone knows your face. It\u2019s so weird.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThings came full circle when he returned to Broadway in 2000, not as a stage manager but as an actor in the Elaine May comedy\u00a0Taller Than a Dwarf<\/em>. He was back again in 2015, portraying Larry David\u2019s bed-ridden dad in\u00a0Fish in the Dark<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe released a book, Too Funny for Words: Backstage Tales From Broadway, Television, and the Movies<\/em>, in May 2024.<\/p>\n

\n\tSurvivors include his wife, psychologist Joan Laxman, whom he married in 1994, and his daughters, Alisa, Amy, Laura and Emily.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Mike Barnes
Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jerry Adler, the behind-the-scenes Broadway veteran who served as the stage manager on the original\u00a0My Fair Lady\u00a0before acting on such shows as\u00a0 The Sopranos ,\u00a0 The Good Wife\u00a0and\u00a0Rescue Me, died Saturday in New York City, a publicist said. He was 96.\u00a0 A Brooklyn native who didn\u2019t become an actor until he was 62 \u2014 despite<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":872374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4948,2567],"tags":[42747,8176],"class_list":{"0":"post-872373","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the","8":"category-jerry","9":"tag-the","10":"tag-jerry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=872373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/872374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=872373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=872373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=872373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}