Topol was a young man who made a career of playing old ones, and one part in particular: Tevye, on stage more than three thousand times and once on film. He was warm, loud and unembarrassed, and in small parts he was a gift.
Fi1m perspective
The thing to watch in For Your Eyes Only (1981) is not Roger Moore but the smuggler cracking pistachios beside him. Topol's Milos Columbo is a man who finds his own danger funny, and he laughs at it with his whole chest while everyone else in the film is being grim. The plot keeps hauling Bond off elsewhere; it lifts whenever it gets back aboard Columbo's boat. We caught ourselves waiting for him, as you wait for the one guest who will make a dull party bearable, and the reason is simple: he is the only person on screen who looks as though he is enjoying himself.
That warmth, earthy and slightly larger than life, was his stock in trade. He came to it by an odd route: a printer, then an army entertainment troupe, then a hand in founding the Haifa municipal theatre in 1961, then a breakthrough in the Israeli film Sallah Shabati (1964). Two years after that he put on the make-up and played Tevye for the first time, in Israel in 1966 and in London in 1967. He was barely into his thirties. Playing old men young was a technique with him, a matter of locked muscles and paint, and he was unbothered by anyone who thought it a trick: "A good actor can play an old man, a sad face, a happy man. Makeup is not an obstacle."
Norman Jewison's film of Fiddler on the Roof (1971) fixed him in the world's mind, and the arguments about it have never quite stopped. The general view was that his Tevye was natural and dignified, a working man rather than a turn; a minority thought him too vigorous, too Israeli, and missed the softer Yiddish and American readings of the part. We are with the majority. A milkman who argues with God ought to have the shoulders for it. He went on playing the role on stage until 2009, more than 3,500 times, which is a length of service most actors would find unbearable and he did not.
The rest was smaller and often better than it needed to be: Dr Hans Zarkov in Flash Gordon (1980), Columbo the year after, The Winds of War on television in 1983. He was, by any measure, typecast, and he was asked about it for the rest of his life. His answer was the sensible one. "How many people are known for one part? How many people in my profession are known worldwide? So I am not complaining." Neither should we. If all you know is the milkman, find the smuggler, and watch what he does with a bag of pistachios.
Biography
Chaim Topol (1935–2023), often billed simply as Topol, was an Israeli actor and singer. He began his career after military service in an army entertainment unit and made his film debut in the early 1960s.
He is best known for playing Tevye in the stage musical Fiddler on the Roof, performing the role more than 3,500 times between 1967 and 2009, and in the 1971 film adaptation. Other notable screen roles include Dr Hans Zarkov in Flash Gordon (1980) and Milos Columbo in the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only (1981). He also appeared in Cast a Giant Shadow (1966), The Winds of War (1983) and seaQuest DSV (1993).
Topol received a Golden Globe for his performance in Fiddler on the Roof and an Academy Award nomination. He was awarded the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement in 2015.
