‘Sopranos’ star Jerry Adler, Broadway backstage vet turned late-in-life actor, 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.

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“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.