1. Martin Balsam had a prolific career in character roles in film, in theatre, and on television.
24 Facts About Martin Balsam
1. 2.
Martin Balsam won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in A Thousand Clowns.
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Martin Balsam had a recurring role as Dr Milton Orloff on the television drama Dr Kildare, and Murray Klein on the sitcom Archie Bunker's Place.
4.
Martin Henry Balsam was born November 4,1919, in the Bronx borough of New York City, to Russian Jewish parents, Lillian and Albert Balsam, who was a manufacturer of women's sportswear.
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Martin Balsam attended DeWitt Clinton High School, where he participated in the drama club.
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Martin Balsam studied at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the German director Erwin Piscator and then served in the United States Army Air Forces from 1941 to 1945 during World War II, achieving the rank of Sergeant.
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Martin Balsam served as a sergeant radio operator in a B-24 in the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations.
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Martin Balsam made his professional debut in August 1941 in a production of The Play's the Thing in Locust Valley.
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Martin Balsam appeared consistently in Broadway and off-Broadway plays, something he would continue to do well into his screen acting career.
10.
Martin Balsam performed in several episodes of the studio's dramatic television anthology series, broadcast between September 1948 and 1950.
11.
Martin Balsam appeared in the Route 66 episode, "Somehow It Gets To Be Tomorrow".
12.
Martin Balsam played Dr Rudy Wells when the Martin Caidin novel Cyborg was adapted as a TV-movie pilot for The Six Million Dollar Man, though he did not reprise the role for the subsequent series.
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Martin Balsam starred as Murray Klein on the All in the Family spin-off Archie Bunker's Place for two seasons and returned for a guest appearance in the show's fourth and final season.
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Martin Balsam made his film debut with an uncredited role in On the Waterfront, directed by his Actors Studio colleague Elia Kazan.
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Martin Balsam played an official of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey investigating mob involvement in the city's waterfront unions.
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Martin Balsam would collaborate with the film's director, Sidney Lumet, twice more with The Anderson Tapes and Murder on the Orient Express.
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Martin Balsam won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Arnold Burns in A Thousand Clowns.
18.
Martin Balsam performed the original voice of the HAL 9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
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Beyond Hollywood, Martin Balsam was a popular character actor in Italian films, beginning in 1960 when he starred in the Luigi Comencini film Everybody Go Home.
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Martin Balsam maintained close ties to Italy even after the end of the poliziottesco trend, traveling there for both professional and personal reasons, and starring in the Italian-produced television series Ocean and La piovra.
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In 1951, Martin Balsam married his first wife, actress Pearl Somner.
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Martin Balsam married his third wife, Irene Miller, in 1963.
23.
On February 13,1996, Martin Balsam died of a stroke in his hotel room while vacationing in Rome, Italy.
24.
Martin Balsam is interred at Cedar Park Cemetery, in Emerson, New Jersey.