Certainly, Salem Ludwig

Pop Does Pot

The performance that made me curious about Salem Ludwig (1915-2007) was his role as Peter Sellers’ father in one of my favorite sixties comedies I Love You, Alice B. Toklas (1968). That same year, he had a small role in What’s So Bad About Feeling Good?, the first team-up between writers George Seaton and Robert Pirosh since A Day at the Races 30 years earlier. Another high profile role I would have seen him in as a kid was the 1971 episode of All in the Family where he plays an ambulance chasing lawyer hired by Archie after a car accident. For years, Ludwig was one of Hollywood’s go-to Jewish old men, like Fyvush Finkel, or Lou Jacobi. I had to do a bit of digging to learn anything about his origins.

A native Brooklynite, Ludwig had first gone on stage in a 1938 production of The Drunkard in Long Beach (for reference, it’s located between Rockaway Beach and Jones Beach, those popular sand bars on Long Island’s southern shore). He served in World War Two, and upon his return studied at the newly formed Actor’s Studio and became a disciple of Bobby Lewis. His stage career is much more notable than his track record on the screen, due (he always maintained) to the Hollywood blacklist. His first Broadway credit was in 1947, and he was in the original productions (or American premieres) of Camino Reale(1953), The Trip to Bountiful (1953), Inherit the Wind (1955), Rhinoceros (1961), Moonchildren (1972), The American Clock (1980), I’m Not Rappaport (1985), as well as prominent revivals of An Enemy of the People (1950), The Three Sisters (1964), and Awake, and Sing! (1995).

Ludwig worked extensively in live television drama between 1950 and 1952, at which time the blacklist (for his outspoken leftist opinions) kept him sidelined for most of the rest of the decade. The 1958 film Never Love a Stranger with John Drew Barrymore and Steve McQueen brought him back to screen work, which remained sporadic. He had a good role in Elia Kazan’s America, America (1963), Paul Bogart’s screen adaptation of The Three Sisters (1966) which featured many from Strasberg’s Broadway cast, Jules Dassin’s The Rehearsal (1974), Franco Zeffirelli’s Endless Love (1981), Mike Nichols’ and Nora Ephron’s Heartburn (1986), Sidney Lumet’sFamily Business (1989), the screen version of I’m Not Rappaport (1996), and several other films. Later TV appearances include guest shots on McCloud, Kate and Allie, The Sopranos, Law and Order, et al. His final credit was a 2009 film called A Killing on Brighton Beach, set in the borough of his origin.