Exhuming Brother Theodore

A tribute today to the memory of of Brother Theodore (Theodore Gottlieb, 1906-2001).

For years and years, long after he passed away in fact, there was a sign advertising Brother Theodore’s long-running solo show out in front of the 13th Street Theatre. That was how I chiefly knew about him in those years. Ironically during those same years he had appeared on Late Night with David Letterman no fewer than 16 times, and I never caught him there, on that much more prominent platform. Dave trotted him out as one of his “characters”, and I imagine many people assumed his act was devised by writers especially for the show, but it was actually his own act, which he had been performing for decades. He was one of those elderly “nuts”, like Professor Irwin Corey or Lord Buckley. Younger people who did such acts were known as performance artists…they were basically surrealist comedians whose acts verged on poetry and even philosophy. Theodore’s routines were particularly dark and reflective, and were deeply rooted in his background.

Brother Theodore was a German Jew and a Holocaust survivor. The playboy son of a wealthy Dusseldorf publisher, he found himself imprisoned in Dachau in the late 1930s, buying his way out by signing over his family’s worldly goods. With the help of Albert Einstein, a family friend, he managed to emigrate via Switzerland and Austria, finally landing in Los Angeles. For a time he worked at exceedingly menial jobs, and used his genius level chess skills to hustle suckers. He broke into films as a bit players in the mid ’40s. You can see him in Orson Welles’ The Stranger (1946) and The Third Man (1949) and B movie thrillers like So Dark the Night (1946), The Lone Wolf in Mexico (1947), and The Black Widow (1947).

In the late ’40s Theodore began performing recitations of writers like Edgar Allan Poe, Saki, and others. Wearing black clothes, on a black stage, lit by a single spot light, his performances were early pre-cursors to what we now think of as Goth culture. Further, with his thick German accent, he sort of harkened back to the ORIGINAL Goths, you know, the ones who terrorized Europe. Gradually, poking fun of Teutonic culture and expressionism crept into the act. It became ironic and self-aware, gloomy and yet funny. In the post-war years of the ’50s and ’60s it proved to be particularly in tune with beatnik and bohemian culture sprouting up in cafes and cabarets in Greenwich Village, L.A. and San Francisco. He seemed to conjure everything bleak from Nietzsche to Nosferatu. In the mid ’50s he was booked several times on The Tonight Show with both Steve Allen and Jack Paar, usually playing a comical TV horror host. He appeared a dozen times on Merv, and also on the shows of Joey Bishop, Dick Cavett, Tom Snyder, and others.

He appeared in a motley assortment of movies. In 1966 he did an animated short adapted from Gogol’s story “The Nose”. Also: Horror of the Blood Monsters (1970), Massage Parlor Murders (1973), Apple Pie (1975), Devil’s Express (1976), Gums (1976), and Nocturna: Granddaughter of Dracula (1979). His best known role was the voice of Gollum inThe Hobbit (1977) and The Return of the King (1980), and he was also in the similar The Last Unicorn (1982). he also had a small role in Joe Dante’sThe Burbs (1989).

Following a brief retirement in the late ’70, the septuagenarian Theodore started a run of midnight shows at the Magic Towne House, on the Upper East Side, ostensibly a magic venue, but his act was so moody and atmospheric it seemed to fit the theatre’s aesthetic. In the ’80s he did those Letterman spots we spoke of, and was also booked on two Billy Crystal variety specials. And that long run at the 13th Street Rep. He was 96 at the time of his passing, and still going strong. Take that, Nazis!

In 2008, the documentary To My Great Chagrin: The Unbelievable Story of Brother Theodore was released, featuring the man himself, as well as fans and colleagues like Dick Cavett, Woody Allen, Henry Gibson, Penn and Teller, Tom Schiller, and Eric Bogosian. As of this writing, Apple TV seems to have it. Highly recommended. If you don’t know him already, I can’t imagine you’d ever regret becoming acquainted with this dazzlingly brilliant writer and performer.

For more on show business history, please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and keep an eye out for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.