Leo Fuchs

Leo Fuchs (May 15, 1911 – December 31, 1994) was a Polish-born American actor. According to YIVO, he was born Avrum Leib Fuchs in Warsaw; according to Joel Schechter, he was born in Lwów, Galicia, then Poland, now called Lviv, Ukraine.

Fuchs performed in many Yiddish and English plays and movies throughout the mid-twentieth century, and was famed as a comic, a dancer, and a coupletist. He wrote much of his own material and toured widely.

Fuchs was born into a Yiddish theatrical family: his father, Yakov Fuchs, was a character actor; his mother, Róża Fuchs (Ruzha Fuchs), was "a leading lady of the musical theatre who perished in the Holocaust of the 1940s," shot dead by Nazi Germans. He began acting (in Polish) when he was five years old, and was praised when he performed at the Warsaw cabaret Qui Pro Quo [pl] when he was 17.

His American debut was at the Second Avenue Theater in the Yiddish Theater District in Lucky Boy with Moishe Oysher in 1929. He moved to New York City in 1935. In his prime, he was known as "The Yiddish Fred Astaire", appearing both on Broadway and in film. In 1936, he married fellow actor Mirele Gruber and toured with her through Poland for a year. In 1937, he made two movies, the short I Want to Be a Boarder (in which he sang his famous song Trouble) and I Want to Be a Mother with Yetta Zwerling. In 1940, he starred in Amerikaner Shadkhen (American Matchmaker). He divorced in 1941 and later married Rebecca Richman.

Starting in the 1960s, Fuchs performed in English-language plays and television, as well as Hollywood films, including The Story of Ruth (1960). Two of his best-known roles were in The Frisco Kid (1979), in which he played with Gene Wilder, and as Hymie Krichinsky in the film Avalon (1990). He died in Los Angeles in 1994.