Theodore Bikel
1924–2015
Vienna-born actor and folk singer who recorded “Dona Dona” in Yiddish in 1959 — keeping the theater song alive on the American folk circuit just before ’s English version.
was born in Vienna in 1924; after the Anschluss his family fled to Mandatory Palestine, where he acted with Habimah and helped found the Cameri Theatre. He studied at RADA in London, then made a dual career in America as a character actor — Captain von Trapp in the original Broadway Sound of Music, Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof more than two thousand times — and as a folk singer. For Elektra he cut albums of Jewish, Israeli, and international songs; Theodore Bikel Sings More Jewish Folk Songs (1959) includes “Dona Dona” in Yiddish. He co-founded the Newport Folk Festival that same year. He died in 2015.