Italian postcard. DEAR Film. The back of the card claims this is Carl Reiner, but this is Alan Arkin as Russian Lieutenant Yuri Rozanov in the American comedy The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (United Artists), 1966) by Norman Jewison.
Alan Wolf Arkin (* 26 March 1934 in New York City, New York; † 29 June 2023 in Carlsbad, California) was an American actor, singer, director and children's author. He won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the road movie Little Miss Sunshine.
Alan Arkin was the son of the songwriter, author and teacher David I. Arkin. While still at school, Arkin joined the band The Tarriers; he wanted to make a career as a folk singer. When the band had a hit single in the US charts in 1956 with a first version of the Banana Boat Song, he left college to tour with the band. Despite a successful European tour, Arkin left the band. A friend had invited him to join the Chicago theatre group Second City. In the early 1960s he moved to New York and performed on Broadway. As early as 1963, he received his first Tony Award for Best Supporting Actor in the comedy Enter Laughing. The comedy Luv, directed by Mike Nichols, was well received and brought him to the attention of director Norman Jewison. Thus Arkin got his first role in a Hollywood film in 1966, playing a Soviet submarine officer in Jewison's war farce The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!, for which he received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role and for the BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer.
Arkin remained loyal to the theatre, however, and directed a short-lived production of Hail Scrawdyke! for the first time that same year. In 1967 he switched back to film and took on the role of the villain in Terence Young's thriller Wait Until Dark alongside Audrey Hepburn. In the following years he concentrated on his film career. He received his second Oscar nomination for best leading actor for his portrayal of a deaf-mute in Robert Ellis Miller's film drama The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. In 1970 he took on the leading role as Captain Yossarian of the US Air Force in Mike Nichols' film adaptation of the novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. The box-office success of Catch-22 finally made Alan Arkin known worldwide. In the following years he played other leading roles in Hollywood. In 1971 he directed the black comedy Little Murders, the cinema adaptation of the play Little Murders by Jules Feiffer. In the mid-1970s, Arkin returned to Broadway as a director of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys but in the later 1970s he did various films again, e.g. performing Sigmund Freud in the Sherlock Holmes-film The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (Herbert Ross, 1976), while he was successful with The In-Laws (Arthur Hiller, 1979), also with Peter Falk. In 1981, Arkin starred in the television film Improper Channels, written by his son Adam Arkin. In 1987 he was also on television in the historical lead role of Leon Feldhendler in the Holocaust drama Escape from Sobibor. In the 1990s he attracted attention mainly for appearances as a character actor in films such as Edward Scissorhands (Tim Burton, 1990), Glengarry Glen Ross (James Foley, 1992), O Que É Isso, Companheiro?/ Four Days in September (Bruno Barreto, 1997), and Jacob the Liar (Peter Kassovitz, 1999).
At the 2007 Academy Awards, Arkin won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the film Little Miss Sunshine (dir. Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris), in which he played the role of the unconventional grandfather Edwin Hoover. The following year he played a secret service chief in Peter Segal's comedy Get Smart. He received another Oscar nomination in 2013 for Ben Affleck's film Argo, in which he had a supporting role as film producer Lester Siegel. In 2015 and 2016, he voiced writer J. D. Salinger in four episodes of the animated series BoJack Horseman. Arkin had his last major role from 2018 in the Netflix comedy series The Kominsky Method. For The Kominsky Method, he received his last two Emmy Award nominations, an award he never managed to win despite a total of six nominations in his lifetime. Arkin left the series before filming the third season, released in 2021, due to age and health reasons. He most recently voiced the character of Knuckle Cracker in the animated film Minions - In Search of the Mini Boss, released in 2022. Arkin's output includes more than 100 film and television productions.
In 1972, Arkin published his first children's book under the title Tony's Hard Work Day, followed by other publications in the decades that followed. In 2019 he was immortalised with a star on the Walk of Fame, guest speaker was Steve Carell. Arkin was married three times, his first two marriages were divorced, most recently to Suzanne Newlander from 1996 until his death. His sons Adam, Anthony and Matthew are also actors. On 29 June 2023, Arkin died in California at the age of 89.
Sources: German and English Wikipedia, IMDb.
