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Thursday December 18, 2003

celebrity jews

by nate bloom

It’s a happy Chanukah for…

San Francisco’s own Jeffrey Tambor. His Fox series, “Arrested Development,” was just renewed for a full year of shows. The comedy/drama, which features Tambor as a Jewish white-collar criminal in jail, has received great reviews but only so-so ratings.

Tambor’s presence in the series is almost an accident. The New York Times reports that he was supposed to appear only in the pilot. However, the network scheduling exec realized that Tambor was the funniest thing in the show and agreed to air it only if Tambor was a regular. Tambor, who is active in the L.A. Jewish community, is best known for his co-starring role in “The Larry Sanders Show.” His daughter, the Times reports, teaches history at Columbia.

Tambor’s wife in the show is played by veteran Jewish actress Jessica Walter, 63. This still-attractive actress has had scores of TV and film appearances since the ’60s, including playing the crazed suitor of a San Francisco DJ (Clint Eastwood) in “Play Misty For Me.” She also was in “The Group,” the 1966 film that introduced Candace Bergen and several other female newcomers. But stardom has eluded her.

Walter has long been married to actor Ron Liebman. Her TV series never seem to last more than a year, but the addition of Liza Minnelli to the “Arrested” cast has boosted the show’s ratings and maybe Walter’s jinx will end. Actor/comedian David Cross, 39, who just got a Grammy nomination for best comedy album, is the other Jewish member of the cast.

It’s also a happy time for …

Sean Paul, 30, who just got two Grammy nominations — best new artist and best reggae album. Talk about an exotic background! His full name is Sean Paul Henriques. His father’s family is Sephardim of Portuguese origin who came to Jamaica in the mid-1600s. The Henriques have always been one of the most prominent Jewish families on the island.

Sean attended, among other schools, Jamaica’s Hillel Academy, a non-denominational school sponsored by the Jewish community. His mother is of Chinese Jamaican background. That’s about all that has come out about his Jewish background — except one of his big hits, ”Get Busy,” has been the subject of buzz on Jewish music sites because the rhythm of the tune (but not the words!) is very much like a Haftarah chant.

Sean rose to prominence as a dance-hall DJ in Jamaica. He broke huge this last year, when “Get Busy” rose to No. 1 on the U.S. charts and his CD “Dutty Rock” hit the Top 10. Jamaica’s Jews, by the way, have always been well integrated into the life of the island, and the community has produced many important business, cultural and government figures.

Holiday greetings to…

Omar Sharif, the Egyptian Arab actor who began his life as a Christian, converted to Islam to marry an Egyptian Muslim actress and is now starring in the film “Monsieur Ibrahim,” about the friendship of an old French Arab shopkeeper and a troubled Jewish teen.

Sharif told the Newark Star-Ledger: “My son obviously learned from me, because he has married three times — to an Orthodox Jewish girl, to a Catholic girl and now to a Muslim girl. … I have a Jewish grandson, for whom I gave the biggest bar mitzvah in Canada. Because I wanted him to know I didn’t care what he was and I didn’t want him to care what I was. ... To me, there are only two categories of people in the world: Good and bad.”

Nate Bloom is the Oakland-based editor of www.Jewhoo.com.

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