Born in Brooklyn in 1929, Adler came from a showbusiness family and was a self-proclaimed “creature of nepotism.” The great-grand nephew of Yiddish theater legend Jacob Adler and the cousin of famed acting teacher Stella Adler, Jerry began his Broadway career in 1950, thanks to a job offer from his father, the general manager of Carol Channing’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
“So there I was, 20 years old and earning $25 a week on a big Broadway smash,” Adler said last year. “My main job was to lead Carol around with a flashlight because she was terribly near-sighted and they didn’t want her to fall into the orchestra pit.”
He became a veteran theater hand, stage manager, and producer on the Great White Way over more than 50 different shows, including the original My Fair Lady, starring Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison. His final Broadway acting gig was in Larry David’s 2015 show, Fish In The Dark, which Adler regarded as one of his favorite jobs because he “stayed in bed until I died (in the first scene) and then spent the rest of the play in the dressing room.”
Adler was a late bloomer in front of the camera. At the tender age of 62, he made his TV debut in a 1991 episode of Brooklyn Bridge. Striking while the iron for aged New Yorkers was hot, Adler followed with the Joe Pesci comedy The Public Eye and Woody Allen’s Manhattan Murder Mystery. Throughout the early ’90s, He appeared on Quantum Leap, Mad About You, and Northern Exposure. In 1999, thanks to scheduling issues that kept Jerry Stiller out of the role, Adler became Herman “Hesh” Rabkin, a veteran loan shark, record executive, and advisor to Tony Soprano, on the pilot for The Sopranos. Coming from the same generation as Tony’s father, Hesh holds a special place in the mafioso’s heart, a relationship that continued throughout the show’s run. Adler’s Sopranos success led to long-running recurring roles on Rescue Me and as Howard Lyman on The Good Wife.
“It was a shock really, after 40 years of working backstage in the dark, to be thrust into the light with people coming up to me to say hello, calling me ‘Hesh’ or ‘Howard Lyman,'” he later said. “It’s weird, but at the same time, quite wonderful.”
He is survived by his four daughters, Alisa, Amy, Laura, and Emily.
