Want to know the best Nehemiah Persoff movies? How about the worst Nehemiah Persoff movies? Curious about Nehemiah Persoff box office grosses or which Nehemiah Persoff movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Nehemiah Persoff movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst reviews? Well, you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
Nehemiah Persoff (1919-) is an American retired actor and painter. Persoff appeared in more than 200 television series, films and plays in a 52-year career. His IMDb page shows 203 acting credits from 1948 to 2003. This page will rank Nehemiah Persoff movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. To do well in the rankings, a movie needed to do well at the box office, be liked by both critics and audiences and earn some award recognition. Some of his movies that do not appear to have been in North American theaters were not included.
Nehemiah Persoff Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Nehemiah Persoff Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Nehemiah Persoff movies by co-stars of his movies.
- Sort Nehemiah Persoff movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Nehemiah Persoff movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Nehemiah Persoff movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each Nehemiah Persoff movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Nehemiah Persoff movie won.
- Sort Nehemiah Persoff movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews, and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Check out Nehemiah Persoff’s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time
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Nehemiah Persoff, one of Hollywood’s busiest actors, dies at 102
The late-blooming actor played more than 200 film and TV roles.
By Adam Bernstein
Nehemiah Persoff, a late-blooming actor who built one of the busiest careers in Hollywood, playing rogues, ringleaders, revolutionaries and refugees — among other memorable portraits of sympathy and villainy — in more than 200 film and TV roles, died April 5 at a care center in San Luis Obispo, Calif. He was 102.
The cause was congestive heart failure, said his son Jeff.
A self-described “tough kid from the streets,” Mr. Persoff grew up in Brooklyn during the Depression and was working as a subway electrician in the late 1930s when — having shaved his head for relief from the summer heat — he caught the attention of an off-Broadway producer looking to add “local color” to his production.
Mr. Persoff agreed to appear onstage and found the experience thrilling, an escape from his mundane existence. In 1948, after Army service in World War II, he became an early member of the Actors Studio, a workshop in New York founded by director Elia Kazan and other prominent figures in theater.
From that elite training ground, Mr. Persoff, already approaching 30, launched a prolific career in the early days of TV. With his stocky build, unnerving gaze, five o’clock shadow and tightly wound energy, Mr. Persoff specialized in portraying gangland figures, Wild West desperados, bellicose generalissimos and Cold War heavies.
Trading his grimace for a warm smile on his broad, expressive face, he also played men of the cloth and workaday laborers in crisis. Like his Actors Studio classmate Eli Wallach, who was also Jewish, he was in constant demand to play ethnic characters including Egyptians, Moroccans, Greeks, Italians and Russians.
His TV career was so prodigious in the 1950s and ’60s that he frequently raced between sets for episodes of such shows as “Rawhide,” “Route 66” and “The United States Steel Hour” — switching wardrobes, hairpieces, prosthetic features, mannerisms and accents at a frantic pace. Although a jovial and peaceable presence off-screen, he was admired for his ability to tap into reservoirs of anger, especially when playing characters with a strong streak of rebelliousness against authority.
“If a character is within my range, then I can find him within myself,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1958. “This character is me under different circumstances. Logic is always on the side of a character. It’s up to me to rationalize the validity of his action.”
In two of his most acclaimed roles of the period — both in 1959 on the dramatic anthology show “Playhouse 90” — he played Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in a teleplay called “The Killers of Mussolini” and the melancholy Spanish guerrilla Pablo in an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”
“Bearded, boorish and beat, he swiped the show out from everyone else,” United Press International TV critic William Ewald wrote of Mr. Persoff’s portrayal of Pablo in a cast that included Jason Robards, Maureen Stapleton, Maria Schell and Wallach. “He caught magnificently the minglement of barbarity and civilization, butcher and shattered hero.”
On “The Twilight Zone,” Mr. Persoff portrayed the skipper of a German U-boat that attacks a British freighter in World War II without warning. The sub sinks the helpless ship, the sub’s crew machine-guns the survivors and the skipper is doomed to relive the episode, from the other side, for eternity.
He became a regular guest star on such disparate shows as “Gilligan’s Island,” playing an exiled tinhorn autocrat named Pancho Hernando Gonzalez Enriques Rodriguez, and “The Untouchables,” as an Al Capone mob associate named Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik.
He made an indelible impression in filmmaker Billy Wilder’s celebrated comic romp “Some Like it Hot” (1959). As the crime boss Little Bonaparte — standing under a banner inscribed with “Friends of Italian Opera” — he proudly announces to an assembly of crime syndicate members: “In duh lass fissel year, we made one hundred an’ twelve million dollars before taxes — only we ain’t payin’ no taxes!” He wears a hearing aid that he turns off when a spray of bullets rubs out his rivals.
His later film roles included the high priest Shemiah in the all-star biblical epic “The Greatest Story Ever Told” (1965), a Jewish refugee in flight from the Nazis in “Voyage of the Damned” (1976), Barbra Streisand’s scholarly and caring father in the movie musical “Yentl” (1983), and the scientist behind a eugenics experiment in the comedy “Twins” (1988), starring Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger as the unlikeliest of siblings. He also was the voice of the animated mouse patriarch Papa Mousekewitz in “An American Tail” (1986) and its film sequels.
After suffering a stroke at 70, Mr. Persoff slowed down his acting career and took up watercolors — approaching the new medium with the same intensity he channeled into his acting. He worked night and day, he said, and amassed a portfolio of more than 250 paintings.
He likened his new art form to the old one.
“When I got a role, I set my sights on being able to get under the skin of the character,” he told interviewer Nick Thomas. “It’s the same with painting. When you sit in front of a blank canvas, there is a feeling of ‘I can’t do it’ for many painters. But because of my acting experience, I always felt that I could do it, and I did.”
Mr. Persoff was born in Jerusalem — soon to become part of the British mandate of Palestine — on Aug. 2, 1919. His father, a coppersmith and jeweler, settled with his family in Brooklyn a decade later. Mr. Persoff, known as Nicky in the United States, described his family as impoverished but tightknit.
He attended the Hebrew Technical Institute, a vocational high school in Manhattan, before doing signal maintenance for the city subway system. After working with amateur theater troupes, he auditioned for the New Theatre League acting school, where he was told that he could attend for free in exchange for fixing any broken lights.
While studying at the Actors Studio, alongside Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift, he had supporting roles on Broadway before Kazan tapped him to play a mobbed-up cabbie in the movie drama “On the Waterfront” (1954). As the sinister cabdriver, he witnesses the famous “I coulda been a contender” speech by ex-boxer Terry Malloy (played by Brando) and then takes Malloy’s corrupt older brother, Charley (played by Rod Steiger), for his final ride.
“There were Brando and Steiger in the back section of a sawed-off car,” Mr. Persoff told Thomas. “I sat on a milk box with Brando and Steiger behind me. When it was time for my close-up, Kazan whispered in my ear to imagine that ‘the guy behind you killed your mother.’ When I saw the film, I was surprised to see how effective the close-up turned out.”
Mr. Persoff played the right-hand man to Steiger’s corrupt boxing promoter in “The Harder They Fall” (1956) and a jittery sergeant blown up by a land mine in the Korean War film “Men in War” (1957), among other small but standout movie roles.
His career continued at a relentless pace through the 1980s, after which he made occasional appearances on “Law & Order,” “Chicago Hope” and other series. His final role, in 2003, was as a rabbi in the HBO production of “Angels in America,” based on Tony Kushner’s play about the AIDS epidemic. He also toured the country for years in a one-man show, “Sholem Aleichem,” telling stories by the Yiddish humorist and playing some of his characters, and he wrote a memoir, “The Many Faces of Nehemiah,” published in 2021.
His wife, Thia Persov, a distant cousin, died in 2021 after 69 years of marriage. In addition to his son Jeff, survivors include three other children, Dan, Perry and Dahlia; and five grandchildren.
Reflecting on his prolific career, he told author Darryl Lyman for the book “Great Jews in the Performing Arts” that he saw his work ethic as a rebuke to Adolf Hitler and the antisemitism that persisted long after the Nazi dictator’s defeat.
“I suspect that one of the most powerful forces shaping my life when I was growing up in the U.S.A. was that German with the small mustache who questioned the right of my people — and therefore me — to live,” he said. “I was then determined to develop whatever talent I had to prove worthy of the gift of life.”
From the Washington Post
Hey Dan. Thanks for the outstanding information on Nehemiah Persoff. Sad news. I will update our Memorium page….which has been way too busy in 2022. RIP!
That article is by Adam Bernstein of the Washington Post.
I have seen 25 of the films on the list. The highest ranked one I have not seen is Red Sky at Morning.
Nehemiah Persoff (102 years young) is # 825 on the 2020 Oracle list; these are the other actors on the list he has appeared with.
2 HARVEY KEITEL The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
3 CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER An American Tail (1986)
11 ERNEST BORGNINE The Badlanders (1958)
14 MAX VON SYDOW The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
14 MAX VON SYDOW Voyage of the Damned (1976)
15 DAVID CARRADINE Too Many Thieves (1967)
16 DENNIS HOPPER Panic in the City (1968)
19 WILLEM DAFOE The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
23 ROD STEIGER Al Capone (1959)
23 ROD STEIGER On the Waterfront (1954)
23 ROD STEIGER The Harder They Fall (1956)
26 MALCOLM MCDOWELL Voyage of the Damned (1976)
34 FRANCO NERO Mafia (1968)
36 ANTHONY QUINN The Wild Party (1956)
37 JOHN CLEESE An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991)
38 CHARLTON HESTON The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
39 RODDY MCDOWELL The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
41 DONALD PLEASENCE The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
57 HARRY DEAN STANTON The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
57 HARRY DEAN STANTON The Wrong Man (1956)
58 ELI WALLACH The People Next Door (1970)
59 CLAUDIA CARDINALE Mafia (1968)
80 MARTIN LANDAU The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
102 ORSON WELLES Voyage of the Damned (1976)
108 JAMES MASON Voyage of the Damned (1976)
113 ROBERT VAUGHN The Big Show (1961)
126 HENRY FONDA The Wrong Man (1956)
127 DENHOLM ELLIOTT Voyage of the Damned (1976)
135 BEN GAZZARA Voyage of the Damned (1976)
138 FAYE DUNAWAY Voyage of the Damned (1976)
153 MAURY CHAYKIN TWINS (1988)
158 SHELLEY WINTERS The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
161 ROBERT LOGGIA The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
180 FERNANDO REY Voyage of the Damned (1976)
189 ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER TWINS (1988)
193 KIRK DOUGLAS The Hook (1963)
196 CLORIS LEACHMAN The People Next Door (1970)
200 MARTIN BALSAM Al Capone (1959)
200 MARTIN BALSAM On the Waterfront (1954)
211 DANNY DEVITO TWINS (1988)
218 JONATHAN PRYCE Voyage of the Damned (1976)
237 PETER FALK Too Many Thieves (1967)
248 ANGELA LANSBURY The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
265 HENRY SILVA Green Mansions (1959)
303 CLAIRE BLOOM Red Sky at Morning (1971)
306 JOSE FERRER The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
306 JOSE FERRER Voyage of the Damned (1976)
310 JACK LEMMON Some Like It Hot (1959)
344 JOHN WAYNE The Comancheros (1961)
344 JOHN WAYNE The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
352 TELLY SAVALAS The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
377 GLENN FORD Fate Is the Hunter (1964)
397 MIRIAM MARGOLYES Yentl (1983)
400 SAM WANAMAKER Voyage of the Damned (1976)
405 HAL HOLBROOK The People Next Door (1970)
407 HEATHER GRAHAM TWINS (1988)
422 MARLON BRANDO On the Waterfront (1954)
426 JODIE FOSTER O’Hara’s Wife (1982)
436 BARBARA HERSHEY The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
439 CLIFF ROBERTSON The Big Show (1961)
460 KIM CATTRALL Deadly Harvest (1977)
462 STUART WHITMAN The Comancheros (1961)
473 TONY CURTIS Some Like It Hot (1959)
475 BRITT EKLAND Too Many Thieves (1967)
532 DUB TAYLOR The Money Jungle (1967)
554 PAT HINGLE On the Waterfront (1954)
591 CARY-HIROYUKI TAGAWA TWINS (1988)
629 ROYAL DANO In Search of Historic Jesus (1979)
629 ROYAL DANO Never Steal Anything Small (1959)
654 MICHAEL CONSTANTINE Voyage of the Damned (1976)
660 LEE MARVIN The Comancheros (1961)
675 DOM DELUISE An American Tail (1986)
675 DOM DELUISE An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991)
677 ANTHONY PERKINS Green Mansions (1959)
677 ANTHONY PERKINS This Angry Age (1958)
687 STEPHEN MCHATTIE THE PEOPLE NEXT DOOR (1970)
727 ROBERT RYAN Day of the Outlaw (1959)
727 ROBERT RYAN Men in War (1957)
730 VICTOR ARGO The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
749 KATHLEEN FREEMAN The Naked City (1948)
757 RICHARD CRENNA Red Sky at Morning (1971)
775 GEORGE HAMILTON The Power (1968)
797 ANTHONY QUAYLE The Wrong Man (1956)
812 SIDNEY POITIER The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
813 ROD TAYLOR Fate Is the Hunter (1964)
828 JACK ELAM The Comancheros (1961)
851 ALDO RAY Men in War (1957)
851 ALDO RAY Psychic Killer (1975)
851 ALDO RAY The Power (1968)
860 MIKE MAZURKI Some Like It Hot (1959)
866 JON LOVITZ AN AMERICAN TAIL: FIEVEL GOES WEST (1991)
878 RICHARD PORTNOW TWINS (1988)
887 MADELINE KAHN An American Tail (1986)
891 CARROLL BAKER The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
895 JOHN CRAWFORD The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
932 MARIA SCHELL Voyage of the Damned (1976)
945 MANDY PATINKIN Yentl (1983)
946 MARSHALL BELL TWINS (1988)
956 LEE GRANT Voyage of the Damned (1976)
Nehemiah has appeared with 37 Oscar winners.
ANTHONY QUINN The Wild Party (1956)
ART CARNEY St. Helens (1981)
AUDREY HEPBURN Green Mansions (1959)
BARBRA STREISAND Yentl (1983)
BARRY FITZGERALD The Naked City (1948)
BURL IVES Day of the Outlaw (1959)
CHARLTON HESTON The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER An American Tail (1986)
CLIFF ROBERTSON The Big Show (1961)
CLORIS LEACHMAN The People Next Door (1970)
DOROTHY MALONE Fate Is the Hunter (1964)
ERNEST BORGNINE The Badlanders (1958)
EVA MARIE SAINT On the Waterfront (1954)
FAYE DUNAWAY Voyage of the Damned (1976)
HENRY FONDA The Wrong Man (1956)
HUMPHREY BOGART The Harder They Fall (1956)
JACK ALBERTSON NEVER STEAL ANYTHING SMALL (1959)
JACK ALBERTSON THE HARDER THEY FALL (1956)
JACK LEMMON Some Like It Hot (1959)
JAMES CAGNEY Never Steal Anything Small (1959)
JAMES STEWART An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991)
JODIE FOSTER O’Hara’s Wife (1982)
JOHN WAYNE The Comancheros (1961)
JOHN WAYNE The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
JOSE FERRER The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
JOSE FERRER Voyage of the Damned (1976)
JOSEPH SCHILDKRAUT THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD (1965)
KARL MALDEN On the Waterfront (1954)
KATY JURADO The Badlanders (1958)
LEE GRANT Voyage of the Damned (1976)
LEE MARVIN The Comancheros (1961)
MARLON BRANDO On the Waterfront (1954)
MARTIN BALSAM Al Capone (1959)
MARTIN BALSAM On the Waterfront (1954)
MARTIN LANDAU The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
ROD STEIGER Al Capone (1959)
ROD STEIGER On the Waterfront (1954)
ROD STEIGER The Harder They Fall (1956)
SHELLEY WINTERS The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
SHIRLEY JONES Never Steal Anything Small (1959)
SIDNEY POITIER The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
VAN HEFLIN The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
WENDY HILLER Voyage of the Damned (1976)
Hey Dan
1. As always thanks for the trivia lists.
2. I have been seeing the name Nehemiah Persoff on your Oracle lists forever….now I actually know who he is….lol.
3. Tally count: Another win for Dan…..Dan 25, Flora 13, Steve 10 and Cogerson 10.
4. Impressive that Nehemiah still has a spot on the Oracle list…I wonder how long he can hold on to the Top 1000.
5. Most frequent Oracle co-star goes to….checking…..Rod Steiger with 3 movies. I wonder if Steiger and Persoff talked about the cab scene in On The Waterfront when they made more movies together?
6. 37 Oscar winning co-stars is a good total…especially since he does not have that many movies…..granted…there are about 10 Persoff movies that did not make the page.
Good stuff as always.
I have seen 13 Nehemiah Persoff movies. He also made a classic episode of The Twilight Zone.
The HIGHEST rated movie I have seen is On the Waterfront.
The highest rated movie I have NOT seen is Twins.
The LOWEST rated movie I have seen Green Mansions.
Favourite Nehemiah Persoff movies:
Some Like It Hot
An American Tail
Men in War
Fate is the Hunter
Day of the Outlaw
Other Nehemiah Persoff Movies I Have Seen:
On the Waterfront
Yentl
The Greatest Story Ever Told
The Harder They Fall
The Wrong Man – based on a true story
The Hook
The Badlanders
Green Mansions
This is Flora Breen Robison. I forgot to add my name
Hey Flora… I changed the name from Anonymous to Flora
Hey Flora….good feedback as always. Tally counts: Dan with 25, Flora with 13 and Steve and Cogerson sitting at 10. I have heard about his Twilight episode…but have not seen it…..and I have it on DVD….so I have no excuse. I have seen 2 of your favorites…Some Like It Hot and An American Tail. I do much better on your “others” list…seeing 4 of those. Wow…a Hitchcock movie NOT on your favorites list. Thanks for stopping by.
I’ve seen 10 Nehemiah Persoff films out of the 31 on the chart. Favorites are – Some Like it Hot, On the Waterfront, An American Tail 1 & 2, Greatest Story Ever Told, The Comancheros and Twins.
Some Like it Hot tops the box office chart (wow!) and the critics chart too, knocking On the Waterfront to second place, it’s a big favorite of mine so I’m not complaining. Brando tops the UMR chart.
Good stuff Bruce. Vote Up!
Hey Steve….thanks for the feedback on our N.P. page. Tally count: Dan with 25, Flora with 13 and me and you sitting at 10. I have seen all 7 of your favorites….so it looks like we have seen almost the same movies….as have to guess that The Wrong Man is also one of the ones we have both watched. Good thoughts on Some Like It On The Waterfront. He played the cab driver in Waterfront. I will have to pay attention to the driver the next time I watch On The Waterfront…good stuff as always.
https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/living-actors-appeared-in-alfred-hitchcock-films/
Persoff’s almost 102 years old! Whoa!
Hey Steve…he is one of the oldest living actors…..for a long time Norman Lloyd had that title. Live long and prosper Mr. Persoff.
This is from 2019. Since then Norman Lloyd, Rhonda Fleming, and Sean Connery have died, maybe others as well.
Hey Flora….I think there are one or two others that have passed….but the total is still over 20. Thanks for checking out that link.