Alan Arkin seen in 2007. (Michael Buckner\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cEvery film I saw, every play, every piece of music fed an unquenchable need to turn myself into something other than what I was,\u201d he wrote in his 2011 memoir, \u201cAn Improvised Life.\u201d<\/p>\n
What he was was the son of Ukrainian and German Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn, where he was born in 1934. But over the course of a long and unusually peripatetic career, he managed to turn himself into a conflicted Russian submarine officer (\u201cThe Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming,\u201d 1966), a struggling Puerto Rican widower (\u201cPopi,\u201d 1969) and a mild-mannered Manhattan dentist recruited into an unlikely espionage scheme by his daughter\u2019s future father-in-law (\u201cThe In-Laws,\u201d 1979).<\/p>\n
His versatility was honed by his study of the \u201cStanislavski\u201d method taught by Benjamin Zemach, an American modern-dance pioneer who specialized in Jewish themes, and his stint as an early member of the Second City improvisational comedy troupe in the 1960s.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s improvisation, and some are terrific, and some are terrible,\u201d he told an interviewer about his days with Second City. \u201cThe ability to fail was an extraordinary privilege and gift. \u2026 You don\u2019t learn anything without failing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arkin, who became the sixth-oldest winner of the best supporting actor Oscar in 2007 for his part in \u201cLittle Miss Sunshine,\u201d died Thursday at his home in San Marcos, Calif. He was 89.<\/p>\n
Over a nearly seven-decade career, he imbued comic roles with pathos and serious roles with a touch of sardonic humor. He was working until nearly the end of his life, co-starring with Michael Douglas from 2018 to 2019 in Chuck Lorre\u2019s Netflix comedy series \u201cThe Kominsky Method.\u201d That role, as agent Norman Newlander, earned him two consecutive Emmy Award nominations.<\/p>\n
His other well-known roles included a paranoid salesman in the film adaptation of David Mamet\u2019s \u201cGlengarry Glen Ross\u201d (1992) and a deaf-mute in the Southern Gothic drama \u201cThe Heart Is a Lonely Hunter\u201d (1968). He also played Yossarian, the reluctant airman in \u201cCatch-22,\u201d the 1970 film adaptation of the Joseph Heller novel. Although the character was technically Armenian, most critics agreed that he was a \u201ccoded\u201d Jew.<\/p>\n
Arkin also voiced J.D. Salinger, or at least a character purporting to be the famously reclusive Jewish writer, in the cult Netflix animated series, \u201cBoJack Horseman.\u201d<\/p>\n
He made his directorial debut with the darkly comic \u201cLittle Murders\u201d (1971), based on the stage play by Jewish writer and cartoonist Jules Feiffer. In 1975, Arkin directed the Broadway production of Neil Simon\u2019s \u201cThe Sunshine Boys,\u201d a comedy about elderly enemies based on the Jewish vaudeville team Smith and Dale.<\/p>\n
Arkin was the son of David I. Arkin, a painter and writer, and Beatrice Wortis, a teacher. He wrote that he grew up in a Jewish family with \u201cno emphasis on religion.\u201d The family moved to Los Angeles when Alan was 11; his parents were accused of being communists during the Red Scare\u201d of the 1950s and struggled for work. He attended Los Angeles State College and Bennington College.<\/p>\n
Arkin won a Tony for best featured actor in 1963 when he appeared on Broadway in \u201cEnter Laughing,\u201d a comedy based on an autobiographical novel by the Jewish comedian, writer and director Carl Reiner.<\/p>\n
Arkin made his film debut \u2014 and received his first Academy Award nomination \u2014 opposite Reiner in \u201cThe Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming,\u201d about a Soviet sub that runs aground off New England. The phrase he teaches his comrades \u2014 \u201cEmergency! Everybody to get from street!\u201d \u2014 became a catchphrase.<\/p>\n
Thirteen years later, \u201cThe In-Laws\u201d would spawn another catchphrase, after Arkin and his co-star Peter Falk avoid a hail of bullets by running zig-zag and yelling \u201cSerpentine!\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1987, he starred in the television film \u201cEscape from Sobibor,\u201d portraying Leon Felhendler, a Polish-Jewish resistance fighter who organized the 1943 prisoner uprising at the Sobibor extermination camp. The role earned Arkin nominations for an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe award for best supporting actor.<\/p>\n
In \u201cLittle Miss Sunshine\u201d (2006) he played the cranky, vulgar grandfather to a little girl who dreams, improbably, of winning a beauty pageant. Arkin\u2019s character spends hours working on her dance routine with her in the independent comedy, which was a surprise hit.<\/p>\n
On receiving his Academy Award for the role in 2007, Arkin said: \u201cMore than anything, I\u2019m deeply moved by the open-hearted appreciation our small film has received, which in these fragmented times speaks so openly of the possibility of innocence, growth and connection.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arkin was also an accomplished folk singer, forming a group, The Tarriers, that had a modest 1956 hit with a version of \u201cThe Banana Boat Song,\u201d a traditional Jamaican calypso folk song that Harry Belafonte would make more famous.<\/p>\n
Arkin was married three times. He had three sons, all actors: Adam Arkin, Matthew Arkin and Anthony (Tony) Dana Arkin.<\/p>\n
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