Jerry Orbach
1935-2004
by James Norton
Sure, he put Baby in the corner. And he arranged the hit on Martin Landau's mistress in Crimes and Misdemeanors.
But for most Americans, Jerry Orbach, who died of prostate cancer this week, will be remembered as Detective Lennie Briscoe of the NYPD. And as "Law and Order" is the nexus and paterfamilias of the sprawling clan of true-crime TV dramas, so was Jerry Orbach the center of "Law and Order's" massive appeal.
Orbach played Briscoe for 12 of the show's 14 years. While most of the show's players have been interchangable and workmanlike, Jerry "Order" Orbach and his "Law" counterpart Sam Waterston have served as the two-stroke engine that has kept the series rolling.
Waterston's prosecutor extraordinaire, Jack McCoy, blazes a burning path through the courtroom — confrontational, mischievious and sometimes fanatically dedicated to abstract principles his coworkers would gladly sacrifice on the altar of pragmatism. Orbach's Briscoe, by contrast, is a realist — a weary ball of resignation and wry understatement. Sharp as a razor when bearing down on a hostile suspect; gentle with children. His trademark: darkly funny wisecracks uttered in the presence of a still-stiffening corpse.
What's remarkable about Briscoe — really, about Orbach's portrayal of the part — is that he stands in such direct opposition to the archetypical American cop hero. An American cop is young, drives a sports car, smashes through doors, gets written off as a "renegade," bucks the system and gets laid more or less by accident — and by witnesses or suspects who really should have been left in their original pristine condition.
Briscoe walks and talks like a jaded Soviet-bloc refugee, minus the accent. He's a recovering alcoholic, sensitive about the sauce but never histrionic. In one particularly wrenching episode, his own daughter dies — a rare departure into the realm of the personal on a show driven by the all-powerful and overwhelming hand of impersonal plot twists and explorations of the legal code's gray areas.
Lesson? Perhaps none whatsoever. But maybe if a regular joe like Briscoe can drive a series like "Law and Order" into the TV stratosphere, there's a market for something a little more nuanced, a little darker and a little more genuinely human than the vast, empty, soul-eroding expanse of cable and network TV.
And perhaps he could have taken it a little further. The Bronx native was poised to kick off a new, even more Lennie-intensive series called "Law and Order: Trial by Jury." Beyond the original "Law and Order," he had a track record to back up his new venture. An accomplished Broadway actor, Orbach won a Tony Award for his performance in "Promises, Promises." He also garnered Emmy nominations for appearances in the "Golden Girls," and his appearance in the 1997 miniseries "Broadway Bound."
Alas, no such luck. As we remember Orbach — or, more accurately, as we watch gigantic, four-hour blocks of "Law and Order" on a semi-weekly basis — we should remember that he was far more than Lennie Briscoe, the role he came to so fully embody. But we should also remember his highlights from the series he so skillfully — and so tenaciously — anchored.
On one recently aired episode, Briscoe's partner makes an observation about a woman killed by a sniper: "Six inches to the right, and she'd still be here."
"Six inches to the right," replies Briscoe, "and Lincoln would have seen the end of the play."
Ah, Lennie. Ah, Jerry Orbach. Beautifully played.
E-mail James Norton at jrnorton@flakmag.com.
