Actor/writer Gordon Pinsent knew Al Waxman from his early days in the 1950s, when they were both struggling but ambitious Toronto actors.

"We hung out while we were waiting for acting jobs and we even had an actors workshop," Pinsent said, "although I don't think we had a name for it or anything."

Pinsent said that even in those lean years, Waxman was devoted to his craft, almost obsessive. Things apparently didn't change too much.

"Al, as an actor, was unsung," Pinsent said.

"He had this innate strength, and a good sense of doing what he felt he needed to do. It was wonderful to see him take a hold of something he really wanted ... He loved acting and I never once saw him tire of it."

* * *

Broadcaster Brian Linehan was stunned by the news of Al Waxman's death.

"It's a real sadness," said Linehan, who first met his good friend Waxman on his popular CITY-TV show City Lights in 1973. "He was one of my first interviews."

In fact, it was Linehan who presented Waxman with the Earle Grey lifetime achievement award at the 1998 Gemini Awards.

"When a friend dies like this, I don't have any showbiz cleverness to offer," said Linehan, who will emcee the Genie Awards Jan. 29 and was looking forward to chatting with his buddy there. "His contribution is almost inestimable. He moved with ease from stage, TV and motion pictures as an actor, producer and director."

* * *

Saul Rubinek, in Los Angeles, remembered Waxman as "dynamic and generous. His presence, even in a few brief scenes in films such as Atlantic City, was extraordinary.

"He had a wonderfully volatile personality and dared to go against the Canadian penchant for self-effacement. He wore his heart on his sleeve and that was an inspiration to a brash young actor like myself."

* * *

Lauded Canadian actor Maury Chaykin was Waxman's King Of Kensington castmate, and he was stunned when he heard the news in Los Angeles yesterday.

"I just saw him last Sunday night at a play in Toronto," Chaykin said. "Mostly I knew him through my uncle, (director) George Bloomfield. Al and George grew up together.

"My memories of him date back to King Of Kensington and doing that show and working with George and Al. Just nothing but fond memories of him. A very sweet man and an incredibly talented actor."

* * *

When Canada's second Kensington-set TV series, Twitch City, premiered two decades after the first, Waxman enthusiastically got in on the passing of the crown.

"We killed the king," director/ producer Bruce McDonald said yesterday of Waxman's Episode 1 appearance as a cantankerous homeless man killed by a blow to the head with a bag of groceries.

"We were so excited when he said yes. We didn't believe he was ever going to do it," McDonald said. "He thought it was really funny."

* * *

Al Waxman was in his acting glory doing his death scene for the premiere episode of Twitch, said series star/writer Don McKellar. Waxman was lying in the gutter.

"He wanted to keep going," McKellar said. "It was really miserable. It was in the slush with rotten fruit in the gutter at Kensington Market. He was a trooper.

"At the end, we were kind of apologetically thanking him and he said, 'No, no, no, thank you,' and gave us both cigars."

Yesterday, the new king toasted the old. McKellar has a huge photo of Waxman -- a prop from the show -- on his living room wall.

"In a way, I feel I might have to take it down. I don't want people to think it's disrespectful or something like that."

* * *

Barney Rosenzweig was the executive producer of Cagney And Lacey, the 1980s CBS police drama in which Waxman co-starred.

"Al and I were not only professionally associated, we were good friends," Rosenzweig said. "Besides Cagney And Lacey, I put him in a show up there (Toronto) called Twice In A Lifetime. And I actually wrote that character for him.

"Al wasn't so much a guy who would add a lot of tics to the character, or come in with his own material. He brought a verisimilitude to it, a strength of reality ... Al was somebody you could give material to and he would make it deeper and fuller and better."

Rosenzweig's wife, Cagney And Lacey co-star Sharon Gless, is in Toronto shooting Queer As Folk.

"I called my wife this morning to tell her, and I had second thoughts about doing so. They took her off the set. I couldn't tell if we had a bad connection, or if she was just so stunned she couldn't talk.

"We were a close family, all of us (on Cagney And Lacey). We worked well together and long together, and we cared about each other. Al was just a decent guy, almost an oddity in his field because he was so family-oriented. He cared so deeply about Sara and his children and his brother and his roots."

Rosenzweig said Waxman was once contacted about being consul general in Los Angeles.

"He loved Canada ... He thought very seriously about giving up his career to do that."

* * *

Actor Kenneth Welsh compared Waxman to the late Bruno Gerussi as "one of the last of those people who, throughout the last 30 years or so, was such a prominent, unmistakable figure in the Canadian television scene.

"He was always very present somehow in everyone's consciousness in the collective community of Canadian television. It was 'Al!' ... 'Al did this,' or, 'Did you hear what Al said about this?' He was eminently quotable and talkable-about."

Despite their long acquaintance and prolific bodies of work, Waxman and Welsh never worked together.

"And now it's too late," Welsh said. "Or maybe not. There's always the ghost in Hamlet."

* * *

"I never met a man as passionate about acting until I met Al," said actor Paul Popowich, with whom Waxman was currently co-starring on Twice In A Lifetime.

"He was a generous and gracious teacher. He was a friend, a mentor and inspiration to me ... I will miss him."

* * *

Executive producer Stephen J. Brackley, who also directed Waxman in his final Twice In A Lifetime episode, called his character, heavenly Judge Othniel, "the backbone of our show."

"He is one of the heroes of my youth as an actor. He was a great intellect, philosopher and family man ... a good man," he said.

* * *

Actress Sandy Ross remembered Waxman as a friend, adviser and political ally, beginning with her term as president of ACTRA's Toronto branch.

"In '94-'95, that really meant a lot to me because I was the first woman and the first person of colour as president and, let me tell you, it wasn't easy."

Waxman was always willing to lend a hand to the cause.

"He literally offered his services, saying, 'What would you like me to do? Where can I speak? How can I help?' Nobody else of that profile did that."

He identified with the cause of minority actors, supported Toronto's Obsidian Theatre company and helped raise funds for Into The Mainstream, a talent directory of minority performers.

"I think that's why he wanted to do Shylock (in Stratford's The Merchant Of Venice), being a Jewish man in an Anglo-Saxon world," she said. "He knew what we were trying to do in terms of putting people in the mainstream."

* * *

Al Waxman wasn't one to ask for a stand-in, recalled actress Alison Sealy-Smith, the star of The Ride, last year's TV movie/series pilot about Toronto cabbies.

In one scene, Yaphet Kotto was to throw a chair through a window into the office of Waxman, who played crusty old night-dispatcher Max.

"Everybody was really concerned about Al getting out of the way. They were going to put somebody else in for him and all kinds of stuff," Sealy-Smith said. "He just did it -- stayed to the last possible second so that it looked really good, and then got out of the way."

* * *

In the latter years of his career, Waxman carved a niche for himself at the Stratford Festival, where he was signed to appear this coming season as Shylock in The Merchant Of Venice.

"I first worked with Al when I was 17 years old," Stratford artistic director Richard Monette said in a release yesterday.

"He gave us a wonderful performance as Willy Loman (in 1997's Death Of A Salesman) and his direction of Anne Frank (last season) was superb.

"The main reason we decided to do The Merchant Of Venice this year was that Al so much wanted to play Shylock. He was passionate about that play and that part ... He was full of ideas about the role, and was so much looking forward to working on it."

* * *

In 1999, Waxman debuted on the stage of the Royal Alexandra Theatre, in Neil Simon's Proposals.

"I'm so glad he did play the Royal Alexandra," producer David Mirvish said. "I know that was something he always wanted to do.

"I feel the loss of all the other shows I would have hoped we would have done together in the future. (He was) a friend, someone who cared about the people in the theatre but cared also about individuals."

* * *

Canadian Stage artistic producer Martin Bragg talked with Waxman earlier this week, when Waxman called to thank Bragg for an invitation to see Larry's Party.

Waxman and Bragg had been talking a lot recently about a project for next year's CanStage season.

"We got our hands on a play that was just perfect for Al," Bragg said. "He's just somebody I've admired for many, many years

"We had one of the most intelligent conversations I have ever had with anyone about the play," Bragg said. "In the end, he turned me down. Talk about being let down nicely."

* * *

Maria Topolovich, president of the Academy Of Canadian Cinema and Television, often travelled with Waxman, one of the academy's founding members who served as chairman for two terms.

"He was very much an ambassador and a tireless promoter of Canadian talent," Topolovich said. "And he did it with a smile and a great deal of charm."


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