STAGE TUBE: On This Day 9/09 - and a Very Happy Birthday to Chaim Topol!

Hello and welcome to BWW's ON THIS DAY Series! Please read along as, each day, we celebrate birthdays, shows' openings and all kinds of theatrical events that have happened on this date.

On this day we wish a very happy birthday to the one and only Chaim Topol! Chaim, or Haim, Topol's reputation is almost inseparable from his portrayal of Tevye, the milkman protagonist of "Fiddler on the Roof". Topol first played the role in 1967, at Her Majesty's Theatre in the West End, and then reprised his role in the 1971 film. For his part in the film, Topol won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Academy Award.

His other cinematic work includes roles in "Galileo", "Flash Gordon" and the James Bond movie, "For Your Eyes Only", and he has also performed onstage in "The Bakers Wife" and "Gigi".

Here he is as the part he played so many times - across four decades - performing one of the musical theatre's greats: 'If I Were a Rich Man.'