Lee J. Cobb was an American actor. He is best known for his performance in 12 Angry Men , his Academy Award-nominated performance in On the Waterfront , and one of his last films, The Exorcist . He also played the role of Willy Loman in the original Broadway performance of Arthur Miller's 1949 play Death of a Salesman under the direction of Elia Kazan. Born Leo Jacob in New York City to a Jewish family of Russian and Romanian extraction. He grew up in The Bronx, New York, on Wilkins Avenue, near Crotona Park. His parents were Benjamin Jacob, a compositor for a foreign-language newspaper,... and Kate Neilecht. Cobb studied at New York University before making his film debut in The Vanishing Shadow . He joined the Manhattan-based Group Theatre in 1935. Cobb did summer stock at Pine Brook Country Club located in the countryside of Nichols, Connecticut, in the 1930s and early 1940s. Pine Brook was the summer home of the Group Theatre from 1931 until the 1940s. Cobb entered films in the 1930s, successfully playing middle-aged and even older men while he was still a youth.
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