Sam Levene (born Scholem Lewin; August 28, 1905 – December 28, 1980) was a Russian Empire-born American Broadway, film, radio, and television actor and director. In a career spanning over five decades, he appeared in over 50 comedy and drama theatrical stage productions and acted in over 50 films across the United States and abroad. Early life Levene was born as Scholem Lewin in Russia, the youngest of five children by a dozen years. He immigrated to the United States when he was two years old. He grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan on Avenue D and 8th Street and attended Public School 64. Levene, who would have been a graduate of Stuyvesant High School in 1923, dropped out. He also failed to qualify for the school's dramatic society. Since he had been in the class of Broadway for over five decades, the illustrious dropout was given a special award, his Stuyvesant High School diploma, in a 1976 ceremony held at the New York's Princeton Club. Levene's father, who anglicized his name as Harry Levine, was an orthodox Jewish cantor, who never was in a theater and thus never saw Sam perform. His mother, Beth Weiner, saw every one of Levene's early performances. Broadway debut On April 20, 1927, Levene made his Broadway stage debut earning 60 dollars a week with his first Actor's Equity contract. A five line role, Levene acted as District Attorney William Thompson in the original Broadway melodrama Wall Street, a play that only ran for three weeks at the Hudson Theatre. Broadway presence In 1980, Levene's last and thirty-ninth Broadway credit was his starring role as Daniel Horowitz in the 1980 comedy Horowitz and Mrs. Washington directed by Joshua Logan which closed after a run of only 10 previews and six performances at the John Golden Theatre. Although the Henry Denker comedy was panned, Levene's star power and comedic performance enabled a five-month tour of Horowitz and Mrs. Washington which went on Christmas hiatus on Saturday December 13, 1980, and turned out to be Levene's final stage performance in Canada, just two weeks prior to his death on December 28, 1980. Levene's Broadway career began with five years of steady employment in nondescript roles in ten Broadway plays, including a successive series of flops. One titled Solitaire (1929), was a Broadway play about a Coney Island midget that only ran four performances