
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, May 15, 1993                   TAG: 9305150300
SECTION: SPECTATOR                    PAGE: S-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SIMI HORWITZ THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

JERRY ORBACH KNOWS THE STREETS OF `LAW & ORDER'

Tie askew, looking like a man who has spent too many hours on a bar stool, Detective Lenny Briscoe shuffles down the hall of a New York hospital. At his side are Detective Mike Logan (played by Chris Noth) and psychiatrist Diane Meade (Lindsay Crouse). She is suspected in a murder case.

"I'm a psychiatrist," she says, trying to derail the issue.

"And I'm a detective," Briscoe mutters with an expression that says, I've seen it all, and nobody is going to pull a fast one on me.

And then, abruptly stepping out of his Briscoe character, Jerry Orbach turns to director Ed Sherin. "There's something wrong here."

He is not happy with the way the scene is developing. There's nervous laughter all around.

It is after 8 at night on the set of "Law & Order" (Wednesday nights on NBC) on New York City's Pier 62 - on 23rd Street, right off the Hudson River - and everyone is a little giddy and tired. After half a dozen rehearsals, they're nowhere near ready to shoot.

Orbach, newest member of the cast that includes Michael Moriarty, Richard Brooks, Steven Hill, Noth and Dann Florek, takes it all in stride: "We can work 16 hours, but then you get several days off."

Orbach's Lenny Briscoe adds a darker new dimension to the straight-arrow flavor of "Law & Order." With his wry survivor's sense of honor, Briscoe already has been guilty of not paying for his meal at a restaurant, and he has uttered ethnic slurs: "If it's crime of passion, it's probably a spic. If it's murder over money, we're talking about a mick."

Natty in denim jeans and a matching shirt, Orbach seated himself on the couch in his dressing room between scenes, legs stretched out, eager to talk about Briscoe. "He may be a kind of breakthrough, but we'll find out more about him."

Lowering his voice conspiratorially, he offered his own thumbnail of Briscoe: "I believe he was part of a clean sweep of a police precinct that was considered corrupt. But since there was no proof, they decided to put all the cops into different precincts."

The 50-something, Bronx-born actor chortled with satisfaction, as if Briscoe's deception was his own.

"Law & Order" is Jerry Orbach's first weekly TV role since he created the part of Harry McGraw, first as a recurring character on "Murder, She Wrote" and then as the mainspring of his short-lived 1987 series, "The Law and Harry McGraw."

Playing Briscoe was an obvious role for him, he emphasized. "Look, if I was cast to play a Norwegian fisherman or a Georgian sharecropper, I'd have to do research. But I've known guys like Briscoe my whole life. I understand them. If I were tougher than I am and my life had gone in a different direction, I could easily have become a Briscoe."

Producer Dick Wolf agreed. "Jerry fits Briscoe like a glove. Briscoe is not a knight in shining armor, but he has an inner moral compass."

That may be, but he's a TV departure all the same. And it's not simply Briscoe's crude style and the suggestion that he's not above graft. More unusual, Briscoe has no difficulty in making those ethnic and racial slurs. And that's perhaps unprecedented in a leading TV cop.

Since Briscoe is the only character in this series who is not defined ethnically, and also the only shady figure here, the question of ethnicity is not irrelevant, Orbach agreed. But then he balked.

"Look, I feel that consciousness-raising is mainly the job of journalists," Orbach remarked. "This is entertainment, I'm an act-" Abruptly, he stopped and grinned to send up a well-known TV commercial. "I'm not an actor, but I play one on TV." He laughed. "I am an actor. I've been an actor for 40 years."

Orbach has appeared in Broadway hits such as "Carnival," "Guys and Dolls" and "Promises, Promises," which earned him a Tony Award. His movie credits include "Dirty Dancing," "Postcards From the Edge" and "Beauty and the Beast." And on television he has appeared in countless guest spots.

After college Orbach landed occasional acting roles, including a stint as a gigolo opposite Ingrid Bergman in an early TV play, "Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman." But despite his efforts to be taken seriously as a dramatic actor, he was developing a reputation as a musical performer.

That was a mixed blessing, he remembered. He was a known entity and worked, at least in New York, fairly steadily. "But when I went to Hollywood, no one wanted me. I was dismissed as a song-and-dance man. In fact, I was not taken seriously as an actor until I did `Prince of the City.' And at that point, I had been in the business 28 years."

One element in "Law & Order" he admitted bothers him a bit is the writers' refusal to explain to the audience some of the technical aspects of the legal system, from police procedure to the philosophy of jurisprudence to behind-the-scenes jargon.

"My instinct in TV is to make sure that the audience gets it," he said. "Here they don't care. One character will say to another that someone was R.O.R. I finally figured out that it meant `released on his own recognizance.' That jars me a little."

by CNB