....one of my old New Haven buds emailed me this one today:


The Most Interesting Jew in the World:
Dos Equis’ pitchman is Jewish actor living in Marina del Rey.

by Adam Wills


“He once had an awkward moment just to see how it feels. He lives
vicariously through himself,” a disembodied voice states.

“He is the Most Interesting Man in the World.”

Seated at a table, surrounded by beautiful women, a bearded man with
salt-and-pepper hair looks into the camera: “I don’t always drink beer,
but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis. Stay thirsty, my friends.”

At a time when many viewers use DVRs to skip over TV commercials, Dos
Equis gets people to stop and watch its ads for their potent blend of
machismo and absurdist humor. The debonair Latin pitchman, a creation of
Euro RSCG, appears one part Earnest Hemingway, one part Baron
Munchausen. We learn his “beard alone has experienced more than a lesser
man’s entire body.”

But the actor who portrays the Most Interesting Man in the World is more
likely to attend a bar mitzvah than a Quinceañera. Jonathan Goldsmith,
72, whose face and voice are now inexorably linked with one of Mexico’s
top-selling beers, is a New York-born Jew who lives with his wife on a
50-foot Beneteau sailboat in Marina del Rey.

“It’s 47.3 feet,” he corrected during a recent phone interview. “It had
a bris … it was 53 feet.”

Goldsmith says he had a nice career as a character actor before his Dos
Equis stint, which began in 2007. He appeared in films, like “Go Tell
the Spartans,” and television shows such as “The A-Team,” “Knight Rider”
and “MacGyver.” “But I’ve never gotten the accolades that I’ve gotten
since this wonderful campaign started,” he said.

Given the campaign’s popularity, Goldsmith says he can’t venture outside
without being recognized.

“I was sitting with my wife in a little Mexican restaurant that we love
to go to for breakfast. A fellow came over and said … ‘I was speaking
with my little boy yesterday, who is 7, and I asked him what he wanted
to do when he grew up. Unhesitatingly, he said, “I want to be the Most
Interesting Man in the World.” ’ And on the other end of the spectrum,
we were on a bus, and an elderly gentleman on a cane came over and said,
‘When I come back, I want to be like you.’ ”

When he auditioned for the Dos Equis role, Goldsmith said he drew
inspiration from a renowned Argentine actor.

“I immediately thought of my friend, Fernando Lamas, who was a great
raconteur and a sailing buddy of mine. … That was the first thing that
came to my mind, and it stuck with me after that,” Goldsmith said.

Despite the grandiosity of the Dos Equis character, separating the actor
from his Latin alter ego is not as easy as it might seem. Goldsmith has
yet to arm-wrestle Fidel Castro, but he has led an interesting life that
includes saving two people from certain death and rescuing tigers.

Born in New York to a gym teacher father and a mother who modeled,
Goldsmith was brought up in a family with religious grandparents and a
great-grandfather who founded a Brooklyn yeshiva. He attended Hebrew
school and became bar mitzvah, but these days he keeps his observance to
High Holy Day services.

“Wherever the tickets are less than flying to Paris, we’ll drop by,” he
said.

Goldsmith is a vocal proponent for the S.A.B.R.E. Foundation, a tiger
rescue organization in Nevada. He traces his love for the animal to a
toy tiger he carried around during his early childhood.

“I just fell absolutely in love with it,” he said. “My zayde used to
take me to The Central Park Zoo to [visit] the lions and tigers. Those
were wonderful, wonderful days.”

Goldsmith met Peter Renzo of S.A.B.R.E. while living in Nevada City,
Calif. At the time, he was introduced to two 30-pound tiger cubs.
Several years later, after S.A.B.R.E. moved outside of Fernley, Nev.,
Goldsmith paid a return visit and found the cuddly cubs had become
700-pound adults. Renzo invited Goldsmith to step into the cage to feed
one of the tigers by hand, and Goldsmith said the big cat wasn’t exactly
intimidated by the Most Interesting Man in the World.

“He handled it very well,” Goldsmith joked. “I was a little bit nervous,
but he looked like a Landsman, so it was alright.”

Among Goldsmith’s other charitable causes are Free Arts for Abused
Children, which pairs artists with children in protective custody, and
the Stella Link Foundation, a group calling attention to child sex
trafficking in Cambodia.

In addition to helping children and animals in need, Goldsmith has
rescued people from deadly situations on two separate occasions. Once,
while hiking during a snowstorm, he found a man stricken with
hypothermia and cared for him overnight until help could arrive the next
morning.

The second incident occurred at Malibu Lagoon.

“I noticed one girl who was in trouble right in front of everybody. I
got her just as she went down. If I wasn’t there, she would have drowned
10 feet from her parents. It was just fortunate,” he said.

And while the Most Interesting Man in the World is portrayed with a
Superman-like invulnerability, Goldsmith says he knows a thing or two
about dying in front of the camera. During a career that spans more than
50 years, he has been drawn-and-quartered, shot, electrocuted and
drowned, and Marshal Matt Dylan killed him on five separate occasions on
the TV show “Gunsmoke.” But Goldsmith’s favorite death sequence was a
public hanging in a movie of the week—the 1969 Western “Cutter’s Trail.”

“It was dawn in Kanab, Utah, and there were hundreds of extras. There
was a long drum roll and a pronouncement. I had this long walk to the
gallows, and then made some last-minute speech of de




--