Joel is the son of the Borscht Belt comedian, Mickey Katz, with whom he first appeared on stage at the age of nine. Ironically, early in his career, If the name Joel Katz doesn’t appear familiar, it is because he changed his name few times, first to Joel Kaye and then to Joel Grey. The 5'5" multi-talented actor, singer, dancer, and director got his big breakwas being cast as the emcee in Cabaret for which he won Broadway's 1967 Tony Award as Best Supporting or Featured Actor (Musical).  Walter Kerr, writing about Cabaret in the Times, described how he “burst from the darkness like a tracer bullet . . . Mr. Grey is cheerful, charming, soulless and conspiratorially wicked.”

Joel recreated his decadent emcee role in an Oscar-winning performance in the film version of Cabaret (1972 which made him one of only eight actors to have won both a Tony and an Oscar for having portrayed the same role on stage and scree . Joel also earned three Tony nominations as Best Actor (Musical): in 1969 George M, in 1975 for Goodtime Charley, and in 1979 for The Grand Tour. He also originated the role of the Wizard in the popular musical Wicked.

Joel has been a tireless performer taking on a co-starring role in the 2011 revival of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes at age 79 while co directing the Broadway revival of The Normal Heart, Larry Kramer’s play about the early days of the AIDS epidemic,  It was during this exhaustive schedule that his work as a photographer was recognized when his photographs and photographs of the performer were featured at an exhibit during April 2011 at the Museum of the City of New York, titled "Joel Grey/A New York Life."

So let’s salute the Energizer geezer on his birthday with a Cabaret Cocktail while watching a DVD of Cabaret with his mesmerizing performance as the unctuous sexual-ambivalent emcee who put the "D" in decadence in post- Weimar Berlin.