Jerry Adler , a former Broadway producer and manager who turned to acting in his sixties and became known to audiences as Hesh Rabkin on “ The Sopranos ,” died Saturday. He was 96.

Adler’s death was confirmed by the Riverside Memorial Chapel in New York.

After decades working behind the scenes on Broadway and in television production, he weighed retirement before the casting director on the 1992 thriller “The Public Eye,” a friend of one of Adler’s daughters, convinced him to read for director Howard Franklin. His role instantly positioned him as an in-demand character actor for the rest of his life.

On HBO’s “The Sopranos,” Adler featured across all six seasons as Hesh Rabkin, a Jewish loan shark who was a friend of Tony Soprano’s father and remains an advisor to James Gandolfini’

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