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Starting form March 2003, visit-syria.com will publish monthly biographies of famous Syrian cultural personalities.

Doreid LAHHAM
(1934-)

Doreid Lahham was born and raised in Damascus. He studied chemistry at Damascus University and began his career as an instructor at the Chemistry Department. In 1960, he took part in a television mini-series called Sahret Dimashq (Damascus Evening), and after sensing his popularity, resigned from the academic field to devote his life to acting. He created an Arabic version of Laurel and Hardy, with the theater pioneer Nihad Quali, and performed three television shows that became instant classics throughout the Arab world. He played the role of Ghawar al-Tawsheh, a slapstick clown and prankster who became a household name in Syria and throughout the Arab world. Following the Arab defeat in the war of 1967, Lahham moved into theater and took up constructive criticism in his shows. He teamed with Mohammad al-Maghout, a political playwright, and began performing plays that criticized Arab inefficiency, weaknesses, corruption, and poverty.

The plays of Doreid Lahham became the only outlet for marginal political criticism and relief throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and his popularity soared, not only in Syrian but in many other Arab countries as well. He toured the Arab world with four plays Day’at Tishreen (October Village), which dealt with the Arab-Israeli War of 1973, Ghorba, which covered Arab immigration to the West, and Kasak ya Watan (Cheers to the Homeland) and Shaka’ik al-Nu’man, a sequel to the 1974 Day’at Tishreen. Leaders throughout the Arab world received him, and he even toured the Americas, performing to the large Arab émigré communities. In 1976, President Hafez al-Asad decorated him with the Highest Order of the Syrian Republic. He was also given medals of recognition for his work by Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba, who gave him the same medal in 1979, and so did Libyan leader Mu’ammar al-Quaddafi in 1991. Nine years later, Lebanese President Emille Lahhoud awarded him the Order of Merit of the Lebanese Republic in a ceremony held at the American University of Beirut (AUB). In the 1980s, having established himself as a revolutionary actor in the Arab world, he presented two movies of political content, al-Hudud (The Border) and al-Taqrir (The Report), which coined him "The Arab Charlie Chaplin." In 1991, the Arab World Academy in Paris honored him for the two works, declaring him the “best Arab actor” of all time and honoring him with a one-week festival of his works.

In 1976, Nihad Quali, who had created all the characters in Lahham’s works, suffered a severe illness and retired from public life. In 1988, Lahham quarreled with Maghout and the teamwork between them came to end. Throughout the 1990s, he presented a variety of works that were written, directed, and starred by him. In 1987, he presented a sequel to his 1974 hit Day’at Tishreen, and in 1992 performed two more theatrical works. One of them, Alusfura al-Sa’ida (The Happy Bird) was a children’s show. In 1999, Lahham tried to re-capture the character of Ghawar, which he had abandoned in the early 1980s when his works began to assume more of a political than a comical character. He performed Awdet Ghawar (The Return of Ghawar), but the work failed to achieve the success Lahham had earned in his earlier comedies. In 1997, in recognition of his two children’s productions, the moview Kafroun in 1990 and Alasfura al-Sa’ida in 1992, he became the UNICEF representative in Syria for children’s affairs. He performed several television series aimed at increasing awareness of the problems of children, and in 1999, became UNICEF Ambassador for Childhood in the Middle East and North Africa. In 2001, Lahham returned to television works, this time as a talk show host on the Saudi-owned MBC channel. He performed a talk show called Ala Mas’uliyati (On My Responsibility) where conducted political, social, and cultural debates with leading politicians, artists, and intellectuals from the Middle East and North Africa. In 2002, he performed another talk show on MBC called Alam Doreid (Doreid’s Wolrd) where he held lively debates with creative Arab children.

Pictures from "Duraid Laham, Meshwar el Omr" written by Dr. Farouk Al JAMMAL

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