Broadway lights to dim tonight for actor Ron Silver

If you're in the New York theater district this evening and you think the marquee lights are dimming, you're not crazy.

As is traditional with the theater world's loss of a great talent, the lights on Broadway will dim tonight in memory of actor Ron Silver, 62,who passed away this week after a two-year struggle with cancer.

Theater marquees will be dimmed for one minute at 8 p.m., the traditional starting time for evening performances of Broadway shows.

Silver won a 1988 best actor Tony Award for his performance in David Mamet's "Speed-the-Plow" and appeared in such plays as "Hurlyburly" by David Rabe and the comedy "Social Security."

From 1991 to 2000, he served as the president of Actors' Equity Assn.

A private service was held for Silver today at a temple on the Upper West Side with friends and family in attendance.

Journalist Leah Sydney spoke to The Dish Rag about her memories of her talented cousin, Ron: 

"My cousin Ron Silver was truly a modern-day Renaissance man. He combined his supreme talent of his craft with his activism and his endless inquiring mind, forever taking chances in all he did. He possessed a true Manhattan-born savvy, and he did it all on his own ... by his steely determination. He was courageous, vibrant, so smart, so quick, loyal, loving and complicated. His humor and confidence come  from his doting  parents and he passed that  on to his beloved children. It's fitting that Broadway is dimming the lights for him tonight,  because all of us that knew and loved him, our lives will  be a bit  diminished now, a bit less exciting, a bit less fun. I just loved Ronnie from my heart. I will miss him so."

Photo: Ron Silver continued to be active politically while fighting cancer. He attended the Barack Obama inaugural. And here he is at the Bloomberg pre-White House Correpondents Dinner cocktail reception in April 2008 with Patricia Duff and New Republic Literary Editor Leon Wieseltier. Credit: WireImage