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He will play a detective in the movie, directed by Franco Nero, in what is believed to be his first film since sexual assault allegations started surfacing in 2017.Kevin Spacey has been cast in a film in what is believed to be the first time since accusations of sexual assault against the actor started surfacing more than three years ago, prompting several court cases and unraveling his onscreen career. More
A familiar face who was especially adept at deadpan comedy, he also appeared on Broadway in “Same Time, Next Year,” wrote books and had his own talk show.Charles Grodin, the versatile actor familiar from “Same Time, Next Year” on Broadway, popular movies like “The Heartbreak Kid,” “Midnight Run” and “Beethoven” and numerous television appearances, died on Tuesday at his home in Wilton, Conn. He was 86.His son, Nicholas, said the cause was bone marrow cancer.With a great sense of deadpan comedy and the kind of Everyman good looks that lend themselves to playing businessmen or curmudgeonly fathers, Mr. Grodin found plenty of work as a supporting player and the occasional lead. He also had his own talk show for a time in the 1990s and was a frequent guest on the talk shows of others, making 36 appearances on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” and more than 40 on David Letterman’s NBC and CBS shows combined.Mr. Grodin with his co-star, Ellen Burstyn, and his director, Gene Saks, in 1975 at the first rehearsal for the Broadway comedy “Same Time, Next Year.” The play was a hit and a turning point in Mr. Grodin’s career.Bettmann, via Getty ImagesMr. Grodin was a writer as well, with a number of plays and books to his credit. Though he never won a prestige acting award, he did win a writing Emmy for a 1977 Paul Simon television special, sharing it with Mr. Simon and six others.Mr. Grodin, who dropped out of the University of Miami to pursue acting, had managed to land a smattering of stage and television roles when, in 1962, he received his first big break, landing a part in a Broadway comedy called “Tchin-Tchin,” which starred Anthony Quinn and Margaret Leighton.“Walter Kerr called me impeccable,” Mr. Grodin wrote years later, recalling a review of the show that appeared in The New York Times. “It took a trip to the dictionary to understand he meant more than clean.”Another Broadway appearance came in 1964 in “Absence of a Cello.” Mr. Grodin’s next two Broadway credits were as a director, of “Lovers and Other Strangers” in 1968 and “Thieves” in 1974. Then, in 1975, came a breakthrough Broadway role opposite Ellen Burstyn in Bernard Slade’s “Same Time, Next Year,” a durable two-hander about a man and woman, each married to someone else, who meet once a year in the same inn room.“The play needs actors of grace, depth and accomplishment, and has found them in Ellen Burstyn and Charles Grodin,” Clive Barnes wrote in a rave in The Times. “Miss Burstyn is so real, so lovely and so womanly that a man wants to hug her, and you hardly notice the exquisite finesse of her acting. It is underplaying of sheer virtuosity. Mr. Grodin is every bit her equal — a monument to male insecurity, gorgeously inept, and the kind of masculine dunderhead that every decent man aspires to be.”The show ran for three and a half years, with an ever-changing cast; the two original stars left after seven months. Mr. Grodin by that point was in demand in Hollywood. (Ms. Burstyn reprised the role in a 1978 film adaptation, but this time opposite Alan Alda in the Grodin role.)Mr. Grodin with Eddie Albert and Cybill Shepherd in the comic romance “The Heartbreak Kid” (1972), one of his best-known films.20th Century-FoxMr. Grodin had already appeared in Mike Nichols’s “Catch-22” in 1970 and had turned in one of his better-known film performances in the 1972 comic romance “The Heartbreak Kid,” in which he played a self-absorbed sporting goods salesman who marries in haste, immediately loses interest in his bride (Jeannie Berlin), and falls in love with another woman (Cybill Shepherd) on his honeymoon. (Elaine May, Mr. Nichols’s longtime comedy partner and Ms. Berlin’s mother, directed.)In 1978 he had a supporting role in the Warren Beatty vehicle “Heaven Can Wait.” Another signature role was in the action comedy “Midnight Run” in 1988, in which Mr. Grodin played an accountant who has embezzled a fortune from the mob and is being pursued by a bounty hunter, played by Robert De Niro.Though Mr. Grodin acted opposite stars like Mr. De Niro and Mr. Beatty, what may have been his best-known role found him working with a dog. The film was “Beethoven,” a family-friendly hit in 1992, and the dog was a St. Bernard. Mr. Grodin played a cranky father who did not exactly warm to the new household pet. In one memorable scene, he crawls into bed with what he thinks is his wife and is enjoying having the back of his neck licked until he realizes that the dog, not the wife, is his bedmate.“You’ve ruined my life,” he growls at the beast. “You’ve ruined my furniture. You’ve ruined my clothes. My family likes you more than they like me. Why? All you do is drool and shed and eat.”The next year he reprised the role in “Beethoven’s 2nd.” If he was frequently upstaged by the title character in these films, he took it in stride.“I don’t complain when the editor chooses my worst take because it’s the dog’s best take,” he told The Kansas City Star when the sequel came out.Charles Sidney Grodin was born on April 21, 1935, in Pittsburgh. His father, Ted, was a merchant who dealt in sewing notions, and his mother, Lena (Singer) Grodin, was a homemaker.He grew up in Pittsburgh and tried the University of Pittsburgh, thinking he might want to be a journalist. But he soon rejected that idea.“I imagined that someday an editor might tell me to ask someone who had lost a loved one how they felt,” he wrote in a 2011 essay for Backstage magazine. “I see that all the time on the news now. Not for me.”He often said that the 1951 movie “A Place in the Sun,” which starred Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift, caused him to shift his focus to acting.“It was two things,” he told the Television Academy Foundation in an oral history. “One is I think I developed an overwhelming crush on Elizabeth Taylor. And two, Montgomery Clift made acting look like, ‘Gee, well that looks pretty easy — just a guy talking.’”Mr. Grodin had a signature role in “Midnight Run” (1988), in which he played an accountant who has embezzled a fortune from the mob and Robert De Niro played the bounty hunter who pursued him.City Light FilmsAfter six months at the University of Miami, he worked at the Pittsburgh Playhouse for a year and a half, then found his way to New York. From 1956 to 1959 he studied with Uta Hagen, though he often found himself questioning her methods, which he said annoyed her.Mr. Grodin made guest appearances on “Shane,” “The Virginian” and other 1960s TV series before landing his first significant film role, as an obstetrician, in the 1968 horror hit “Rosemary’s Baby.”In 1976 he played an unlikable oilman in a remake of “King Kong,” with some reluctance.“I wanted to play the love interest with Jessica Lange,” he said. “I didn’t want to be the guy responsible for the death of the most beloved animal outside of Bambi. But they wanted me for the bad guy.”By popular demand, his character meets a gruesome end.“The only thing they changed after the first screening, I was told, is when Kong got loose and tried to step on me and kill me and missed,” he said. “The audience was so disappointed that they had to recut it.”Mr. Grodin in 2000, not long after his CNBC talk show ended its run. “They brought me in there to be a humorist,” he said, “but pretty quickly I got caught up in social issues.”Suzanne DeChillo/The New York TimesMr. Grodin showed a different side in the mid-1990s when he hosted “The Charles Grodin Show” on the cable channel CNBC.“They brought me in there to be a humorist,” he said in the oral history, “but pretty quickly I got caught up in social issues, and the show became just as much that, if not dominantly that. Some people like it better when you’re funny, and some people prefer that you’re taking cameras up to prisons and trying to help people who shouldn’t be in prison.”Nicholas Grodin said his father had particularly been proud of his work for the Innocence Project, the prison justice organization, and related causes, and his work for groups that help homeless people.After his talk show ended in 1998, Mr. Grodin largely stepped away from show business for a dozen years. Then he began to take roles again, including a recurring one on “Louie,” the comedian Louis C.K.’s series.Mr. Grodin wrote several memoirs full of anecdotes from his career, including “It Would Be So Nice if You Weren’t Here: My Journey Through Show Business” (1989) and “We’re Ready for You, Mr. Grodin: Behind the Scenes at Talk Shows, Movies and Elsewhere” (1994).His first marriage, to Julie Ferguson, ended in divorce. In 1983 he married Elissa Durwood, who survives him, along with his son, who is from his second marriage; a daughter from his first marriage, the comedian Marion Grodin; and a granddaughter.After more than a decade away from show business, Mr. Grodin began to take roles again. He’s seen here in his recurring role as a doctor in a 2014 episode of the comedian Louis C.K.’s series “Louie.”K.C. Bailey/FXA 1985 anecdote Mr. Grodin related on Mr. Letterman’s show was typical of the breath of fresh, if offbeat, air he brought to those appearances. He told Mr. Letterman that he had been gratified when, walking through the lobby on his way to the studio, the crowd that had lined up to get into the show burst into applause.“I turned around to smile,” he said, “and they weren’t applauding me. There was a duck in a tuxedo walking by, and they were applauding the duck.“But,” he added, “for the moment that I thought they were applauding me, it was a lovely, lovely moment.”He offered no explanation for the presence of the duck. More
Two-thirds of characters reflect stereotypes, and just 3.4 percent of movies had leads or coleads who were Asians or Pacific Islanders, the study of 1,300 movies found.Of the 1,300 top-grossing films released from 2007 through 2019, just 44 featured an Asian or Pacific Islander character in a leading role — and one-third of the roles went to a single actor, Dwayne Johnson, a study has found. More
The actor talked about the shocking events of Sunday’s episode, about working alongside Kate Winslet and about those delicious Wawa hoagies.This interview contains major spoilers for Episode 5 of “Mare of Easttown.”When Detective Colin Zabel (Evan Peters) breezes into the grim, insular, working-class Pennsylvania community of Easttown, he’s the young hot shot from county, sent to babysit the troubled detective Mare Sheehan (Kate Winslet) as she investigates the murder of a teenage mother. More
Ms. Hayes had quite a cackle, and it served her well in a number of witchy roles, beginning in 1969 on a short-lived but much remembered TV series.Billie Hayes, who rode a memorable cackle to kiddie-TV fame, playing a witch named Witchiepoo in the short-lived but much remembered 1969 series “H.R. Pufnstuf,” died on April 29 in Los Angeles. She was 96.News of her death was posted on her website.Ms. Hayes had built a moderately successful stage career and had portrayed Mammy Yokum in the 1959 film version of “Li’l Abner” (reprising a role she had played on Broadway) when she was cast as Witchiepoo.“H.R. Pufnstuf” was the first of a string of children’s shows made by the brothers Sid and Marty Krofft in the 1970s — trippy, slapdash-looking affairs that contrasted noticeably with the carefully pitched messages of “Sesame Street” and “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” which were born in the same era. Krofft shows tended toward the bizarre: “Lidsville,” for instance, which also starred Ms. Hayes (as well as Charles Nelson Reilly), involved a land of living hats.Few of the shows lasted long — “Pufnstuf” survived only 17 episodes — but they made an impression.“The Kroffts dished up a swirl of psychedelia, vaudeville and cheesy production values that might be described as brown acid for the toddler soul,” Emily Nussbaum wrote in The New York Times in 2004, when TV Land broadcast a marathon of Krofft creations.“Pufnstuf” was a sort of comic sendup of “The Wizard of Oz,” with Witchiepoo pursuing a talking flute possessed by a boy named Jimmy (Jack Wild) in much the way Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch of the West craves Dorothy’s ruby slippers.The red wig and elaborate makeup Ms. Hayes wore made her a striking figure, but witchy ineptitude kept Witchiepoo from being too scary. In 1970 she played the character in a film version, called simply “Pufnstuf,” in a cast that also included Martha Raye as a character named Boss Witch and Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas as one named Witch Hazel.For years afterward the role made Ms. Hayes popular among casting directors in search of a witch. In 1971 she played one in an episode of the sitcom “Bewitched” in which she was ultimately bested by Samantha, the series’ star witch, played by Elizabeth Montgomery. In 1985 she was the voice of the witch Orgoch in the animated Disney film “The Black Cauldron.” She was the voice of a cackling witch in “Shrek Forever After” in 2010.Perhaps most memorably, in 1976 the comedian Paul Lynde, with whom she had first worked decades earlier, managed to pair her and Ms. Hamilton in a running sketch on “The Paul Lynde Halloween Special,” which also featured appearances by Betty White, Donny and Marie Osmond and the rock group Kiss, and which has taken on a sort of kitschy fame.“The two witches bookend Mr. Lynde as they cackle their way through the hardcover editions of ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ and ‘The Exorcist,’ call ‘The Sound of Music’ a real horror movie and play Witches’ Monopoly, a board game in which contestants can either buy a property or blow it up,” The New York Times wrote in 2007 when a DVD of that television rarity was released.Ms. Hayes played other roles in her somewhat sporadic career, including providing the voices for characters on “The Brothers Flub,” “Transformers: Rescue Bots” and other animated shows. But Witchiepoo was the one that stuck in people’s heads. In 2003 Inside TV ranked her No. 3 on its list of Top 10 witches in TV history, behind only Ms. Montgomery and Catherine Hicks, who played Amanda Tucker on the 1980s series “Tucker’s Witch.”Ms. Hayes at the Museum of Television and Radio in Beverly Hills, Calif., at a party celebrating the release of “H.R. Pufnstuf” on DVD in 2004.Stephen Shugerman/Getty ImagesBillie Armstrong Brosch was born on Aug. 5, 1924, in Du Quoin, Ill. Her father, Charles, was a coal miner, and her mother, Marie (Armstrong) Brosch, was an administrator for the Perry County General Assistance Office.She began performing as a child and continued to do so after leaving high school early, performing in Chicago and with U.S.O. shows. (An agent at the start of her professional career suggested that “Brosch” was not an ear-friendly name for a performer.)She eventually secured a role in a touring show called “What’s New” with Mr. Lynde. In 1956 Mr. Lynde wrote and directed sketches for a Broadway revue called “New Faces of 1956,” and Ms. Hayes found herself as one of those new faces — along with a young British actress named Maggie Smith.Ms. Hayes said her commitment to “New Faces,” which ran for 220 performances, kept her from accepting an offer to originate the role of Mammy Yokum in “Li’l Abner,” a musical based on Al Capp’s comic strip characters, when it opened on Broadway in November 1956, but she later stepped into the part, replacing Charlotte Rae. She won the role in the 1959 film version.Ms. Hayes was also president of Pet Hope, an animal care organization. She leaves no immediate survivors.In a 1969 interview with the Dallas-area broadcaster Bobbie Wygant, Ms. Hayes noted that, though Witchiepoo was the villain of “Pufnstuf,” she received a lot of fan mail from children seeking her help with kid-size problems.“I’m the Ann Landers of the witch world,” she said.“I don’t know why they pick the witch to write to,” she said, “unless they figure either she’s so dumb she’ll give me a funny answer or she’s so smart I’ll get out of trouble.” More
As the daughter of Laraine Newman, she has an understanding of the ups and downs of early success. Will those lessons be helpful for her first series, “Hacks”?Right before the shutdown last year, the comic Hannah Einbinder became, at 23, the youngest (and as of now last) stand-up to perform a set on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” making a splash in her network television debut. More
New and returning TV series like “The Gilded Age” and “The Good Fight” have been a lifeline for celebrated theater actors during the pandemic. Will TV, or theater, ever look the same?Back in March, the actress Kelli O’Hara arrived on Rhode Island’s Gold Coast. A company of theater heroes, with enough combined Tonys to crowd a mansion’s mantels, met her there. “It was almost like Broadway said, ‘We’re shutting down,’” O’Hara recalled during a recent telephone interview. “So 20 of us got together and said, ‘Let’s go do a play in a seaside town.’”But O’Hara — and colleagues like Christine Baranski, Nathan Lane, Debra Monk and Cynthia Nixon — hadn’t come to Newport to for a summer stock job. Or even for the clam cakes. They were on location for “The Gilded Age,” a robber baron costume drama from Julian Fellowes that will premiere on HBO in 2022.With Broadway theaters closed since last April, “The Gilded Age” joins current series like “The Good Fight,” “Younger” and “Billions” and upcoming ones like “The Bite” and a “Gossip Girl” reboot in providing a glitzy refuge for theater stars during the shutdown. Broadway performers have always appeared here and there on scripted series. (No 2000s Playbill bio was complete without a “Law & Order” credit.) But this past year, television work — which is typically better paid than theater and more luxurious in its perks — was pretty much the only show in town.Benton as Natasha in the musical “Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812,” which earned her a Tony nomination. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“People are just really excited to be working and to have human contact and to be on set and telling a story again,” Allison Estrin, the casting director of “Billions,” said. “Every actor I’ve talked to has just expressed nothing but gratitude and excitement for being able to work right now.”And because every stage actor was suddenly available, television has never seemed so theatrical. (You could cast a credible Sondheim revival with actors on “The Good Fight” alone.) Will television ever look the same? Will Broadway?A year or so ago, casting directors would have had to compete with — or maneuver around — Broadway commitments. “It was always a scheduling nightmare to work around people’s curtain times,” Robert King, a creator of “The Good Wife” and “The Bite” said.“Sorry to say it, but it worked for us,” he added about the shutdown, “because we could schedule more freely.”Tavi Gevinson.The CWAdam Chanler-Berat.The CWTavi Gevinson and Adam Chanler-Berat, stars of the new “Gossip Girl,” had both committed to a revival of the Stephen Sondheim musical “Assassins.” “We were going to work overtime and do back flips to make it work for them,” Cassandra Kulukundis, the “Gossip Girl” casting director, said. The pandemic put an end to back flips. Did that make Kulukundis’s life easier?“It made my life sad,” she said. “I want to see those people working.”Although some shows had completed casting before Covid-19 hit New York, many have stepped up with an express desire to employ stage actors. “Everyone’s aware that it’s a horrible time,” Warren Leight, the showrunner for “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” said. “And if you can help out, you do.”“So I just made the call early on,” he continued: “Let’s make this the year where the first pool of actors we go to is a Broadway actor, the Off Broadway actors.” He estimates that he has employed an average of 10 theater actors — Jelani Alladin, André De Shields, Adriane Lenox and Eva Noblezada among them — per episode this season.Robert and Michelle King conceived the goofy horror comedy “The Bite,” in part, to keep stage actors working. “Employing people that were out of work from the theater was uppermost in our mind,” Michelle King said. She doesn’t think that the six-episode show, which debuts May 21 on Spectrum, would have worked without stage performers. Filmed comparatively early in the pandemic, it was mostly shot remotely, in actors’ homes.“Because people are acting by themselves, you really need people that are at the very top of their craft,” she said. “If we hadn’t had access to those people, the show wouldn’t have come together creatively.”Like Gevinson and Chanler-Berat, Steven Pasquale (as seen in “The Bite”) was committed to a revival of the Stephen Sondheim musical “Assassins” before Covid-19 hit New York.Spectrum Originals/CBS StudiosFor Steven Pasquale, a Broadway veteran who was also slated for the “Assassins” revival, “The Bite” provided a welcome alternative. “It felt a little bit like we were making theater, even though we were making a TV show, because there were so many theater people involved.”“The Gilded Age,” which employs 17 Tony winners and nominees in its cast, had a similar put-on-a-show ethos. “There is something about theater actors on a television set,” said Audra McDonald, a six-time Tony winner and a star of “Gilded,” “The Bite” and “The Good Fight.” “It feels like it’s a repertory company.”Nixon said that “Gilded” had brought her back together with theater co-stars from her 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s. During a recent shoot, Nixon recalled, she looked at the cast members in the scene and said to Baranski, “We could totally do ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ right here.”This isn’t to suggest that casting stage performers is an act of charity or an excuse for an impromptu reunion. Yes, Broadway actors may have less on-camera experience than some of their Hollywood counterparts. But they bring an ease with stylized language, as well as a professionalism and can-do attitude that inures them to the hectic rhythms and sudden changes of a television set, especially a set operating under Covid-19 precautions.From left, Audra McDonald, Christine Baranski and Cush Jumbo in “The Good Fight.” “There is something about theater actors on a television set,” McDonald said. “It feels like it’s a repertory company.” Patrick Harbron/CBS“People who work in live theater, where anything can go wrong, they’re always on their toes,” said Kulukundis, the “Gossip Girl” casting director. Christine Baranski, a Tony winner and a star of “The Good Fight” and “The Gilded Age,” put it this way: “We have a skill set and a respect for process. You hire a theater actor and they’ll come in prepared.”Theater actors are unruffled by specialized jargon. Estrin can always tell when a stage actor walks into the audition room for “Billions.” An exuberant drama set among financiers and the regulators who love-hate them, its current season includes the Tony nominees Daniel Breaker, Stephen Kunken and Sarah Stiles.“It isn’t easy dialogue to say,” Estrin said. “They walk in the door and make it look easy.”Brandon Victor Dixon and McDonald in the Broadway musical “Shuffle Along.” McDonald tried for years to get a song written into “The Good Fight,” finally succeeding in Season 3.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Younger,” a pacey comedy set in the world of Manhattan publishing, often relies on musical theater stars to deliver its zingers. “These are actors that are able to make the words sing,” said Steven Jacobs, one of the show’s casting directors.When it comes to words that people might have used a century ago, stage actors typically have an advantage. Not every film or TV actor has done period work, but theater-trained actors usually have at least a few Shakespeare plays and Shavian comedies under their era-appropriate belts.“We tend to have experience with having to wrap our mouths around different types of texts,” Denée Benton, a Tony nominee who stars in “The Gilded Age” said. “I’ve spent my entire career in corsets. So when this show came around, I was like, ‘Yeah, I know how to do this.’”Doing this without giving up theater wasn’t always an option. Back in the ’90s, when Baranski needed to earn more money and decided to seek television roles, she had to move to Los Angeles.“There wasn’t enough TV work in New York back then,” she said. “Now there is, and it’s a great thing for the theater community. God, I wish it had happened earlier.”The Emmy- and Tony-winning actor André De Shields in scene from “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” The show employed an estimated 10 theater actors per episode this season.Virginia Sherwood/NBCDuring this lost Broadway season, New York-based series have allowed Broadway talent to keep their health insurance and pay their mortgages without having to uproot their lives. Television has also provided a spiritual solace, a means to practice their art when other modes were unavailable. (Or as in the case of Zoom theater, glitchy and not always satisfying.)“The creative safety of knowing I’m going to get to use my gifts, the financial safety of knowing that I’m going to be able to pay my bills for a time period, it’s priceless,” Benton said. O’Hara put it even more feelingly. “It’s the most beautiful gift I’ve ever had,” she said of her work on “The Gilded Age.” “It fooled me into thinking I’m still doing theater.”Mandy Patinkin, a Broadway legend and a series regular in the coming season of “The Good Fight,” tried out retirement last year, after a nearly decade-long run on “Homeland.” He hated it. Returning to television gave him a renewed sense of purpose.“Part of what Covid taught me, among so many things, was the appreciation of the privilege of having a vocation that would structure my day and my life and my evenings and my time on Earth,” he said.De Shields won a Tony for his performance in the Broadway production of “Hadestown.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSlowly, Covid’s heavy curtain is starting to rise. Most of New York’s capacity restrictions, including those governing live theater, are scheduled to end on May 19 with social distancing requirements still in place; Broadway theaters, which depend on tourists and are too expensive to operate with limited audiences, have been cleared to reopen at full capacity beginning on Sept. 14.But with so many actors having found comfort and health insurance in television in the past year, will they return to the stage?Even before the pandemic, casting plays and musicals had become more difficult, said Bernard Telsey, a casting director for “The Gilded Age” and a co-artistic director of MCC Theater. “Everyone is wanting to do television now,” he said. This applies as much to younger stage actors as to seasoned ones. “They’re five minutes out of Juilliard, and they’re looking at a television show,” he said.But there are pleasures — for actors and audiences — that television can’t offer, at least not often and not without a lot of begging first. There are few high Cs on TV, and fewer kick lines. But “Younger” has included a few songs, among them a blissful “9-to-5,” led by Miriam Shor, an original cast member from “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.” There’s also a scene this season in which the series lead, Sutton Foster, dances to a song from “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” a show she starred in.“I’m always looking for little excuses to see her really step out and perform a little bit,” Darren Star, the creator of “Younger,” said.McDonald tries to make TV just a little more theatrical. For years, she asked the Kings to write a song into “The Good Fight.” They finally agreed and in the third season, McDonald and Baranski’s characters break into “Raspberry Beret” during late-night case prep.“We had a ball doing that,” McDonald said. “Because we knew it was as close to a musical number as we would ever get.”Matt Stevens More
In his long career as an actor, producer and director, he worked with some of the best-known names in show business, even if his own was barely recognized.He was the young actor who moved the audience as Cinna the poet in Orson Welles’s 1937 theatrical production of “Julius Caesar.”He was the chilly fascist sympathizer who kept audiences on the edge of their seats as he dangled from the Statue of Liberty in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1942 film “Saboteur.”And he was the kindly Dr. Auschlander on the popular 1980s hospital drama “St. Elsewhere.”His face was recognizable to generations of people. But his name? Well, just consider this: When a filmmaker decided to make a documentary about him, he ended up titling it “Who Is Norman Lloyd?”Mr. Lloyd, who died on Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles at 106, carved out a successful career over seven decades as an actor, producer and director, working with some of the best-known names in the business — even if his own was barely recognized.His death was confirmed by the producer Dean Hargrove, a longtime friend.In addition to acting under Welles and Hitchcock, Mr. Lloyd worked with Charlie Chaplin, Bertolt Brecht, John Houseman and Jean Renoir. He became good friends with Hitchcock and a frequent tennis partner of Chaplin’s. And he had stories to tell about all of them.“He is a fount of stage and movie lore, full of juice at the age of 93,” The New Yorker wrote when “Who Is Norman Lloyd?” was released in 2007.When Mr. Lloyd spoke, he did so with the sort of delivery that suggested an upper-crust upbringing and impeccable schooling. As it happened, he was born in Jersey City, N.J., on Nov. 8, 1914, and the only social climbing his family did was to move to Brooklyn. The aristocratic voice came later, when it was suggested that he take elocution lessons to erase his accent.“He sounds like he was born in London,” a friend, Peter Bart, the editorial director at Variety, once said. “It’s not an affectation. It’s just the way he sounds.”Mr. Lloyd began performing when he was very young, appearing before ladies’ clubs, he told The Star-Ledger of Newark in 2007. “‘Father, Get the Hammer. There’s a Fly on Baby’s Head’ — that was my big number,” he recalled dryly. “So you can imagine what that act was like.”But the young man was set on an actor’s path, and eventually he began working under Welles at the Mercury Theater in New York. The pay was poor, but it was the Depression, and he was better off than many of the people who crammed the theater in search of a cheap diversion. Mr. Lloyd’s performance as Cinna, in a version of “Julius Caesar” that Welles set in Mussolini’s Italy, brought him acclaim.“By many accounts, the most electrifying moment in ‘Caesar’ was the brief scene in which Cinna the Poet is mistaken for one of the conspirators and is set upon by the mob,” Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker in 2015 in an article about Welles.When Welles moved to Los Angeles in 1940 to make films, the young Mr. Lloyd went with him.Welles’s first movie project fell through, however, and Mr. Lloyd, who was expecting a baby with his wife, Peggy, a fellow performer, decided to look for work elsewhere. Welles’s next project went better: It was “Citizen Kane.”But while Mr. Lloyd missed a chance to have a role in that classic film, he did manage to get cast by Hitchcock in “Saboteur.” His role was a big one: Fry, a fifth columnist bent on attacking American targets during World War II.At the film’s climax, he topples over the edge of the Statue of Liberty’s torch and dangles as the film’s hero (Robert Cummings) tries to pull him to safety by his sleeve. (If a spoiler can be forgiven after all these years, Fry’s fate is less like that of Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint as they perch on Mount Rushmore in another Hitchcock film, “North by Northwest,” than that of King Kong on the Empire State Building.)Other roles followed, including in Hitchcock’s “Spellbound” (1945), Chaplin’s “Limelight” (1952) and Jean Renoir’s Hollywood movie “The Southerner” (1945). But Mr. Lloyd gradually began to turn to producing and directing.During the Hollywood blacklist period, his work dried up because of his past associations with leftist performers. He credited Hitchcock with reviving his career by insisting that he be allowed to hire Mr. Lloyd to produce and direct episodes of his television shows, “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.”Mr. Lloyd took whatever work he could get until almost the end of his life. He had roles in an episode of “Modern Family” in 2010 and in the 2015 Judd Apatow movie “Trainwreck.” He also continued to spend a lot of time on the tennis court.Mr. Lloyd “still plays tennis and still follows the serve to the net, which is daunting,” Mr. Bart said in an interview when his friend was well into his 90s.In 2014, the year he turned 100, the Los Angeles City Council proclaimed Nov. 8, his birthday, “Norman Lloyd Day.”Peggy Lloyd, who was born Margaret Hirsdansky and who was married to Mr. Lloyd for 75 years, died in 2011. She and Mr. Lloyd had met when they co-starred in a play called “Crime,” directed by Elia Kazan.Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.Matthew Sussman, who directed the documentary about Mr. Lloyd, said its title came late in the game, as he was telling acquaintances what he was working on.“That would be the question,” he said, “almost every time: ‘Who is Norman Lloyd?’”Neil Vigdor contributed reporting. More
