Actor Tony Musante ("Toma") 1936-2013

[Zoneboy]

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Tony Musante, a rugged-looking American actor who was seen on television, in films and on stage in the United States and Europe for over 50 years but who was probably best known for a TV series he left after one season, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. He was 77.

His wife, Jane, said the cause was a hemorrhage, which occurred while he was recovering from oral surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital.

Mr. Musante appeared opposite George C. Scott in the film “The Last Run” in 1971, on Broadway with Meryl Streep in a 1976 production of Tennessee Williams’s “27 Wagons Full of Cotton,” and in television dramas like “Ride With Terror,” a “DuPont Show of the Week” presentation with Gene Hackman in 1963. (Mr. Musante reprised the role, as an urban psychopath, in a 1967 film adaptation titled “The Incident,” with Martin Sheen.)

And then there was “Toma,” the show that got away.

Mr. Musante, who preferred the creative opportunities of stage and film roles, was reluctant when, in 1973, he was offered the starring role in “Toma,” an ABC detective drama about a renegade police detective. He agreed on one condition: that he have the option to leave after one season.

The show did fairly well in the ratings against formidable competition — “The Waltons” on CBS and “The Flip Wilson Show” on NBC — but Mr. Musante stuck to his guns. He left the series to take the role of Lt. William Calley, the Army officer convicted of ordering the massacre of Vietnamese villagers at My Lai in 1968, in Stanley Kramer’s 1975 television movie “Judgment: The Court Martial of Lt. William Calley.”

“Toma” was soon remade by its creator, Roy Huggins, as a vehicle for a replacement star, Robert Blake. The new show, renamed “Baretta,” ran from 1975 to 1978 and — like other Huggins shows, including “Maverick,” “The Rockford Files” and “The Fugitive” — had a successful afterlife in syndication.

“People in Hollywood always asked him if he regretted it, but he really never did,” Mrs. Musante said of her husband, adding: “He didn’t become the household name, or make the money he would have had he done it. But he needed variety.”

Anthony Peter Musante was born in Bridgeport, Conn., on June 30, 1936, to Anthony Musante, an accountant, and the former Natalie Salerno, a schoolteacher. He graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio in 1958 and attended a summer drama school at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., before moving to New York. He and his wife, the former Jane Sparkes, who also graduated from Oberlin, were married in 1962 and lived in Manhattan.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Musante is survived by two sisters, Cecelia Sisti and Katherine Walker, and a brother, Thomas.

Mr. Musante appeared in about 20 Italian films, most recently “La Vita Come Viene” (2003), directed by the Golden Globe Award-winning director Stefano Incerti. In 1976, he was nominated for an Emmy Award for his role in an episode of the NBC drama series “Medical Story.”

He viewed his role in “Toma” as a big break, in a sense. “He got his first Broadway show because of it,” his wife said — in James Kirkwood’s 1975 comedy, “P.S. Your Cat is Dead!,” which also starred Jennifer Warren and Keir Dullea. Mr. Musante played a fast-talking bandit, and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award.

[Marvo301]

Tony Musante

[king of comedy]

Great actor and I wished he had stayed on Toma.

[Penny Lane]

Tony Musante , 77, who starred in the 1973 series "Toma" died on Nov. 26. Jane Kean, 90, who played Trixie in "The New Honeymooners"also died on Nov. 26.

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[Dude111]

Thats sad........ I havent ever watched any of those shows but its sad when ppl pass on