Actor George Grizzard Dies at 79

[Zoneboy]

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George Grizzard, a versatile actor who achieved his greatest renown on the stage, playing everything from Shakespeare to Shaw, from Neil Simon to Edward Albee, died yesterday in Manhattan. He was 79 and lived in Manhattan.

His death, at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, was caused by complications of lung cancer, said his partner, William Tynan, who is Mr. Grizzard’s only survivor.

Mr. Grizzard’s career began in the 1950s and lasted more than 50 years. He had roles in movies and was a familiar face on television. But it was in the theater that he thrived, particularly in Mr. Albee’s plays. He appeared in the original 1962 Broadway production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” Mr. Albee’s seething drama of marital strife. More than 30 years later, he won a Tony Award for his performance in a revival of another Albee drama, “A Delicate Balance.”

In both plays he was singled out by critics for his ability to move dexterously from one emotional state to another. Howard Taubman, writing about “Virginia Woolf” in The New York Times, praised Mr. Grizzard’s ability to shift “from geniality to intensity with shattering rightness.” Vincent Canby, reviewing “A Delicate Balance” in 1996, wrote admiringly about the way Mr. Grizzard’s character exploded when cornered.

Mr. Grizzard made his Broadway debut as Paul Newman’s kid brother and fellow convict in “The Desperate Hours” (1955), by Joseph Hayes, in which the jailbreakers invade a home and terrorize the occupants (Karl Malden and Nancy Coleman). By 1959, Mr. Grizzard had received his first Tony nomination, as best featured actor, for his work in “The Disenchanted,” an adaptation of Budd Schulberg’s novel about F. Scott Fitzgerald. It starred Rosemary Harris and Jason Robards Jr.

Three years later, he and Robards appeared together again in “Big Fish, Little Fish,” a comedy by Hugh Wheeler about a successful novelist (Mr. Grizzard) who becomes a magnet for the emotionally needy. Mr. Grizzard came away with his second Tony nomination, again as best featured actor.

It led to another memorable role, in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” which caused a sensation when it opened at the Billy Rose Theater in 1962. Directed by Alan Schneider, it starred Uta Hagen and Arthur Hill as the warring spouses, Martha and George, and featured Melinda Dillon and Mr. Grizzard as Honey and Nick, newcomers to Martha and George’s college campus battleground. (The play was later adapted for a film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, with George Segal as Nick.) In a 1996 interview with The Associated Press, Mr. Grizzard spoke of the difficulty of enduring the role of Nick in the play night after night. “That’s the guy Edward wanted destroyed, and he did a pretty good job of doing just that,” he said. “And the audience, every time George and Martha stuck another knife in, they laughed and clapped.”

After only a few months in the production, Mr. Grizzard stunned his associates by announcing that he was leaving to go to Minneapolis. The director Tyrone Guthrie was holding auditions there at his new theater for a modern-dress production of “Hamlet.” Mr. Grizzard, who felt he still had a lot to learn, wanted to try for the part. He got the part and then stayed on at the Guthrie Theater for the next two years, playing the title role in Shakespeare’s “Henry V,” the Dauphin in Shaw’s “St. Joan” and the rascally Mosca in Ben Jonson’s “Volpone.”

George Cooper Grizzard Jr., was born on April 1, 1928, in Roanoke Rapids, N.C., and grew up in Washington. After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he worked briefly at a Washington advertising agency, then quit and auditioned successfully at the newly established Arena Stage. He eventually went to New York, where he studied acting with Sanford Meisner before returning to the Arena to earn his Actors Equity card. When he came back to New York in 1955, he made his Broadway debut in “The Desperate Hours.”

His Broadway credits also included “The Country Girl,” a revival of the play by Clifford Odets. When the production moved from the Kennedy Center in Washington to Broadway in 1972, Walter Kerr, writing in The Times, called Mr. Grizzard’s performance as a cocky young theater director “brilliant.”

Mr. Grizzard went on to play the Duke of Windsor in Royce Ryton’s drama “Crown Matrimonial” (1973); a sometime husband in Neil Simon’s “California Suite” (1976); and a mental patient who thinks he’s Einstein in a Kennedy Center revival of Dürrenmatt’s “Physicists” (1982).

His occasional film roles included a bullying United States senator in “Advise and Consent” (1962), based on the novel by Allen Drury; a kindly doctor in “Happy Birthday, Wanda June” (1971), by Kurt Vonnegut, and a Western oilman in “Comes a Horseman” (1978). In 2000, he and Elaine Stritch played a wealthy couple in Woody Allen’s “Small Time Crooks.”

On television, Mr. Grizzard made regular appearances on series like “Law & Order.” He was nominated for an Emmy Award for his performance as John Adams in “The Adams Chronicles,” a 13-part historical saga on PBS in 1976, and won an Emmy starring with Henry Fonda in “The Oldest Living Graduate.” That drama, broadcast live on NBC in 1980, was the story of a father-son struggle over property.

In 1996 Mr. Grizzard finally took home the Tony Award that had eluded him for so many years, winning as best actor in a play for his performance in the restaging of Mr. Albee’s scathing 1966 drama “A Delicate Balance,” a portrait of family conflict and suburban malaise. Mr. Grizzard was a standout in a cast that included Rosemary Harris, Ms. Stritch and Mary Beth Hurt. Mr. Grizzard also shone in “Seascape” (2005), another Albee revival, in which he and Frances Sternhagen played a long-married couple whose beachgoing idyll is interrupted by the arrival of two inquisitive amphibians.

And in 2006, Mr. Grizzard, playing a successful fashion designer who becomes a gay activist, held his own against Christine Baranski’s scintillating socialite in Paul Rudnick’s “Regrets Only.”

In interviews, Mr. Grizzard spoke frankly of the ups and downs of the acting life, the rich, meaty roles and the interminable runs in bad plays. But his pull to acting was there practically from the start. “I was an only child, and probably very lonely,” he said in a 1985 interview with The Times, “so I made up children to play with — Gene and Bounds and Mrs. Pig and Mrs. Hog and their children and a town called Scottina. It was all a child’s fantasy, but I guess that just kind of developed into wanting to create people.”

[MikeLutton]

never heard of him but sad

[Kristen]

According to IMDB, he was in two episodes of The Golden Girls, playing Blanche's husband (in a dream, during the ep. "Mrs. George Deveraux"), and her brother-in-law in another episode.

[Ohio8]

Originally Posted by Kristen

According to IMDB, he was in two episodes of The Golden Girls, playing Blanche's husband (in a dream, during the ep. "Mrs. George Deveraux"), and her brother-in-law in another episode.

I'll post caps of Goerge in that show as soon as I get the DVD from Netflix.