R.I.P. Richard Dysart
Re: R.I.P. Richard Dysart
Back around the time I graduated high school, L.A. Law was in syndication on one of the cable networks. That summer after graduation, without a lot to do, I got hooked into watching it every day. Ended up watching the entire series. I enjoyed it from the beginning, and then somewhere around its fourth season it turned into a different show, took off like a roman candle and didn't let up until the fifth season, after the infamous elevator episode, among other things. The bottom fell out soon after, with some truly risible plotlines (including one long arc dealing with the LA riots), only to surprisingly rebound with a very solid final season, albeit as a very different kind of show than it was during its earlier seasons. Dysart was never anything like a standout, and his Emmy win wasn't very deserved--if I remember right, it was for an episode with a chimpanzee during those awful middle seasons--but he was a solid-enough straight man, and I liked him a lot in Pale Rider, which I think is one of Eastwood's most underrated films. (I know, I know...most of you are saying to yourselves, "he thinks any Eastwood movie not up for Best Picture is one of his most underrated.")
R.I.P. Richard Dysart
Richard Dysart of 'L.A. Law' Dies at 86
by Bruce Weber New York Times 4/10/2015
Richard Dysart, a character actor who specialized in lawyers, doctors and other authority figures -- most notably Leland McKenzie, the founding partner of the law firm McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney & Kuzak, on the soapy-serious prime-time drama "L.A. Law" -- died on Sunday at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 86.
The cause was cancer, said his wife, Kathryn Jacobi Dysart.
A handsome man with a distinguished but not especially distinctive screen presence, Mr. Dysart was for most of his career an "Oh yeah, that guy" sort of performer in movies and on TV in roles requiring executive demeanor, kindly rectitude, patriarchal spine or the confidence stemming from success or power.
He played doctors in "The Hospital" (1971), a scabrous comedy written by Paddy Chayefsky and starring George C. Scott and Diana Rigg; "The Terminal Man" (1974), based on Michael Crichton's medical thriller about brain surgery and mind control; "First You Cry" (1978), a television movie adaptation of the first-person account of a mastectomy and its aftermath by the newscaster Betty Rollin, who was played by Mary Tyler Moore; and "Being There" (1979), an adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski's short satirical novel about a simple-minded gardener (Peter Sellers) who becomes a presidential adviser.
In appearances on television series and in movies from the 1960s through the early 1980s, he played Judge Russell R. Leggett, who presided over the Jean Harris murder trial; the movie mogul Jack Warner; a fictional secretary of defense; and Edwin M. Stanton, Abraham Lincoln's secretary of war.
In the 1980s he twice played Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower in TV movies, and twice President Harry S. Truman: once in "Day One," a television movie about the atomic bomb, and once in "War and Remembrance," the mini-series adapted from Herman Wouk's novel. Later, he twice played J. Edgar Hoover, director of the F.B.I.: once in the TV movie "Marilyn and Bobby: Her Final Affair" (1993), an account of an alleged romance between Marilyn Monroe and Robert F. Kennedy, and once in "Panther" (1995), Mario Van Peebles's dramatized history of the Black Panther Party.
"L.A. Law," seen on NBC from 1986 to 1994, made him widely known. Created by Steven Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher, the show -- which also starred Harry Hamlin, Jimmy Smits, Susan Dey, Jill Eikenberry, Susan Ruttan and Corbin Bernsen, among others -- focused on the firm led by McKenzie, a sometimes paternal, sometimes ruthless executive who presides over an office full of well-dressed, ambitious, usually greedy and very often randy partners and underlings.
Dealing in both serious issues (sex crimes, corruption, minority rights, police brutality) and outlandish comedy, the show was part sendup of yuppie (the term was current then) privilege and the breed of affluence particular to Los Angeles, part melodrama and part legitimate contemplation of the problems in a disparate and rancorous modern society.
As McKenzie fended off challenges to his leadership, managed complicated lawsuits and his unruly personnel, and conducted a couple of ill-advised romances -- one with a much younger woman, another with a high-powered rival who is memorably dispatched when she tumbles down an elevator shaft to her death -- Mr. Dysart was nominated for Emmy Awards four times. He won for outstanding supporting actor in a drama series in 1992.
Richard Allen Dysart was born outside Boston on March 30, 1929, and grew up in Skowhegan and Augusta, Me. His father, Douglas, was a podiatrist. During a childhood illness he became enthralled with radio drama, and his mother, the former Alice Hennigar, introduced him to the stage at a summer stock company, the Lakewood Theater, outside Skowhegan.
He interrupted his schooling at Emerson College in Boston with a stint in the Air Force, and when he returned to Emerson he performed in plays there while earning a bachelor's degree and a master's in speech communication.
In the late 1950s he moved to New York, where he was working in the box office at the Off Broadway Circle in the Square Theater when he got his break: a job as an understudy in José Quintero's famous production of Eugene O'Neill's "The Iceman Cometh," starring Jason Robards.
Several roles at Circle in the Square followed -- including, when he was just 29, the sagacious stage manager in Thornton Wilder's "Our Town." He later worked for the director William Ball, founder of the American Conservatory Theater, which in 1966 made its permanent home in San Francisco. He also appeared a handful of times on Broadway, including, in 1972, as Coach in "That Championship Season," Jason Miller's Tony-winning drama about the reunion of a high school basketball team.
Mr. Dysart's other film credits include "The Day of the Locust" (1975), the nightmarish Hollywood fable adapted from Nathanael West's novel; "Pale Rider" (1985), a western in which he played a villain opposite Clint Eastwood; "Mask" (1985), a fact-based drama about a boy with a deformed skull (Eric Stoltz) and his devoted mother (Cher), in which Mr. Dysart played Cher's father; and "Back to the Future III" (1990), the finale of the time-traveling comic adventure series. Mr. Dysart played a barbed-wire salesman.
Mr. Dysart's first two marriages ended in divorce. In addition to his wife, whom he married in 1987, he is survived by a stepson, Arie Jacobi, and two step-grandchildren.
by Bruce Weber New York Times 4/10/2015
Richard Dysart, a character actor who specialized in lawyers, doctors and other authority figures -- most notably Leland McKenzie, the founding partner of the law firm McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney & Kuzak, on the soapy-serious prime-time drama "L.A. Law" -- died on Sunday at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 86.
The cause was cancer, said his wife, Kathryn Jacobi Dysart.
A handsome man with a distinguished but not especially distinctive screen presence, Mr. Dysart was for most of his career an "Oh yeah, that guy" sort of performer in movies and on TV in roles requiring executive demeanor, kindly rectitude, patriarchal spine or the confidence stemming from success or power.
He played doctors in "The Hospital" (1971), a scabrous comedy written by Paddy Chayefsky and starring George C. Scott and Diana Rigg; "The Terminal Man" (1974), based on Michael Crichton's medical thriller about brain surgery and mind control; "First You Cry" (1978), a television movie adaptation of the first-person account of a mastectomy and its aftermath by the newscaster Betty Rollin, who was played by Mary Tyler Moore; and "Being There" (1979), an adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski's short satirical novel about a simple-minded gardener (Peter Sellers) who becomes a presidential adviser.
In appearances on television series and in movies from the 1960s through the early 1980s, he played Judge Russell R. Leggett, who presided over the Jean Harris murder trial; the movie mogul Jack Warner; a fictional secretary of defense; and Edwin M. Stanton, Abraham Lincoln's secretary of war.
In the 1980s he twice played Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower in TV movies, and twice President Harry S. Truman: once in "Day One," a television movie about the atomic bomb, and once in "War and Remembrance," the mini-series adapted from Herman Wouk's novel. Later, he twice played J. Edgar Hoover, director of the F.B.I.: once in the TV movie "Marilyn and Bobby: Her Final Affair" (1993), an account of an alleged romance between Marilyn Monroe and Robert F. Kennedy, and once in "Panther" (1995), Mario Van Peebles's dramatized history of the Black Panther Party.
"L.A. Law," seen on NBC from 1986 to 1994, made him widely known. Created by Steven Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher, the show -- which also starred Harry Hamlin, Jimmy Smits, Susan Dey, Jill Eikenberry, Susan Ruttan and Corbin Bernsen, among others -- focused on the firm led by McKenzie, a sometimes paternal, sometimes ruthless executive who presides over an office full of well-dressed, ambitious, usually greedy and very often randy partners and underlings.
Dealing in both serious issues (sex crimes, corruption, minority rights, police brutality) and outlandish comedy, the show was part sendup of yuppie (the term was current then) privilege and the breed of affluence particular to Los Angeles, part melodrama and part legitimate contemplation of the problems in a disparate and rancorous modern society.
As McKenzie fended off challenges to his leadership, managed complicated lawsuits and his unruly personnel, and conducted a couple of ill-advised romances -- one with a much younger woman, another with a high-powered rival who is memorably dispatched when she tumbles down an elevator shaft to her death -- Mr. Dysart was nominated for Emmy Awards four times. He won for outstanding supporting actor in a drama series in 1992.
Richard Allen Dysart was born outside Boston on March 30, 1929, and grew up in Skowhegan and Augusta, Me. His father, Douglas, was a podiatrist. During a childhood illness he became enthralled with radio drama, and his mother, the former Alice Hennigar, introduced him to the stage at a summer stock company, the Lakewood Theater, outside Skowhegan.
He interrupted his schooling at Emerson College in Boston with a stint in the Air Force, and when he returned to Emerson he performed in plays there while earning a bachelor's degree and a master's in speech communication.
In the late 1950s he moved to New York, where he was working in the box office at the Off Broadway Circle in the Square Theater when he got his break: a job as an understudy in José Quintero's famous production of Eugene O'Neill's "The Iceman Cometh," starring Jason Robards.
Several roles at Circle in the Square followed -- including, when he was just 29, the sagacious stage manager in Thornton Wilder's "Our Town." He later worked for the director William Ball, founder of the American Conservatory Theater, which in 1966 made its permanent home in San Francisco. He also appeared a handful of times on Broadway, including, in 1972, as Coach in "That Championship Season," Jason Miller's Tony-winning drama about the reunion of a high school basketball team.
Mr. Dysart's other film credits include "The Day of the Locust" (1975), the nightmarish Hollywood fable adapted from Nathanael West's novel; "Pale Rider" (1985), a western in which he played a villain opposite Clint Eastwood; "Mask" (1985), a fact-based drama about a boy with a deformed skull (Eric Stoltz) and his devoted mother (Cher), in which Mr. Dysart played Cher's father; and "Back to the Future III" (1990), the finale of the time-traveling comic adventure series. Mr. Dysart played a barbed-wire salesman.
Mr. Dysart's first two marriages ended in divorce. In addition to his wife, whom he married in 1987, he is survived by a stepson, Arie Jacobi, and two step-grandchildren.