When Peter Falk Was My Roommate, and Theater Ruled NYC

In 1965 George Segal burst into stardom with Ship of Fools and King Rat. A 12 months later he achieved superstardom in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (enjoying the function Piazza had performed on the stage), with Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and Sandy Dennis, directed by Mike Nichols—all of whom, together with Segal, had been nominated for Academy Awards (Taylor and Dennis received). In 1967 he obtained nice critiques enjoying Biff in a TV model of the American basic Loss of life of a Salesman, with Lee J. Cobb, the unique Willy Loman. After starring in 1970 with Ruth Gordon within the outrageous comedy The place’s Poppa?, he grew to become a favourite romantic main man, appearing reverse a few of Hollywood’s greatest names: Barbra Streisand, Jane Fonda, Goldie Hawn, Jacqueline Bisset, Natalie Wooden, and Glenda Jackson. Within the ’80s his profession went south, owing to, amongst different issues, medication. However he got here again with a bang within the ’90s, enjoying severe leads in films and on tv. His final triumph was an eight-year run on The Goldbergs (2013–2021). Marion Segal, in the meantime, grew to become a movie editor, working most notably on Terrence Malick’s Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978).

Roy Scheider, after successful an Obie in New York for the play Stephen D. in 1968, grew to become world-famous simply three years later for Klute and The French Connection. He subsequently appeared on TV and in movies roughly 100 instances, and he achieved worldwide regard for 2 blockbuster successes: Jaws (1975) and All That Jazz (1979).

Wayne Rogers was the final to hit the massive time, however as soon as he performed three seasons of M*A*S*H, from 1972 to 1975, his purple hair and large grin had been engraved perpetually on the general public’s consciousness. He left the present as a result of he felt the producers had been favoring Alan Alda over him. However he quickly starred in one other comedy collection, Home Calls, from 1979 to 1982. In addition to appearing, he made frequent TV appearances as an professional on the inventory market, and he was an excellent cash supervisor, notably for Falk and himself. At his dying Rogers was reportedly price $75 million.

Although I noticed Rogers sometimes within the ’70s, when he was appearing on the East Coast, I by no means had any contact with the opposite three as soon as they grew to become stars. After they moved to LA, their lengthy marriages all led to divorce. Peter and Alyce Falk cut up up in 1976, after 16 years collectively, and he remarried one 12 months later. Wayne and Mitzi Rogers divorced in 1983, and he married once more in 1988. George and Marion Segal ended their 27-year marriage in 1983, and he married twice extra. Roy and Cynthia Scheider cut up in 1986, after 24 years collectively, and he took a second spouse in 1989. Cynthia, like Marion Segal, had change into a movie editor.

All 4 males had lengthy careers. Scheider died in 2008, at 76, of a number of myeloma. Falk handed in 2011, at 83, a sufferer of Alzheimer’s illness. Rogers died in 2015, at 82, of pneumonia, and Segal in 2021, at 87, after bypass surgical procedure.

VI

Back within the ’60s, I might have wager the ranch that Ed Heffernan can be the largest success of all of them. He appeared terrific in every thing he did, from a number of roles in Shakespeare within the Park to The Fantasticks off-Broadway to Purlie on Broadway, and everybody liked and admired him. However fame could be very fickle. Heffernan was born with the face of a personality actor—rubbery and splendidly expressive however by no means conventionally handsome. As a homosexual man he struggled to simply accept himself. Earlier than he died, in 2018, on the age of 84, he had been in 42 performs and carried out 24 roles in films or on TV; however the roles obtained smaller and smaller, as a result of he couldn’t management his ingesting. He was final on the stage in 1987, and he performed occasional small elements on TV till 2014. Right now, as Google will inform you, he’s finest remembered because the gang’s financial institution teller in The Sting (1973). I just lately found a bizarre, little-known movie he’s in, Puzzle of a Downfall Youngster (1970), starring Faye Dunaway, the place his appearing, in a couple of quick scenes, stands out. Scheider can be within the forged. Heffernan was within the unique productions of two performs by Albee on Broadway—the second was Malcolm—and he as soon as took me with him to Albee’s home in Montauk. The invitation was for tea, which was served by a white-coated butler, however when Albee, who was a recovering alcoholic, requested us if we’d slightly have a drink, Heffernan and I each requested for a martini. When the butler got here in once more with a silver tray, Albee requested, “Does cinnamon toast go with a martini?” Nearly in unison Heffernan and I replied, “Not with this one.”

I at all times assumed that Ben Piazza would additionally rise to the highest and keep there, on condition that he had been in 9 Broadway performs and three works by Albee, together with The Zoo Story, earlier than he was 40. He known as me in 1969 to ask me off-Broadway to see two quick performs he had written, considered one of them that includes his spouse of two years, Dolores Dorn-Heft (who had beforehand been married to Franchot Tone). Throughout their 12-year marriage, they would seem collectively in a single movie, The Sweet Snatchers (1973). Piazza was in a dozen extra movies, however primarily in character elements. One of the best identified are Inform Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970), starring Liza Minnelli (Wayne Tippit can be in it); The Blues Brothers (1980), the place he’s the uptight gentleman who asks the headwaiter to alter his desk in an effort to transfer away from the scruffy title characters; and Responsible by Suspicion (1991), about blacklisting in Hollywood, wherein he performs the producer Darryl Zanuck. Piazza died of AIDS in 1991, on the age of 58.

Minor and Carruthers stored their flats on twenty first Avenue till they died, Minor of prostate most cancers in 1991, on the age of 63; Carruthers of a coronary heart assault 4 years later, when he was 64.

Minor was the wittiest and most likely essentially the most clever of the actors I knew. For instance, in making ready to play Uncle Vanya for a really temporary run in a regional theater, he seemed up each phrase of the textual content in an English-Russian dictionary, and for a number of years he taught drama at Bennington School. After Jason Robards, a pal from their Circle within the Sq. days, married Lauren Bacall, he invited Minor to their residence within the Dakota for drinks. In response, Minor invited the couple to dinner on twenty first Avenue. It occurred to be a sweltering night, Minor recalled, and Jason and “Betty” needed to move the tremendous and his spouse, who had been cooling off on the stoop, and climb 5 flights of stairs earlier than they obtained to the recent meal he had spent two days making. As Minor grew older, he directed primarily in regional theaters, the place, through the years, he labored with some main stars, together with Geraldine Web page, Rip Torn, Sandy Dennis, Jean Marsh, and Wayne Rogers. In 1982 Rogers organized for him to direct an episode of Home Calls, Minor’s solely job in TV.

Carruthers, too, acted primarily in regional theaters, however he additionally had small elements in movies, together with Tootsie (1982); he’s the white-haired man who late within the movie dances previous Dustin Hoffman in drag in a restaurant and tells “her” she’s even higher trying in particular person than on TV. For quite a lot of years, he supplemented his earnings by working on the Virginia Zabriskie Gallery. One in every of Zabriskie’s artists, Robert De Niro Sr., the actor’s father, fell for Carruthers and requested him to maneuver to Europe with him. Carruthers had two giant portraits of himself by the artist hanging in his residence, and he usually mentioned jokingly, “If I had played my cards right, today I would be Robert De Niro’s stepmother.”

Quintero directed nearly 100 productions earlier than he died, in 1999, of throat most cancers. Of these, 19 had been performs by O’Neill, together with Extra Stately Mansions (1967), with Ingrid Bergman and Colleen Dewhurst, and revivals of A Moon for the Misbegotten (1973) and Lengthy Day’s Journey Into Evening (1988), each with Dewhurst and Jason Robards. His early success was more and more threatened by his alcoholism. In 1968, throughout rehearsals for a manufacturing in Mexico Metropolis, the star, Dolores del Rio, had him fired for drunkenness. After conquering his dependancy he received a Tony for A Moon for the Misbegotten and continued to direct, educate, and lecture for 25 years.