George Grizzard
Encyclopedia
George Cooper Grizzard, Jr. (April 1, 1928 – October 2, 2007) was an American actor of film
and stage
. He appeared in more than 40 films, dozens of television programs and a number of Broadway plays.
, the son of Mary Winifred (née Albritton) and George Cooper Grizzard, an accountant.
Grizzard memorably appeared as an unscrupulous United States senator in the film Advise and Consent
in 1962. His other theatrical films included the drama From the Terrace
with Paul Newman
(1960), the Western story Comes a Horseman
with Jane Fonda
(1978) and a Neil Simon comedy, Seems Like Old Times
.
In more recent years, he guest-starred several times on the NBC
television drama Law & Order
as defense attorney Arthur Gold. He also portrayed President John Adams
in the Emmy Award
-winning WNET
-produced PBS
mini-series The Adams Chronicles
.
Grizzard made his Broadway
debut in The Desperate Hours
in 1955. He was a frequent interpreter of the plays of Edward Albee
, having appeared in the original 1962 production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
as Nick, as well as the 1996 revival of A Delicate Balance and the 2005 revival of Seascape
. He also starred in You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running
.
In 1980 he won an Emmy for his work in The Oldest Living Graduate. He starred as reporter Richard Larsen in The Deliberate Stranger
, a television movie about serial killer Ted Bundy
. He won the 1996 Tony Award
for Best Actor in a Play
for A Delicate Balance. Additional Broadway credits include The Creation of the World and Other Business
, The Glass Menagerie
, The Country Girl, The Royal Family, and California Suite
.
He would also appear in the Golden Girls as George Devereaux, the late husband of Blanche Devereaux; as well as Jamie Devereaux, George's brother.
In 2001, Grizzard played Judge Dan Haywood in a stage production of Judgment at Nuremberg
opposite Maximilian Schell
under the production of actor Tony Randall
. Grizzard appeared as Big Daddy in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
at the Kennedy Center in 2004.
Grizzard's last film appearance was in Clint Eastwood
's Flags of Our Fathers
.
He was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame
in 2002.
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
and stage
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
. He appeared in more than 40 films, dozens of television programs and a number of Broadway plays.
Life and career
Grizzard was born in Roanoke Rapids, North CarolinaRoanoke Rapids, North Carolina
Roanoke Rapids is a city in Halifax County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 16,957 at the 2000 census. It is the principal city of the Roanoke Rapids Micropolitan Statistical Area.-Geography:...
, the son of Mary Winifred (née Albritton) and George Cooper Grizzard, an accountant.
Grizzard memorably appeared as an unscrupulous United States senator in the film Advise and Consent
Advise and Consent
Advise and Consent is a 1959 political novel by Allen Drury that explores the United States Senate confirmation of controversial Secretary of State nominee Robert Leffingwell who is a former member of the Communist Party...
in 1962. His other theatrical films included the drama From the Terrace
From the Terrace
From the Terrace is a 1960 American drama film directed by Mark Robson and starring Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Myrna Loy, Barbara Eden, Ina Balin, and Leon Ames....
with Paul Newman
Paul Newman
Paul Leonard Newman was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver and auto racing enthusiast...
(1960), the Western story Comes a Horseman
Comes a Horseman
Comes a Horseman is a 1978 film starring James Caan, Jane Fonda, Jason Robards, and Richard Farnsworth.The movie, set in the American West of the 1940s, tells the story of two ranchers whose small operation is threatened both by economic hardship and the expansionist dreams of a local land baron...
with Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda is an American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model, and fitness guru. She rose to fame in the 1960s with films such as Barbarella and Cat Ballou. She has won two Academy Awards and received several other movie awards and nominations during more than 50 years as an...
(1978) and a Neil Simon comedy, Seems Like Old Times
Seems Like Old Times (film)
Seems Like Old Times is a 1980 comedy film starring Chevy Chase, Goldie Hawn, and Charles Grodin, directed by Jay Sandrich, with Neil Simon as screenwriter....
.
In more recent years, he guest-starred several times on the NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
television drama Law & Order
Law & Order
Law & Order is an American police procedural and legal drama television series, created by Dick Wolf and part of the Law & Order franchise. It aired on NBC, and in syndication on various cable networks. Law & Order premiered on September 13, 1990, and completed its 20th and final season on May 24,...
as defense attorney Arthur Gold. He also portrayed President John Adams
John Adams
John Adams was an American lawyer, statesman, diplomat and political theorist. A leading champion of independence in 1776, he was the second President of the United States...
in the Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
-winning WNET
WNET
WNET, channel 13 is a non-commercial educational public television station licensed to Newark, New Jersey. With its signal covering the New York metropolitan area, WNET is a primary station of the Public Broadcasting Service and a primary provider of PBS programming...
-produced PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
mini-series The Adams Chronicles
The Adams Chronicles
The Adams Chronicles is a thirteen-episode miniseries by PBS that aired in 1976 to commemorate the American Bicentennial.-Synopsis:The series chronicles the story of the Adams political family over a 150-year span, including John Adams , his wife Abigail Adams, his son John Quincy Adams The Adams...
.
Grizzard made his Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
debut in The Desperate Hours
The Desperate Hours (play)
The Desperate Hours is a 1955 play by Joseph Hayes, based on his 1954 thriller novel of the same title. The story, about three escaped convicts, was the basis for the films The Desperate Hours in 1955 and Desperate Hours in 1990....
in 1955. He was a frequent interpreter of the plays of Edward Albee
Edward Albee
Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...
, having appeared in the original 1962 production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a play by Edward Albee that opened on Broadway at the Billy Rose Theater on October 13, 1962. The original cast featured Uta Hagen as Martha, Arthur Hill as George, Melinda Dillon as Honey and George Grizzard as Nick. It was directed by Alan Schneider...
as Nick, as well as the 1996 revival of A Delicate Balance and the 2005 revival of Seascape
Seascape (play)
Seascape is a play by American playwright Edward Albee. Directed by Albee himself, the production opened on Broadway on January 26, 1975, at the Sam S. Shubert Theatre, starring Deborah Kerr, Barry Nelson, Maureen Anderman and Frank Langella, who won a Tony Award for his performance as Leslie...
. He also starred in You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running
You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running
You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running is a collection of four unrelated one-act comedy plays by Robert Anderson.In The Shock of Recognition, playwright Jack Barnstable auditions Richard Pawling for a role that requires nudity and discovers the overeager actor is more than willing to...
.
In 1980 he won an Emmy for his work in The Oldest Living Graduate. He starred as reporter Richard Larsen in The Deliberate Stranger
The Deliberate Stranger
The Deliberate Stranger is a book and television film about serial killer Ted Bundy.-Book:Bundy: The Deliberate Stranger was written by a Seattle Times reporter named Richard W. Larsen and published in 1980...
, a television movie about serial killer Ted Bundy
Ted Bundy
Theodore Robert "Ted" Bundy was an American serial killer, rapist, kidnapper, and necrophile who assaulted and murdered numerous young women during the 1970s, and possibly earlier...
. He won the 1996 Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
for Best Actor in a Play
Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play
The Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play presented since 1947, is awarded to actors in productions of new or revival plays.-1940s:*1947 - José Ferrer – Cyrano de Bergerac / Fredric March – Years Ago...
for A Delicate Balance. Additional Broadway credits include The Creation of the World and Other Business
The Creation of the World and Other Business
The Creation of the World and Other Business is a play by Arthur Miller.A parable inspired by the Book of Genesis in the Bible, it explores the classic theme of good versus evil by way of a comedic retelling of the story of the creation of man . Miller's God is powerful but lacks wisdom...
, The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie is a four-character memory play by Tennessee Williams. Williams worked on various drafts of the play prior to writing a version of it as a screenplay for MGM, to whom Williams was contracted...
, The Country Girl, The Royal Family, and California Suite
California Suite
California Suite is a 1976 play by Neil Simon. Similar in structure to his earlier Plaza Suite, the comedy is composed of four playlets set in Suite 203-04, which consists of a living room and an adjoining bedroom with an ensuite bath, in The Beverly Hills Hotel.-Plot:In Visitor from New York,...
.
He would also appear in the Golden Girls as George Devereaux, the late husband of Blanche Devereaux; as well as Jamie Devereaux, George's brother.
In 2001, Grizzard played Judge Dan Haywood in a stage production of Judgment at Nuremberg
Judgment at Nuremberg
Judgment at Nuremberg is a 1961 American drama film dealing with the Holocaust and the Post-World War II Nuremberg Trials. It was written by Abby Mann, directed by Stanley Kramer, and starred Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Maximilian Schell, Werner Klemperer, Marlene Dietrich, Judy...
opposite Maximilian Schell
Maximilian Schell
Maximilian Schell is an Austrian-born Swiss actor who won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Judgment at Nuremberg in 1961...
under the production of actor Tony Randall
Tony Randall
Tony Randall was a U.S. actor, comic, producer and director.-Early years:Randall was born Arthur Leonard Rosenberg to a Jewish family in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the son of Julia and Mogscha Rosenberg, an art and antiques dealer...
. Grizzard appeared as Big Daddy in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a play by Tennessee Williams. One of Williams's best-known works and his personal favorite, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955...
at the Kennedy Center in 2004.
Grizzard's last film appearance was in Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...
's Flags of Our Fathers
Flags of Our Fathers (film)
is a 2006 American war film directed, co-produced and scored by Clint Eastwood and written by William Broyles, Jr. and Paul Haggis. It is based on the book of the same name written by James Bradley and Ron Powers about the Battle of Iwo Jima, the five Marines and one Navy Corpsman who were involved...
.
He was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame
American Theatre Hall of Fame
The American Theatre Hall of Fame in New York City was founded in 1972. Earl Blackwell was the first head of the Executive Committee. In an announcement at a luncheon meeting on March 1972, he said that the new Theater Hall of Fame would be located in the Uris Theatre . James M...
in 2002.
Selected Filmography
- JusticeJustice (1954 TV series)Justice is an NBC half-hour drama television series about attorneys of the Legal Aid Society of New York, which aired from April 8, 1954 to March 25, 1956. In the 1954-1955 season, Justice starred Dane Clark as Richard Adams and Gary Merrill as Jason Tyler. In the 1955-1956 season, William Prince...
(1954) (TV) - Alfred Hitchcock PresentsAlfred Hitchcock PresentsAlfred Hitchcock Presents is an American television anthology series hosted by Alfred Hitchcock. The series featured dramas, thrillers, and mysteries. By the premiere of the show on October 2, 1955, Hitchcock had been directing films for over three decades...
(1956–1962) (TV) - The Twilight ZoneThe Twilight ZoneThe Twilight Zone is an American television anthology series created by Rod Serling. Each episode is a mixture of self-contained drama, psychological thriller, fantasy, science fiction, suspense, or horror, often concluding with a macabre or unexpected twist...
(1960–1963) (TV) - From the TerraceFrom the TerraceFrom the Terrace is a 1960 American drama film directed by Mark Robson and starring Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Myrna Loy, Barbara Eden, Ina Balin, and Leon Ames....
(1960) - Thriller (1960) (TV)
- Advise and ConsentAdvise and ConsentAdvise and Consent is a 1959 political novel by Allen Drury that explores the United States Senate confirmation of controversial Secretary of State nominee Robert Leffingwell who is a former member of the Communist Party...
(1962) - Ben CaseyBen CaseyBen Casey is an American medical drama series which ran on ABC from 1961 to 1966. The show was known for its opening titles, which consisted of a hand drawing the symbols "♂, ♀, *, †, ∞" on a chalkboard, as cast member Sam Jaffe intoned, "Man, woman, birth, death, infinity." Neurosurgeon Joseph...
(1963) (TV) - Dr. KildareDr. KildareDr. James Kildare is a fictional character, the primary character in a series of American theatrical films in the late 1930s and early 1940s, an early 1950s radio series, a 1960s television series of the same name and a comic book based on the TV show, and a short-lived 1970s television series...
(1964) (TV) - Happy Birthday, Wanda JuneHappy Birthday, Wanda JuneHappy Birthday, Wanda June is a play by Kurt Vonnegut, and a 1971 film adaptation, directed by Mark Robson.-Plot:The opening of this play is "This is a simple-minded play about men who enjoy killing, and those who don't."...
(1970) (Play) - Happy Birthday, Wanda JuneHappy Birthday, Wanda JuneHappy Birthday, Wanda June is a play by Kurt Vonnegut, and a 1971 film adaptation, directed by Mark Robson.-Plot:The opening of this play is "This is a simple-minded play about men who enjoy killing, and those who don't."...
(1971) (Film) - The Adams ChroniclesThe Adams ChroniclesThe Adams Chronicles is a thirteen-episode miniseries by PBS that aired in 1976 to commemorate the American Bicentennial.-Synopsis:The series chronicles the story of the Adams political family over a 150-year span, including John Adams , his wife Abigail Adams, his son John Quincy Adams The Adams...
(1976) (TV) - Hawaii 5-0 (1978) (TV)
- Comes a HorsemanComes a HorsemanComes a Horseman is a 1978 film starring James Caan, Jane Fonda, Jason Robards, and Richard Farnsworth.The movie, set in the American West of the 1940s, tells the story of two ranchers whose small operation is threatened both by economic hardship and the expansionist dreams of a local land baron...
(1978) - The Oldest Living Graduate (1980) (TV)
- Seems Like Old TimesSeems Like Old Times (film)Seems Like Old Times is a 1980 comedy film starring Chevy Chase, Goldie Hawn, and Charles Grodin, directed by Jay Sandrich, with Neil Simon as screenwriter....
(1980) - Wrong is RightWrong Is RightWrong Is Right is a black comedy thriller about the theft of two suitcase nukes, featuring the plot conventions of media bias, reality television, government conspiracy, and Islamic terrorism...
(1982) - Trapper John M.D. (1984) (TV)
- Bachelor Party (1984)
- Spencer: For Hire (1985) (TV)
- The Cosby ShowThe Cosby ShowThe Cosby Show is an American television situation comedy starring Bill Cosby, which aired for eight seasons on NBC from September 20, 1984 until April 30, 1992...
(1985) (TV) - The Deliberate StrangerThe Deliberate StrangerThe Deliberate Stranger is a book and television film about serial killer Ted Bundy.-Book:Bundy: The Deliberate Stranger was written by a Seattle Times reporter named Richard W. Larsen and published in 1980...
(1986) (TV) - Murder, She WroteMurder, She WroteMurder, She Wrote is an American television mystery series starring Angela Lansbury as mystery writer and amateur detective Jessica Fletcher. The series aired for 12 seasons from 1984 to 1996 on the CBS network, with 264 episodes transmitted. It was followed by four TV films and a spin-off series,...
(1985–1988) (TV) - The Golden GirlsThe Golden GirlsThe Golden Girls is an American sitcom created by Susan Harris, which originally aired on NBC from September 14, 1985, to May 9, 1992. Starring Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty, the show centers on four older women sharing a home in Miami, Florida...
(1988–1990) (TV) - 3rd Rock from the Sun3rd Rock from the Sun3rd Rock from the Sun is an American sitcom that aired from 1996 to 2001 on NBC. The show is about four extraterrestrials who are on an expedition to Earth, which they consider to be a very insignificant planet...
(1997–1998) (TV) - Small Time CrooksSmall Time CrooksSmall Time Crooks is a 2000 American crime-comedy film directed, written, and starring Woody Allen, along with Tracey Ullman and Hugh Grant.-Plot:...
(2000) - Wonder BoysWonder Boys (film)Wonder Boys is a dark comedy film based on the 1995 novel of the same title by Michael Chabon. Directed by Curtis Hanson, it stars Michael Douglas as professor Grady Tripp, a novelist who teaches creative writing at an unnamed Pittsburgh university...
(2000) - Law & OrderLaw & OrderLaw & Order is an American police procedural and legal drama television series, created by Dick Wolf and part of the Law & Order franchise. It aired on NBC, and in syndication on various cable networks. Law & Order premiered on September 13, 1990, and completed its 20th and final season on May 24,...
(1992–2000) (TV) - Flags of our FathersFlags of Our FathersFlags of Our Fathers is a New York Times bestselling book by James Bradley with Ron Powers about the five United States Marines and one United States Navy Corpsman who would eventually be made famous by Joe Rosenthal's lauded photograph of the flag raising at Iwo Jima, one of the costliest and...
(2006)