People Film, TV actor Peter Boyle dies at 71 -- Rest in Peace

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Subject: People Film, TV actor Peter Boyle dies at 71

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December 12 2006

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Date Posted: December 18, 2006 1:22:35 EDT

He turned crankiness into comedy.

As Frank Barone, Peter Boyle spent years as one of television's most beloved characters - the crusty, outspoken curmudgeon on Everybody Loves Raymond who would barge into his son's Long Island home and plant himself in front of the TV.

He made fun of his two sons. He routinely insulted his wife (when he wasn't telling her to make him something to eat).

It was a role that earned him multiple Emmy nominations, and was a final high note in a decades-long career that had him playing everything from an angry working man to a tap-dancing monster.

Boyle died Tuesday evening at New York Presbyterian Hospital. The 71-year-old had been suffering from multiple myeloma and heart disease, said his publicist, Jennifer Plante.

"I am deeply saddened by the passing of Peter Boyle," Ray Romano said, adding that Boyle was a mentor to him from the early days of Everybody Loves Raymond.

"He gave me great advice, he always made me laugh, and the way he connected with everyone around him amazed me. The fact that he could play a convincing curmudgeon on the show, but in reality be such a compassionate and thoughtful person, is a true testament to his talent," Romano said.

"It's like losing a spouse," said Doris Roberts, who played Boyle's wife on the sitcom.

Boyle had a respectable career, including a part in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, long before Everybody Loves Raymond, which ran from 1996 until last year. He also was close friends with John Lennon, who was best man at Boyle's wedding.

A member of the Christian Brothers religious order who turned to acting, the tall, prematurely balding Boyle gained notice in the title role of the 1970 sleeper hit Joe, playing an angry, murderous bigot at odds with the emerging hippie youth culture.

Briefly typecast in tough, irate roles, Boyle began to escape the image as Robert Redford's campaign manager in The Candidate and left it behind entirely after Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks' 1974 send-up of horror films.

The latter movie's defining moment came when Gene Wilder, as scientist Frederick Frankenstein, introduced his creation to an upscale audience. Boyle, decked out in tails, performed a song-and-dance routine to the Irving Berlin classic Puttin' On the Ritz.

It showed another side of Boyle, one that would be best exploited in Raymond.

"He's just obnoxious in a nice way, just for laughs," Boyle said of the Frank Barone character in a 2001 interview. "It's a very sweet experience having this (success) happen at a time when you basically go back over your life and see every mistake you ever made."

When Boyle tried out for the role opposite Romano's Ray Barone, however, he was kept waiting for his audition - and he was not happy.

"He came in all hot and angry," recalled the show's creator, Phil Rosenthal, "and I hired him because I was afraid of him." But Rosenthal also noted: "I knew right away that he had a comic presence."

Patricia Heaton, who played Boyle's daughter-in-law in Raymond, said in a statement, "Peter was an incredible man who made all of us who had the privilege of working with him aspire to be better actors. ... He was loved by everyone that knew him and loved by his many fans who cherished his talent."

"I've lost an amazing friend and colleague," said Brad Garrett, who played Boyle's son Robert on the sitcom. "Being able to share nine years with Peter on Raymond and witness his talent and humanity was an honor."

Boyle had first come to the public's attention more than a quarter of a century before Raymond, in the critically acclaimed Joe. He met his wife, Loraine Alterman, on the set of Young Frankenstein when she visited as a reporter for Rolling Stone magazine and Boyle, still in monster makeup, asked her for a date.

On television, he starred in Joe Bash, an acclaimed but short-lived 1986 "dramedy" in which he played a lonely beat cop. He won an Emmy in 1996 for his guest-starring role in an episode of The X Files, and was nominated for Raymond and for the 1977 TV film Tail Gunner Joe, in which he played Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

In the 1976 film Taxi Driver, he was the cabbie-philosopher Wizard, who counseled Robert De Niro's violent Travis Bickle.

He appeared in dozens of other films, including T.R. Baskin, F.I.S.T., Johnny Dangerously, The Dream Team, Monster's Ball, The Santa Clause, The Santa Clause 2 and While You Were Sleeping.

The son of a local TV personality in Philadelphia, Boyle was educated in Roman Catholic schools and spent three years in a monastery before abandoning his religious studies.

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