LOS ANGELES – George Segal, the Oscar-nominated banjo actor turned out for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and worked until his late 80s on the ABC sitcom “The Goldbergs,” died Tuesday in Santa Rosa, Calif., his wife said.
“The family is appalled to announce that George Segal passed away this morning due to complications from bypass surgery,” Sonia Segal said in a statement. He was 87.
George Segal has always been known as a comedian, becoming one of the biggest stars on screen in the 1970s when adult light comedy came to fruition.
But his most famous role was in a harrowing drama, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, Based on Edward Albee’s acclaimed play.
He was the last remaining credit member of the small team, and all four of them were nominated for Academy Awards: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton for star roles, Sandy Dennis and Segal for supporting shows. The women won Oscars, the men did not.
For a younger audience, he was best known for playing the publisher of Jack Gallo magazine on the NBC series “Just Shoot Me” from 1997 to 2003, and as the grandfather of Albert “Pops” Solomon on “The Goldbergs” since 2013.
“Today we have lost a myth. It was a real honor to be a small part of George Segal’s remarkable legacy, “said Adam Goldberg, creator of” Goldbergs “, who founded the show on his youth from the 1980s. “With real intent, I ended up throwing the perfect man to play Pops. Just like my grandfather, George was a baby at heart with a magical spark. ”
During his prime time in Hollywood, he played numerous intellectuals in the face of volunteer prostitute Barbra Streisand in 1970 “The Owl and the Pussycat; “A false husband opposite Glenda Jackson in 1973″ A Touch of Class; ” hopeless gambler opposite Elliot Gould in 1974 “California Split;” director Robert Altman; and bank by bank opposite Jane Fonda in 1977 “Fun with Dick and Jane.”
Dressed as a handsome main figure, Segal’s image had gradually risen from his first film, 1961, “The Young Doctors” starring his ninth bill. His first performance in “King Rat” came as a reckless resident of a Japanese prison camp during World War II.
In “Virginia Woolf,” he played Nick, one half of a young couple who were invited for drinks and witnessed the bitterness and harassment of a middle-aged couple.
Director Mike Nichols needed someone who would get the approval of star Elizabeth Taylor, and he turned to Segal when Robert Redford rejected him.
According to Nichols biographer Mark Harris, the director said that Segal was “close enough to the young god he must have been for Elizabeth, and clever enough and funny enough to deal with. that humility. ”
He would ride the film to a long series of stardom. Then in the late 1970s, “Jaws” and other action movies changed the nature of Hollywood movies, and the light-hearted comedies that Segal did well came into being.
“Then I got a little older,” he said in an interview in 1998. “I started playing urban father roles. And that kind of guy turned into a Chevy Chase, and after that there was nowhere to go. ”
As well as the 1989 hit “Look Who’s Talking,” Segal films in the 1980s and 1990s were flawed. He turned to television and starred in two failed series, “Take Five” and “Murphy’s Law”. ”
He then had success in 1997 with partner David Spade “Just Shoot Me” in which he played Gallo, despite his grim way of hiring his daughter (Laura San Giacomo) and who keeping an office boy character worth Spade on his pay out of a sense of love for both.
Series co-star Brian Posehn was among many who paid homage to Segal Tuesday night.
“I grew to watch it, the whole charm of old school, a fun time without effort,” said Seose’s “Just Shoot Me” Posehn. “Making scenes with him was one of the best things in my life, but it was even colder to get to know him and make the legend laugh.”
Throughout his long acting career, Segal played the banjo for sport, getting very adept at the instrument he first picked up as a boy. He played with his own Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz.
Born in 1934 in Great Neck, New York, the third son of a malt and beer merchant, Segal began entertaining at the age of 8, performing magic tricks for neighborhood children.
He attended Quaker Boarding School in Pennsylvania and as an undergraduate at Columbia University he organized “Bruno Linch and His Imperial Band,” where he also played banjo.
After graduating, Segal worked unpaid at the New York Theater Circle in the Square, doing everything from taking tickets to scarce acting. He studied drama with Lee Strasberg and Uta Hagen, and made his professional acting debut outside Broadway in Moliere’s “Don Juan”. It lasted one night.
After spending time on Broadway in “The Iceman Cometh” with Eugene O’Neill, he was drafted into the Army. Released in 1957, he returned to the stage and began earning small film roles.
In 1956 Segal married the editor of the television story Marion Sobel and they had two daughters, Elizabeth and Polly, before they separated in 1981.
He married his second wife, Linda Rogoff, in London in 1982 and was devastated when she died of a stomach illness 14 years later.
“It was a time when I said,` It doesn’t matter; I don’t get it anymore, ”he told an interviewer in 1999.“ With Linda dying, I lost interest in everything. I was working just to make a living. Acting, like life, was going to be a joyless job. ”
He eventually reconnected with Sonia Schultz Greenbaum, who had been a high school sweetheart about 45 years earlier. They talked on the phone, sometimes for up to six hours, and were married just a few months after reuniting.
“She helped me through the worst days of my life just listening to me without loading,” Rye said in 1999. “It was magical.”