Word: staging
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...have known who George Grizzard was; renown on the stage (he won a Tony for Best Actor in A Delicate Balance) doesn't translate to mass fame as it once did. But whether you saw him as an oilman in Comes a Horseman with Jane Fonda, as an imperious lawyer on Law and Order or the ghost of Rue McClanahan's husband (a recurring role!) on The Golden Girls, you knew that that actor was those people. As Andre Bishop told the Los Angeles Times, "What was remarkable about his acting was he didn't seem to be acting...
...Broadway, out of Washington. D.C., and the University of North Carolina, to play a bad guy holding a nice family hostage in the 1955 thriller The Desperate Hours. (One of his fellow thugs was the young Paul Newman, who told the Times this week, "When we were on the stage together, he was the best thing around.") He lightened up in his next play, The Happiest Millionaire, then played opposite the luminous Rosemary Harris in The Disenchanted. (Grizzard and Harris would team again in the '0s, for a revival of The Royal Family, and in the '90s for A Delicate...
...came on my radar in the early '60s. I saw him on stage in Virginia Woolf, where he was Nick, a cocky young professor whom an older college couple (Arthur Hill and Uta Hagen) have fun unmanning on their way to their own, more melancholy accommodation with reality. He also made an impression in a big movie, the political drama Advise and Consent, as a snaky, pre-Cheney Wyoming Senator, trying to blackmail a colleague for an early brush with homosexuality. In my innocent appreciation, I didn't think he was good at playing bad guys; I thought...
...that, as you can guess by now, was acting, as my wife Mary and I instantly realized when we met George in the '90s. The man was a pussycat, warm and modest, his strong opinions on politics and the performing arts mediated by a Southern affability. On stage he was master of the quiet revelation of cosmic disappointment - the existential wince - but when the makeup came off he gave every evidence of enjoying his time on earth: spinning anecdotes about the actors and playwrights he knew, or devouring a Bay's English muffin, or working on his flower and vegetable...
...know George because his partner of nearly 40 years was William Tynan, who was a stage and TV actor before he became a TIME arts reporter of exceptional knowledge, ingenuity and patience. He retired in 2000 but has continued his active interest in the theater, as a Tony voter and a perfect complement to George. The two met when they played in The Boys in the Band in Florida in the late '60s. Both were strong personalities who challenged and supported each other. Their time together marked what to me was, in all but name, one of the great marriages...