George Segal, Jr. (born
February 13, 1934) is an A
actor of stage and screen.
Early life
Segal was
born in Great
Neck
, Long
Island
, New
York
, the son of Fannie and George Segal, Sr. He was
educated at George
School
, a private Quaker preparatory boarding school
near Newtown
, Pennsylvania
. He also attended Haverford College
.
Career
A 1955 graduate of
Columbia
University, he has played both drama and comedy, although he is
more often seen in the latter. Originally a stage actor and
musician, Segal appeared in several minor films in the early 1960s
(and also the well-known
1962 movie
The Longest Day).
Segal was signed to a
Columbia
Pictures contract in 1961 making his film debut in
The Young Doctors and appearing in
the
The Naked City
produced by Columbia's
Screen Gems.
He started
attracting critical attention in 1965 as a distraught newlywed in
Ship of Fools, as a
P.O.W. in King Rat in a role originally
meant for Frank Sinatra, and as an Algerian Paratrooper captured at
Dien Bien
Phu
who leaves the French army to become a leader of
the FLN in Lost Command. He was loaned to
Warner Bros for his well-regarded performances as Nick in
Who's Afraid of
Virginia Woolf? (for which he was nominated for an
Oscar), then
appeared as a British secret service agent in
The Quiller Memorandum, a
Cagneyesque gangster in
The St. Valentine's Day
Massacre, perplexed police detective Mo Brummel in
No Way to Treat a
Lady, a bookworm in
The Owl and the Pussycat, a
war weary platoon commander in
The Bridge at Remagen, a man
laying waste to his marriage in
Loving, and a hairdresser turned
junkie in
Born to Win. Segal also
starred with
Ruth Gordon in
Carl Reiner's 1970 dark comedy
Where's Poppa?.
He played a burglar in the 1972 comedy
The Hot Rock with
Robert Redford, a comically unfaithful
husband in
A Touch of
Class and a
midlife crisis
victim in
Blume in Love. He
co-starred with
Jane Fonda as
suburbanites-turned-bank-robbers in
Fun with Dick and
Jane, and starred as a faux gourmet in
Who Is Killing the
Great Chefs of Europe?.
Segal was so appealing that too often he was asked to carry a film
on his charm alone , especially in the 1970s. He was relatively
inactive in the 1980s, but bounced back as the sleazy father of
Kirstie Alley's baby in
Look Who's Talking, and in the 1993
sequel
Look Who's Talking
Now, and as a
left-wing
comedy writer in
For the Boys
(1991).
He also starred in the
NBC television
sitcom Just Shoot
Me! (1997–2003) as
Jack Gallo,
the sharp, though somewhat silly, head of the fashion and style
magazine
Blush.
He is also an accomplished
banjo player; he
played with a dixieland jazz band while in college at Columbia that
assumed different names; when he was the one who booked a gig, he
would bill the group as "Bruno Lynch and his Imperial Jazzband".
The group, which later settled on the name Red Onion Jazz Band,
later played at his first wedding. In 1974 he played in
A Touch
of Ragtime, an album with his band, the Imperial Jazzband
(which, other than its name, may or may not have had any relation
to his college band). His banjo skills was referenced in
The Simpsonsepisode
A Fish Called Selma,
while on a date with
Troy
McClure Selma says "I once went on a date with a famous
actor and had a wonderful time" to which Troy replies "Really...who
was it, George Segal? I hear he plays the banjo."
Recently, he portrayed elderly musician Tony Delgatto in
2012.
Filmography
References
- http://www.filmreference.com/film/98/George-Segal.html
-
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70D12FC3B5F127A93C2A8178AD85F458785F9
- Segal, George. I've Got A Secret, April 11,
1966.
-
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1345&dat=19850921&id=ScUSAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ovkDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5580,1612493
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