Charles Grodin, Star of ‘Beethoven’ and ‘Heartbreak Kid,’ Dies at 86

Authored by nytimes.com and submitted by mi-16evil
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Mr. Grodin, who dropped out of the University of Miami to pursue acting, had managed to land a smattering of stage and television roles when, in 1962, he received his first big break, landing a part in a Broadway comedy called “Tchin-Tchin,” which starred Anthony Quinn and Margaret Leighton.

“Walter Kerr called me impeccable,” Mr. Grodin wrote years later, recalling a review of the show that appeared in The New York Times. “It took a trip to the dictionary to understand he meant more than clean.”

Another Broadway appearance came in 1964 in “Absence of a Cello.” Mr. Grodin’s next two Broadway credits were as a director, of “Lovers and Other Strangers” in 1968 and “Thieves” in 1974. Then, in 1975, came a breakthrough Broadway role opposite Ellen Burstyn in Bernard Slade’s “Same Time, Next Year,” a durable two-hander about a man and woman, each married to someone else, who meet once a year in the same inn room.

“The play needs actors of grace, depth and accomplishment, and has found them in Ellen Burstyn and Charles Grodin,” Clive Barnes wrote in a rave in The Times. “Miss Burstyn is so real, so lovely and so womanly that a man wants to hug her, and you hardly notice the exquisite finesse of her acting. It is underplaying of sheer virtuosity. Mr. Grodin is every bit her equal — a monument to male insecurity, gorgeously inept, and the kind of masculine dunderhead that every decent man aspires to be.”

MimonFishbaum on May 18th, 2021 at 18:11 UTC »

He was a lot older than I thought.

jough22 on May 18th, 2021 at 18:04 UTC »

A lot of people calling out his big roles. I wanted to call out a smaller role I loved him in. He played Murray, friend of Kevin Kline's character in Dave. It was just the right balance of dead-pan and practicality that the role really needed.

RIP, Mr. Grodin.

spockgiirl on May 18th, 2021 at 17:47 UTC »

Also a two-time Muppet co-star in both The Great Muppet Caper and the followup as a Disneyworld guard in "The Muppets at Walt Disney World" a few years later.