GEORGE GAYNES

(16 May 1917 - 15 February 2016)

Born in Helsinki (now in Finland) Gaynes was a stage and film actor. He appeared in the original Broadway production of Bernstein’s Wonderful Town (1953) as Bob Baker, and in Cole Porter’s Out of This World. He also appeared in opera in Italy, France and the US, played in Gilbert & Sullivan and toured in My Fair Lady. In US television from 1955 he appeared in umpteen series including The Defenders, Hawaiian Eye, Cheyenne, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Bonanza, Mannix, Columbo, Cannon, McCloud, Washington: Behind Closed Doors, Punky Brewster, General Hospital, The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd and Hearts Afire. He made films from the mid-1960s and was in Sidney Lumet’s The Group, Doctors’ Wives, The Way We Were, Harry and Walter Go To New York, Nickelodeon, Altered States, To Be or Not To  Be (Mel Brooks), Louis Malle’s Vanya On 42nd Street and Tootsie etc. He found lasting fame, however, in a comic role as the bumbling Commandant Lassard in the seven Police Academy films. Later work included The Fantastic Four, The Crucible and Wag the Dog. He leaves a widow, the actress, singer and dancer Allyn Ann McLerie (of Where’s Charley? and Calamity Jane fame) with whom he founded the State Street Ballet Company in Santa Barbara.

MICHAEL DARVELL