GEORGE SEGAL

(13 February 1934 - 23 March 2021)

The American actor George Segal was born to Russian Jewish immigrants, but raised by secular parents and did not change his Jewish name, although he often played Jewish roles. Inspired by Alan Ladd, he vowed to become an actor. After graduating from Columbia University, where he was a virtuoso banjo player, he formed a jazz band. Following a course at the Actors Studio, he understudied Jason Robards in The Iceman Cometh and worked on many other Broadway plays. His first film was The Young Doctors (1961) with Ben Gazzara, followed by The Longest Day. Early on he did many TV shows until his part in Act One, the film of Moss Hart’s autobiography. He was with Yul Brynner in Invitation to a Gunfighter, in Stanley Kramer’s Ship of Fools and starred in Bryan Forbes’ POW drama King Rat. Mike Nichols’ version of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? saw Segal as a young professor sparring verbal games with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, for which he was Oscar-nominated. He secured top-billing in The Quiller Memorandum, a spy thriller with Alec Guinness and Max Von Sydow, and went on to appear in Roger Corman’s The St Valentine’s Day Massacre. George Segal, who has died aged 87, following bypass surgery, showed a penchant for comedy in Sidney Lumet’s Bye Bye Braverman, Jack Smight’s No Way to Treat a Lady, Carl Reiner’s Where’s Poppa? and The Owl and the Pussycat (with Barbra Streisand). He was even better in A Touch of Class with Glenda Jackson, but she collected the Oscar. Their second coupling in Lost and Found was less successful. However, The Black Bird, The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox and Fun With Dick and Jane were reasonably good. Later films proved less successful and he took shelter mostly in TV, including Just Shoot Me!, in a long run from 1997. His last work was the long-running The Goldbergs with Segal as Albert 'Pops' Solomon. George Segal was married first to the film editor-producer Marion Sobel, with whom he has two daughters, Elizabeth and Polly, then Linda Sue Rogoff and finally Sonia Schultz Greenbaum.

MICHAEL DARVELL