Alan Oppenheimer

Alan Oppenheimer, born in New York City on April 23, 1930, is an American retired actor whose career has spanned live-action television, voice acting, and Broadway. The son of stockbroker Louis Oppenheimer and his wife Irene, Oppenheimer built a decades-long presence across multiple entertainment mediums beginning in the 1960s.

On stage, Oppenheimer appeared in the 1994 Broadway production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard, portraying legendary film director Cecil B. DeMille. His television work as a character actor was equally wide-ranging. He took on a Nazi and a Hollywood movie star across separate appearances on Hogan's Heroes, portrayed both an Israeli secret agent and a double-agent KAOS scientist on Get Smart, and originated the role of Mickey Malph — Ralph Malph's father — on Happy Days. He held a recurring role during the first two seasons of St. Elsewhere as Ira, the husband of Helen Rosenthal, and recurred as Mayor Alvin B. Tutwiller on Mama's Family. In the science fiction realm, Oppenheimer played the head IT technician in the 1973 cult film Westworld and appeared in three separate Star Trek series, each time as a different character: the Klingon cleric Koroth in The Next Generation episode "Rightful Heir," Starfleet Captain Declan Keogh commanding the USS Odyssey in Deep Space Nine, and an alien ambassador in Voyager. He also became the second actor to play Dr. Rudy Wells in The Six Million Dollar Man, taking over the role from Martin Balsam beginning with the second pilot film, Wine, Women and War, and continuing until Martin E. Brooks assumed the part in 1975.

Oppenheimer's voice acting career, active since the 1970s, produced an extensive body of work, much of it for Filmation. For that studio he voiced Mighty Mouse, Oil Can Harry, Swifty, and the narrator on The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle; Ming the Merciless on Flash Gordon; the Overlord on BlackStar; and Skeletor, Man-At-Arms, and Mer-Man on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. He also voiced Prime Evil in Filmation's Ghostbusters in 1986, and contributed multiple characters to Uncle Croc's Block's Fraidy Cat, including Fraidy Cat, Jasper Catdaver, Captain Eddie Kittenbacker, and Cloud Nine. Beyond Filmation, he voiced Thundarr the Barbarian, Vanity on The Smurfs, Rhinokey and Crock from The Wuzzles, and four characters — Falkor, Gmork, Rockbiter, and the Narrator — in the 1984 film The NeverEnding Story. On The Transformers, he voiced the contrasting characters Beachcomber and Warpath, and his portrayal of Seaspray drew comparisons to his earlier Mer-Man performance. He served as the voice of Merlin in The Legend of Prince Valiant in the early 1990s and provided additional voices on Battle of the Planets in 1978. He voiced the never-seen character Alistair Crane on the soap opera Passions until 2004, when the role was recast on camera with David Bailey. Later voice credits include the scientist in the 2009 animated film 9, Alfred Pennyworth in Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, and a guest appearance on Tigtone as well as Old Timer in Toy Story 4, both in 2019.

His video game voice work includes Dr. Piotr Ivanovich in Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix, Prometheus in God of War II, Jandor the Airship Captain in Nox, Harold in Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, Dyntos and the Chariot Master in Kid Icarus: Uprising, and Darm and the Narrator in Ys.

In 1991, Oppenheimer received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for his portrayal of Eugene Kinsella in Murphy Brown. In his personal life, he married costume designer Marianna Elliott in 1958, and the couple had three children together. After a divorce, the two remarried in 1992 and remained together until Elliott's death in 2003.