Ben Piazza

Benito Daniel Piazza, known professionally as Ben Piazza, was born on July 30, 1933, in Little Rock, Arkansas, and died on September 7, 1991. An American actor, he built a career spanning stage, film, and television, with Broadway appearances stretching from 1956 to 1968.

Piazza's stage work earned him a Theatre World Award in 1959, and his Broadway credits included The Zoo Story, American Dream, Song of the Grasshopper, The Fun Couple, and A Second String, among other productions. His association with playwright Edward Albee, a close friend to whom he later dedicated his novel, was a notable element of his theatrical life.

His screen career began in Canada with Sidney J. Furie's A Dangerous Age in 1959, followed almost immediately by his Hollywood debut in The Hanging Tree that same year. He subsequently signed contracts with both Warner Bros. and Gary Cooper's production company for a period of five years, though his next film appearance did not come until No Exit in 1962. Over the following decades he became a prolific character actor in film and television. He appeared in Otto Preminger's Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon in 1970, playing the violent boyfriend who scars Liza Minnelli's character's face. His most widely recognized film role came in John Landis's 1980 comedy The Blues Brothers, in which he played the wealthy restaurant patron from whom Jake, portrayed by John Belushi, offers to buy his wife and daughter.

Additional film credits included The Candy Snatchers in 1973, The Bad News Bears in 1976, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden in 1977, Nightwing in 1979, Peter Bogdanovich's Mask in 1985, Clean and Sober in 1988, and Guilty by Suspicion in 1991, his final film, in which he portrayed Hollywood studio mogul Darryl F. Zanuck. On television, he appeared in a 1975 episode of Barnaby Jones titled "Bond of Fear," held the role of Walt Driscoll during the sixth season of Dallas from 1982 to 1983, and in 1986 joined the cast of the daytime soap opera Santa Barbara as Dr. A.L. Rawlings for a three-month run.

Beyond acting, Piazza was also a writer. In 1964 he published The Exact and Very Strange Truth, a coming-of-age novel centered on an Italian-American boy growing up in Little Rock, Arkansas. Though Piazza stated in the book's introduction that any resemblance between its characters and real people was irrelevant, the parallels to his own life were evident. He dedicated the work to Edward Albee.

In his personal life, Piazza was married to actress Dolores Dorn from 1967 until 1979. From 1973 until his death he was in a committed relationship with Wayne Tripp. Piazza died of cancer on September 7, 1991.