E. G. Marshall

E. G. Marshall, born Everett Eugene Grunz on June 18, 1914, in Owatonna, Minnesota, was an American actor whose career spanned stage, film, television, and radio over more than five decades. The son of Hazel Irene (née Cobb) and Charles G. Grunz, he adopted the surname Marshall for his professional work and declined throughout his life to reveal what his initials stood for, quipping that they represented "Everybody's Guess." He died of lung cancer at his home in Bedford, New York, on August 24, 1998, at the age of 84.

Marshall's stage work began in New York in the 1940s, and by 1948 he had already appeared in the original New York productions of The Skin of Our Teeth and The Iceman Cometh. That same year he was among the first group of actors admitted to the newly formed Actors Studio, joining a cohort that included Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Julie Harris, and Kim Stanley, among others. His Broadway career extended from 1942 to 1980 and included appearances in John Gabriel Borkman, Nash at Nine, Plaza Suite, and The Gang's All Here. He took on leading roles in both The Crucible and Waiting for Godot, the latter of which was also documented in a 1956 cast recording featuring Bert Lahr.

On television, Marshall achieved his broadest recognition as Lawrence Preston, a Manhattan defense attorney in the CBS legal drama The Defenders, which ran from 1961 to 1965. The role earned him two Emmy Awards. He subsequently portrayed Dr. David Craig in The Bold Ones: The New Doctors from 1969 to 1973, and played Nazi collaborator Henri Denault on Falcon Crest in 1982. From January 1974 through February 1982, he served as the original host of CBS Radio Mystery Theater, a nightly radio drama series. His final screen work was a reprisal of his role as Lawrence Preston in two television films based on The Defenders.

Marshall's film credits included Juror 4 in Sidney Lumet's 12 Angry Men (1957), District Attorney Harold Horn in Compulsion (1959), Colonel Jerome Pakenham in Town Without Pity (1961), Colonel Rufus S. Bratton in Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), Arthur in Woody Allen's Interiors (1978), the President of the United States in Superman II (1980), Arthur Smith in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), John N. Mitchell in Nixon (1995), and Walter Sullivan in Absolute Power (1997).

In 1973, Marshall returned to live theater to play the title role in a production of Macbeth at the Virginia Museum Theatre in Richmond, Virginia, directed by Keith Fowler, which received praise from the New York Times. Beyond his performing work, he was selected as a Fellow of the American Bar Association and served as an officer of the American Judicature Society. He was also a member of the Committee for National Health Insurance and narrated a political advertisement supporting Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey during the 1968 campaign.

Marshall was married twice. His first marriage, to Helen Wolf in 1931, produced two daughters, Jill and Degen, and ended in divorce in 1953. He married Judith Coy in 1958, and they had two sons, Sam and Jud, and a daughter, Sarah. That marriage lasted until his death.