George S. Irving

George S. Irving, born Irving Shelasky on November 1, 1922, in Springfield, Massachusetts, was an American actor whose Broadway career spanned from 1943 to 2005. The son of Russian Jewish immigrants Abraham and Rebecca Shelasky, he was one of four siblings. As a boy of thirteen or fourteen, he sang as a soprano in synagogues and churches. By his final year of high school in 1940, he learned of a dramatic school in Boston that accepted students who were not yet of draft age and who were tall with deep voices, earning a scholarship to attend. In 1942, he worked in the chorus of the St. Louis Muny Opera before launching his professional stage career.

Irving made his Broadway debut in the original 1943 production of Oklahoma!, stepping into the chorus after one of the original cast members lost his voice. He had secured the audition by writing to the Theatre Guild and asking them to remind Oscar Hammerstein that the composer knew him slightly. He was drafted into the United States Army for service in World War II only days after the production opened. Following his military service, he returned to the stage and accumulated credits that included Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Me and Juliet, the play The Good Soup, and the play Once in a Lifetime, among other productions.

Irving became particularly well known to Broadway audiences through his work in Irene, which opened in 1974 and starred Debbie Reynolds, with Jane Powell later succeeding her in the lead role. At the 27th Tony Awards, he won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical for that production, having also received a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance in 1972. He received a Tony nomination for his portrayal of Sir John in Me and My Girl, which ran on Broadway beginning in 1987. In 2008, at the age of eighty-six, Irving was presented with the 17th Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre on December 8 of that year. That same year he performed a one-man cabaret show at Feinstein's in New York City and recreated three roles he had originally played in the 1976 Joseph Stein musical So Long, 174th Street, now retitled Enter Laughing in a revised production at Off-Broadway's York Theatre Company, where his performance of "The Butler's Song" drew strong notices.

Beyond Broadway, Irving maintained a substantial voice acting career. He was widely recognized as the voice of Heat Miser in the 1974 American Christmas television special The Year Without a Santa Claus, in which he played the character opposite Dick Shawn's Snow Miser. He reprised the role in A Miser Brothers' Christmas, a sequel that premiered on ABC Family on December 13, 2008, and which received an Annie Award nomination from the Los Angeles Chapter of the International Animated Film Society for Best Animated Television Production Produced for Children. His other voice work included the role of Mister Geppetto in Pinocchio's Christmas for Rankin-Bass, the character Captain Contagious in Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical Adventure, and the narrator of the animated series Underdog, on which he also voiced Tap Tap the Chizzler across 124 episodes from 1964 to 1967. He voiced Running Board on Go Go Gophers across 48 episodes and provided voices for Klondike Kat. Irving also narrated the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark audiobooks and a collection of books by Patrick F. McManus, including A Fine and Pleasant Misery and Never Sniff a Gift Fish.

On television, Irving was familiar to audiences of the 1970s through a guest appearance on All in the Family as Russell DeKuyper, the loudmouthed husband of Edith Bunker's cousin Amelia, and he was a regular cast member of the short-lived 1976 sitcom The Dumplings. He appeared as Baron Mirko Zeta in the New York City Opera production of Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow, broadcast live in 1996 from the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, during which he also discussed the operetta's history and historical inspiration during intermission. His film credits included Up the Sandbox in 1972 and Deadly Hero in 1975.

Irving was married to actress Maria Karnilova from 1948 until her death in 2001. They had a son, Alexander, and a daughter, Katherine Irving, as well as three grandchildren. Irving died in Manhattan of heart failure on December 26, 2016, at the age of ninety-four.