George Segal

George Segal Jr., born February 13, 1934, in New York City, was an American actor and musician whose career spanned stage, film, and television across six decades. He died on March 23, 2021. The youngest of four children born to Fannie Blanche Segal and George Segal Sr., a malt and hop agent, Segal grew up largely in Great Neck, New York. All four of his grandparents were Russian-Jewish immigrants. His sister Greta died of pneumonia before he was born, his brother John worked in hops brokerage and farming in Grandview, Washington, and his brother Fred became a screenwriter. After his father's death in 1947, Segal relocated to New York City with his mother. He completed his secondary education at George School, a Quaker boarding school in Pennsylvania, graduating in 1951, and went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts in performing arts and drama from Columbia College of Columbia University in 1955. He subsequently served in the United States Army during the Korean War.

Segal's interest in acting began at age nine upon seeing Alan Ladd in This Gun for Hire. After his military service, he studied at the Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg and at HB Studio with Uta Hagen. His early stage work included an understudy role in the 1956 off-Broadway production of The Iceman Cometh starring Jason Robards, a performance in Antony and Cleopatra for Joseph Papp, and membership in an improvisational group called The Premise, which performed at a Bleecker Street coffeehouse alongside Buck Henry and Theodore J. Flicker. His Broadway career ran from 1961 to 1998 and included appearances in Gideon, Rattle of a Simple Man, Requiem for a Heavyweight, and Art. Gideon, written by Paddy Chayefsky, ran for 236 performances during the 1961–62 season. Rattle of a Simple Man, an adaptation of a British production, featured Tammy Grimes and Edward Woodward in its 1963 run.

Segal signed with Columbia Pictures in 1961 and made his film debut in The Young Doctors. Early television appearances included Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Armstrong Circle Theatre, and Naked City. He appeared in the World War II film The Longest Day in 1962, had a small role in Act One in 1963, and co-starred with Yul Brynner in the western Invitation to a Gunfighter in 1964. He joined the cast of Columbia's The New Interns that same year, a role that earned him the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year, alongside Harve Presnell and Chaim Topol.

His film prominence grew substantially in 1965 when he appeared in two well-regarded productions: Stanley Kramer's Ship of Fools, an ensemble drama led by Vivien Leigh and Lee Marvin that received an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture, and King Rat, in which he played the title role of a scheming prisoner of war, a part originally intended for Frank Sinatra. He followed those performances with roles in The Quiller Memorandum (1966), in which he played a secret service agent in Berlin in a role originally written for Charlton Heston, and Roger Corman's The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967). On television, he played Biff in a 1966 production of Death of a Salesman opposite Lee J. Cobb, and appeared in adaptations of The Desperate Hours (1967) and Of Mice and Men (1968), the latter two directed by Ted Kotcheff.

Mike Nichols, who had previously directed Segal in the 1964 off-Broadway play The Knack, cast him in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) after Robert Redford declined the role. Segal played Nick, the young faculty member, alongside Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and Sandy Dennis in the Warner Bros. production. The film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture and was later selected for the National Film Registry. Segal earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance.

Throughout the late 1960s and 1970s, Segal maintained a steady presence in films across multiple genres, including No Way to Treat a Lady (1968), The Bridge at Remagen (1968), Where's Poppa? (1970), The Owl and the Pussycat (1970), Born to Win (1971), The Hot Rock (1972), Blume in Love (1973), California Split (1974), The Terminal Man (1974), The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox (1976), Fun with Dick and Jane (1977), Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (1978), The Last Married Couple in America (1980), and Carbon Copy (1981). His performance in A Touch of Class (1973) won him the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. He was among the first American film actors to achieve leading man status without changing his Jewish surname.

In later years, Segal appeared in supporting roles in films including Stick (1985), Look Who's Talking (1989), For the Boys (1991), Flirting with Disaster (1996), The Cable Guy (1996), The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), 2012 (2009), and Love & Other Drugs (2010). On television, he played Jack Gallo on the sitcom Just Shoot Me! from 1997 to 2003 and Albert "Pops" Solomon on The Goldbergs from 2013 until his death in 2021.

A musician throughout his life, Segal began playing the ukulele as a child in Great Neck before transitioning to the four-string banjo in high school. At Columbia University he performed with a dixieland jazz band that performed under several names, including Bruno Lynch and his Imperial Jazz Band and, later, the Red Onion Jazz Band. During his Army service he played in a group called Corporal Bruno's Sad Sack Six. He continued playing the banjo throughout his career, incorporating it into both film and television appearances and making music recordings.