Jack Kehoe

Jack Kehoe (November 21, 1934 – January 14, 2020) was an American actor whose career spanned stage, film, and television across several decades. Born in Astoria, New York, he served in the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army before pursuing a career in acting, training under the instruction of Stella Adler.

Kehoe's Broadway career ran from 1963 to 1977 and included two productions: The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, which opened in 1963, and The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, in which he appeared in 1977.

His film work brought him into a range of genres, with a notable concentration in crime drama. The year 1973 alone saw Kehoe appear in three films: Serpico, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, and The Sting, the last of which went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. In The Sting, Kehoe played grifter Joe Erie, also known as The Erie Kid. He continued working in film throughout the following decades, appearing in Car Wash (1976), On the Nickel (1980), and Jonathan Demme's Melvin and Howard (1980), another Academy Award-winning production. His later credits included The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984), Brian De Palma's The Untouchables (1987), Midnight Run (1988), and the Western Young Guns II (1990). His final screen appearance came in David Fincher's The Game (1997), alongside Michael Douglas, after which Kehoe retired from acting.

His television work included appearances on The Twilight Zone, Murder, She Wrote, and Miami Vice. Among the limited interviews he gave during his career was one published in a 1974 issue of New York Magazine, in which he discussed his perspective on Hollywood.

Kehoe died on January 14, 2020, following a stroke, at the age of 85. He is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park. He is survived by his partner of forty years, Sherry Smith; the two had no children.