John Harkins

John Raymond Harkins (September 7, 1932 – March 5, 1999) was an American actor who worked across stage, film, and television throughout a career spanning more than four decades. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, he attended Normandy High School before pursuing his education at the University of Iowa. After completing his studies, Harkins began his professional acting career on Broadway in the mid-1950s and became a life member of The Actors Studio.

His Broadway career ran from 1955 to 1971 and included productions of Antigone, The Three Sisters, Mother Courage and Her Children, The Gang's All Here, The Night Circus, The Terrible Swift Sword, and Good as Gold. These stage credits established Harkins as a working presence in New York theater during a period that coincided with his involvement at The Actors Studio.

Harkins made his television debut in 1965 in an episode of The Trials of O'Brien, and the following year he appeared in his first film, a screen adaptation of The Three Sisters alongside Shelley Winters and Geraldine Page. From 1967 to 1970, he took on various roles in the television series Dark Shadows, and later appeared in guest roles on Harry O as well as in several television movies. In 1975, he joined the cast of the CBS sitcom Doc in a recurring capacity, and he also appeared in the widely remembered Mary Tyler Moore Show episode "Chuckles Bites the Dust," playing the reverend.

During the 1980s, Harkins built a substantial screen résumé. He portrayed a cynical lawyer in the 1981 thriller Absence of Malice, starring Paul Newman, and played an ill-fated real-estate agent in the 1983 horror film Amityville 3-D. That same year he appeared in The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Fifteen Years Later Affair. In 1984, he took on the role of former Communist and Cold War-era figure Whittaker Chambers in the PBS miniseries Concealed Enemies. From 1985 to 1987, Harkins portrayed the recurring character Bruce Mansfield on Cagney & Lacey, a role he reprised in the 1994 television reunion film Cagney & Lacey: The Return. In 1988, he co-starred in a television adaptation of Inherit the Wind alongside Jason Robards and Kirk Douglas, and also appeared in Slaves of New York that same year.

Among his final screen appearances was a role in the 1996 HBO film Crime of the Century. Harkins died on March 5, 1999, in Portola Valley, California.