Patrick O'Neal

Patrick Wisdom O'Neal (September 26, 1927 – September 9, 1994) was an American actor and restaurateur born in Ocala, Florida, to Martha and Coke Wisdom O'Neal. He attended Ocala High School and the Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville, Georgia, before enrolling at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he studied drama. During his undergraduate years, O'Neal participated in the Florida Players theatre troupe, served as editor of the university yearbook, and was a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. Following graduation, he enlisted in the United States Air Force and served during the Korean War, directing short training films over the course of fifteen months. He subsequently relocated to New York City, where he trained at the Actors Studio and the Neighborhood Playhouse.

O'Neal built a career that spanned four decades of television work, primarily as a guest performer beginning in the 1950s. His most prominent stage work came in the early 1960s, when he appeared on Broadway in two productions: A Far Country, which ran from April through November 1961, and Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana, in which he played a leading role from December 1961 through September 1962, earning critical praise for the performance. The starring role in the 1964 film adaptation of The Night of the Iguana went instead to Richard Burton.

His film work included a leading role in John Huston's The Kremlin Letter in 1969, a supporting part in the western El Condor that same year, and an appearance in the 1973 film The Way We Were. In 1990, he portrayed corrupt Police Commissioner Kevin Quinn in Sidney Lumet's Q&A. On television, O'Neal appeared twice on Columbo, playing a murderous architect in the 1972 episode "Blueprint for Murder" and a television network executive in the 1978 episode "Make Me a Perfect Murder."

Beginning in 1963, O'Neal co-owned a series of restaurants on Manhattan's West Side with his wife and his brother Michael. These included The Ginger Man on West 64th Street, later renamed O'Neal's; an O'Neal's location on West 57th Street that briefly served as the flagship of a chain; The Landmark Tavern on 11th Avenue; and O'Neal's Saloon at West 63rd Street and Columbus Avenue, which was retitled O'Neal's Baloon after the word "Saloon" was found to have been prohibited during Prohibition, though the neon sign had already been produced.

O'Neal married actress Cynthia Baxter in 1956. The couple had two sons, Maximilian and Fitzjohn, and remained married until his death. O'Neal died on September 9, 1994, at Saint Vincent's Catholic Medical Center in Manhattan at the age of 66, from respiratory failure. He was also suffering from lung cancer and tuberculosis at the time of his death.