Peter Boyle

Peter Richard Boyle (October 18, 1935 – December 12, 2006) was an American actor born in Norristown, Pennsylvania, who built a career spanning stage, film, and television over four decades. He was the youngest of three children born to Alice (née Lewis) and Francis Xavier Boyle, and grew up in Philadelphia after his family relocated from Norristown. His father, Francis, worked as a Philadelphia television personality from 1951 to 1963, appearing in roles that included the Western show host Chuck Wagon Pete and the host of Uncle Pete Presents the Little Rascals, an after-school children's program featuring Little Rascals, Three Stooges, and Popeye shorts. Francis Boyle also appeared on Ernie Kovacs' morning program on WPTZ. Boyle's paternal grandparents were Irish immigrants, and his mother was of French, English, Scottish, and Irish descent. He was raised Catholic and attended St. Francis de Sales School and West Philadelphia Catholic High School for Boys.

After graduating from high school in 1953, Boyle spent three years in formation with the De La Salle Brothers, a Catholic teaching order, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree from La Salle University in Philadelphia in 1957 before leaving the order. He subsequently graduated from Officer Candidate School in 1959 and was commissioned as an ensign in the United States Navy, though his military service was cut short by a nervous breakdown. In New York City, he studied acting with Uta Hagen at HB Studio while working as a postal clerk and a maitre d'. While still in Philadelphia, he had worked as a cameraman on the cooking program Television Kitchen, hosted by Florence Hanford.

Boyle's professional stage career began in 1963 when he was hired for the Wayside Theatre's opening season, where he appeared in Summer and Smoke by Tennessee Williams. He subsequently played Murray the cop in a touring company of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple, departing the tour in Chicago to join the Second City ensemble there. His Broadway career ran from 1966 to 1980 and included appearances in The Odd Couple and Paul Sills' Story Theatre, as well as a starring role in The Roast, a 1980 Broadway play directed by Carl Reiner in which he played a comedian who is the object of the roast. Also in 1980, he co-starred with Tommy Lee Jones in an off-Broadway production of Sam Shepard's True West, and two years later he played the head of a dysfunctional family in Joe Pintauro's Snow Orchid at the Circle Repertory.

Boyle's film breakthrough came with Joe (1970), in which he starred as a bigoted New York City factory worker. The film generated controversy over its violence and language. His next significant role was as the campaign manager for a U.S. Senate candidate played by Robert Redford in The Candidate (1972), followed by an appearance opposite Robert Mitchum as an Irish mobster in The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973). In 1973 he also appeared in Steelyard Blues alongside Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland. One of his most recognized film performances came in Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein (1974), in which he played Frankenstein's monster, a role that included a sequence in which the monster, dressed in top hat and tails, dances and grunt-sings "Puttin' on the Ritz." Boyle met his future wife, journalist Loraine Alterman, on the set of Young Frankenstein while she was reporting for Rolling Stone. Through Alterman and her friend Yoko Ono, Boyle became friends with John Lennon, who served as best man at Boyle and Alterman's 1977 wedding. The couple had two daughters, Lucy and Amy.

Boyle continued to accumulate notable film credits throughout the 1970s and beyond, playing the philosophical cab driver Wizard in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) with Robert De Niro, a union organizer's adversary in F.I.S.T. (1978), a bar owner and fence in The Brink's Job (1978), a private detective in Hardcore (1979), and the attorney of Hunter S. Thompson, played by Bill Murray, in Where the Buffalo Roam (1980). He also appeared in the science-fiction film Outland (1981) opposite Sean Connery, the pirate comedy Yellowbeard (1983), and the crime comedy Johnny Dangerously (1984) with Michael Keaton. Later supporting roles included parts in Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Malcolm X (1992), The Shadow (1994), While You Were Sleeping (1995), That Darn Cat (1997), Dr. Dolittle (1998), Monster's Ball (2001), The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002), and all three films in The Santa Clause franchise, in which he played Scott Calvin's boss Mr. Whittle in the original 1994 film and Father Time in the two sequels.

Boyle received his first Emmy nomination for his portrayal of Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1977 television film Tail Gunner Joe. In 1986 he starred in the television series Joe Bash, created by Danny Arnold. His most sustained television success came with the CBS sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, in which he played the patriarch Frank Barone from 1996 to 2005. The role earned him seven nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. In 1996 he also won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series for his portrayal of Clyde Bruckman in the Fox series The X-Files. Over the course of his career, Boyle received both a Primetime Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.