Steve Landesberg

Steve Landesberg was an American actor, comedian, and Broadway performer born on November 23, 1936, in the Bronx, New York. His father, Abraham Landesberg, operated a grocery store, and his mother, Ann Landesberg, worked as a milliner. He was Jewish. Landesberg died of colon cancer on December 20, 2010, at the age of 74, and was cremated.

Landesberg is best remembered for portraying Detective Sergeant Arthur P. Dietrich, a cerebral and composed police officer, on the ABC sitcom Barney Miller. He appeared in 124 episodes, joining the cast in the final episode of the 1975 season and remaining through the series finale in 1982. The role earned him three Emmy Award nominations. Prior to Barney Miller, he was a cast member of the 1974 CBS sitcom Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers, and co-starred in Black Bart, a television pilot that served as a spin-off of Blazing Saddles.

As a stand-up comedian, Landesberg made frequent appearances on Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show, where he incorporated celebrity impersonations and dialect humor into his monologues. He was also a member of the improv group New York Stickball Team, which produced several shows that aired on cable television following the conclusion of Barney Miller. During his stand-up years, he pronounced his surname with a silent first "e," as "Lands-berg," before later amending it to the three-syllable pronunciation "Lan-des-berg" toward the end of his time on Barney Miller.

His television guest appearances included The Rockford Files, Law and Order, Saturday Night Live, The Golden Girls, That '70s Show, Ghost Whisperer, and Everybody Hates Chris. He starred as Dr. Myron Finkelstein in the Starz original series Head Case, and an unsold sitcom pilot, The Best Defense, in which he played a public defender in Seattle, aired on ABC on June 19, 1995. His film credits include Leader of the Band, Wild Hogs, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

In 1992, Landesberg appeared on Broadway in Guys and Dolls. During the mid-1980s through the early 1990s, he served as a television and print spokesman for Northwestern Bell's long-distance telephone services, AAMCO Transmissions, Canadian Airlines, and Office Depot. Landesberg and his wife, Nancy Ross Landesberg, had one daughter, Elizabeth. Throughout his career he was deliberately evasive about his age and year of birth, a practice his daughter attributed to his having entered show business relatively late in life.