David Doyle

A great many people know David Doyle's voice and could not pick his face out of a line-up, which is a strange fate for a man who appeared in every episode of one of the most watched shows on American television.

He worked first as a New York character actor, and the late-1960s film credits are better than his television reputation suggests: Coogan's Bluff and No Way to Treat a Lady in 1968, Elaine May's A New Leaf in 1971, Capricorn One later. He had exactly the face the era wanted for lawyers, cops, executives and mid-level functionaries, and the delivery to match, dry and slightly rumpled.

Then Charlie's Angels made him John Bosley. He and Jaclyn Smith were the only cast members to appear in every episode, through all the changes of angel around them. Bosley is not a good part on paper. Doyle turned him into the show's ballast, the adult in a series about glamour, playing avuncular competence without once winking at the audience.

The last act was animation. That raspy delivery turned out to be ideal for cartoons, and children who never saw a frame of 1970s television knew him as Grandpa Lou Pickles on Rugrats, the first actor in the part, alongside voice work on Darkwing Duck, Goof Troop, Road Rovers and The Adventures of Pinocchio. He died in 1997.