Herb Edelman

The Neil Simon pipeline made Herb Edelman. Born in Brooklyn in 1933, he turned up as Harry Pepper, the telephone man, in the 1967 film of Barefoot in the Park, then as Murray the cop in The Odd Couple a year later, then as Harry Michaels in California Suite in 1978. Three Simon adaptations across eleven years is not coincidence; it is shorthand for a specific thing Edelman could do, which was walk into somebody else's argument, deliver two flat lines, and leave having taken the scene with him.

He worked constantly and rarely near the top of the bill. The Way We Were used him in 1973, The Front Page and The Yakuza both in 1974, and, more strangely, the 1984 martial-arts comedy Wheels on Meals, which is the sort of credit that only happens to a character actor whose agent says yes. Television was steadier. He was Joel Steiger across Cagney and Lacey, Artie Gelber on Murder, She Wrote, and Richard Clarendon on St. Elsewhere, all recurring parts, all built on the same trick of arriving with the plot in his pocket.

The role that outlived the rest was Stanley Zbornak, Dorothy's ex-husband on The Golden Girls: a man written to be resented, played with just enough hurt underneath that the audience kept wanting him back. He was twice nominated for an Emmy for his television work. He died in 1996.