Mark Blum

Blum's specialty was the man being left behind. In Desperately Seeking Susan he is Gary Glass, the hot-tub salesman whose suburban New Jersey life is far too small for the wife who wanders out of it, and he plays it without asking for either sympathy or contempt, which is a large part of why the film works. A year later he was Richard Mason in Crocodile Dundee, the fiance who gets out-charmed by an Australian in a leather hat and never sees it coming.

Two roles like that could have become a trap, and largely did. He kept working steadily as the smooth, faintly compromised professional: Denny Gordon in Blind Date, Arthur Peale in The Presidio, an obstetrician here and an interviewer there, the reporter Wayne Satz in Indictment: The McMartin Trial, and the magazine's lawyer Lewis Estridge in Shattered Glass, where institutional caution becomes its own kind of villainy.

Theatre was the other half of the life, and it is where the prize is: he won an Obie for the play Gus and Al in the 1988 to 1989 season. Television gave him a late, warm run as the union representative Bob on Mozart in the Jungle, a small recurring part he turned into a running joke worth waiting for. He died in 2020.