Everybody Loved Peter Boyle
We knew him as Frank Barone, the gruff grandpa who made merry mischief with his sons, his long-suffering wife Marie and his horrified in-laws for nine seasons on
Everybody Loves Raymond. Also as the comical monster of
Young Frankenstein, tapping and yowling to "Puttin' on the Ritz." And let's not forget Clyde Bruckman, the wry, melancholy psychic who foresaw his own death (among others, including Mulder's) in one of the most memorable
X-Files episodes ever.
It was for that
X-Files guest shot that Peter Boyle won his Emmy in 1996, but he won America's heart (and was nominated seven times) as the most curmudgeonly of the comic engines in the splendid ensemble cast of
Everybody Loves Raymond, one of the last great classic TV comedies. His cranky rapport with Doris Roberts, who played Marie to his Frank, was so popular they reprised their roles for several retro Alka-Seltzer commercials after
Raymond folded. It was great seeing them again, reminding us of how much we missed them. His death this week at the age of 71, after suffering from multiple myeloma and heart disease, reminds us again of our, and TV's, loss.
The role of Frank was a welcome late-career gift to this wonderful character actor, who burst on the scene in 1970 as the bigoted title character of the controversial film
Joe. Boyle himself couldn't have been more different from Joe (or, for that matter, Frank). He reportedly turned down other violent roles (including the lead of
The French Connection) after the success of
Joe, deploring what he saw as the glamorization of violence. An outspoken critic of the Vietnam War, he befriended John Lennon, who was the best man at Boyle's 1977 wedding to Lorraine Alterman, a
Rolling Stone reporter.
Imagine. Or, as Frank might say, "Holy crap." As TV catchphrases go, that's a pretty good one to remember Peter Boyle by.
