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hesAugust 12, 2008
George Furth, an Actor and Playwright, Dies at 75
By BRUCE WEBER
George Furth, a playwright who collaborated with Stephen Sondheim on the Tony Award-winning musical “Company” and who was a ubiquitous character actor whose distinct profile enlivened dozens of popular television series as well as movies like “Blazing Saddles,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “Shampoo,” died on Monday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 75.
Dennis Aspland, his friend and agent, confirmed his death. Mr. Aspland said that he did not know the precise cause, but that Mr. Furth had been in the hospital for a lung infection.
A lanky man with a seemingly natural kinetic nervousness and a perpetual expression of worry, Mr. Furth was often cast as an odd duck, a milquetoast or a stammery, uneasy type with something to hide. A list of his television credits describes a history of popular series from the 1960s to the ’90s, from “The Defenders,” “The Farmer’s Daughter,” “Honey West,” “F Troop,” “The Monkees” and “McHale’s Navy” to “All in the Family,” “Little House on the Prairie,” “Murder, She Wrote,” “Wings,” “Murphy Brown,” “L.A. Law” and “The Nanny.” Perhaps his most memorable role was as Woodcock, the loyal railway employee who allows himself to be blown up not once, but twice, by Paul Newman’s Butch Cassidy, rather than let the train he is riding be robbed.
“Butch, you know if it were my money, there’s nobody I’d rather have steal it than you,” Woodcock calls memorably through a locked door, moments before it explodes in his face for a second time. “But you see, I am still in the employment of E. H. Harriman of the Union Pacific Railroad.”
As a playwright, Mr. Furth reached Broadway several times, both on his own and as a collaborator. “Twigs,” his play about four women from the same family, all played by Sada Thompson, received mixed reviews when it opened on Broadway in 1971, though Mr. Furth’s script had a fan in Walter Kerr of The New York Times, who called its four interconnected pieces “funny and touching and freshly conceived.”
A short-lived comedy, “The Supporting Cast,” appeared in 1981; and a more serious play, “Precious Sons,” a family drama with conscious echoes of Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and William Inge, received serious critical treatment when it appeared in 1986, but the prevailing judgment was that Mr. Furth’s noble ambition for his play outstripped his achievement. He also wrote the book for the Kander and Ebb musical “The Act,” a 1977 vehicle for Liza Minnelli.
In his best-known works, however, he was overshadowed by his writing partner, Mr. Sondheim, with whom he wrote three shows: two musicals, “Company” and “Merrily We Roll Along”; and a nonmusical mystery, “Getting Away With Murder.” “Merrily We Roll Along” and “Getting Away With Murder” were famous failures, though “Merrily,” which closed after 16 performances in 1981, would be revised more than once and become a favorite among Sondheim devotees.
But “Company,” a wry, cynical, sometimes bitter look at marriage through the trepidatious eyes of a bachelor, was a hit, not just for Mr. Sondheim’s score (with songs like “Barcelona,” “Sorry-Grateful” and “The Ladies Who Lunch”) but also for Mr. Furth’s book, an adaptation of a play he had written, comprising 11 loosely connected episodes about couples in which one actress was to play all the wives.
“Company” won a Tony for best musical in 1971, and Mr. Furth won a Tony of his own for his book. The show had two full Broadway revivals, the latest in 2006.
Mr. Furth, who leaves no immediate survivors, was born George Schweinfurth in Chicago on Dec. 14, 1932. He graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in speech, and did graduate work at Columbia. He made his Broadway stage debut in 1961 and his movie debut in 1964 in Gore Vidal’s political drama “The Best Man.” His long show business career took place as much behind the scenes as in public view.
“Nobody had a larger group of completely devoted friends than George,” Warren Beatty, the actor and director who first met Mr. Furth at Northwestern in the 1950s, said in a telephone interview on Monday. They worked together on the films “Shampoo” and “Bulworth,” but Mr. Furth was an adviser to him as well, Mr. Beatty said: “His intelligence was of inestimable value to me in the work I’ve done.”
George Furth, an Actor and Playwright, Dies at 75
By BRUCE WEBER
George Furth, a playwright who collaborated with Stephen Sondheim on the Tony Award-winning musical “Company” and who was a ubiquitous character actor whose distinct profile enlivened dozens of popular television series as well as movies like “Blazing Saddles,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “Shampoo,” died on Monday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 75.
Dennis Aspland, his friend and agent, confirmed his death. Mr. Aspland said that he did not know the precise cause, but that Mr. Furth had been in the hospital for a lung infection.
A lanky man with a seemingly natural kinetic nervousness and a perpetual expression of worry, Mr. Furth was often cast as an odd duck, a milquetoast or a stammery, uneasy type with something to hide. A list of his television credits describes a history of popular series from the 1960s to the ’90s, from “The Defenders,” “The Farmer’s Daughter,” “Honey West,” “F Troop,” “The Monkees” and “McHale’s Navy” to “All in the Family,” “Little House on the Prairie,” “Murder, She Wrote,” “Wings,” “Murphy Brown,” “L.A. Law” and “The Nanny.” Perhaps his most memorable role was as Woodcock, the loyal railway employee who allows himself to be blown up not once, but twice, by Paul Newman’s Butch Cassidy, rather than let the train he is riding be robbed.
“Butch, you know if it were my money, there’s nobody I’d rather have steal it than you,” Woodcock calls memorably through a locked door, moments before it explodes in his face for a second time. “But you see, I am still in the employment of E. H. Harriman of the Union Pacific Railroad.”
As a playwright, Mr. Furth reached Broadway several times, both on his own and as a collaborator. “Twigs,” his play about four women from the same family, all played by Sada Thompson, received mixed reviews when it opened on Broadway in 1971, though Mr. Furth’s script had a fan in Walter Kerr of The New York Times, who called its four interconnected pieces “funny and touching and freshly conceived.”
A short-lived comedy, “The Supporting Cast,” appeared in 1981; and a more serious play, “Precious Sons,” a family drama with conscious echoes of Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and William Inge, received serious critical treatment when it appeared in 1986, but the prevailing judgment was that Mr. Furth’s noble ambition for his play outstripped his achievement. He also wrote the book for the Kander and Ebb musical “The Act,” a 1977 vehicle for Liza Minnelli.
In his best-known works, however, he was overshadowed by his writing partner, Mr. Sondheim, with whom he wrote three shows: two musicals, “Company” and “Merrily We Roll Along”; and a nonmusical mystery, “Getting Away With Murder.” “Merrily We Roll Along” and “Getting Away With Murder” were famous failures, though “Merrily,” which closed after 16 performances in 1981, would be revised more than once and become a favorite among Sondheim devotees.
But “Company,” a wry, cynical, sometimes bitter look at marriage through the trepidatious eyes of a bachelor, was a hit, not just for Mr. Sondheim’s score (with songs like “Barcelona,” “Sorry-Grateful” and “The Ladies Who Lunch”) but also for Mr. Furth’s book, an adaptation of a play he had written, comprising 11 loosely connected episodes about couples in which one actress was to play all the wives.
“Company” won a Tony for best musical in 1971, and Mr. Furth won a Tony of his own for his book. The show had two full Broadway revivals, the latest in 2006.
Mr. Furth, who leaves no immediate survivors, was born George Schweinfurth in Chicago on Dec. 14, 1932. He graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in speech, and did graduate work at Columbia. He made his Broadway stage debut in 1961 and his movie debut in 1964 in Gore Vidal’s political drama “The Best Man.” His long show business career took place as much behind the scenes as in public view.
“Nobody had a larger group of completely devoted friends than George,” Warren Beatty, the actor and director who first met Mr. Furth at Northwestern in the 1950s, said in a telephone interview on Monday. They worked together on the films “Shampoo” and “Bulworth,” but Mr. Furth was an adviser to him as well, Mr. Beatty said: “His intelligence was of inestimable value to me in the work I’ve done.”