John Randolph 1915 - 2004

Character Actor John Randolph Dies at 88

I first noticed and remembered John Randolph in the late 70s, or around then. I have a vivid memory of it being summer, and some kids were splashing in the pool, and I was inside the sliding glass doors, looking at the cable guide. I remember somehow pointing out Heaven Can Wait (1978) to my mom, who said that she had just seen that on the airplane and that she really liked it. I think it must have been starting just then, and I watched it, and loved it. I probably watched it at least half a dozen time that month on HBO.

I was introduced to not only Randolph, but James Mason and Jack Warden (both great character actors who left serious impressions on me), Charles Grodin (who I then thought was very funny, up until his godawful talk/whine show), Dyan Cannon (who seemed like she might have a career taking off, but never really did), Warren Beatty, Buck Henry (re-enforced by watching early Saturday Night Live reruns), R.G. Armstrong (a Sam Peckinpah regular), Dolph Sweet (who would go on to star -- and die -- on Gimme a Break with Nell Carter).

Anyway, Randolph left an impression on me. He just had one or two scenes. One main scene, very quick, as the "Former Owner" of the Los Angeles Rams, who had just sold the team to the character Warren Beatty was playing:

Former Owner: He got my team. The son of a bitch got my team.
Advisor to Former Owner: What kind of pressure did he use, Milt?
Former Owner: All I asked was sixty-seven million, and he said "okay."
Advisor to Former Owner: Ruthless bastard.

Anyway, I thought that was very funny (after I think, my mom explained it to me), and still think so.

I know I also watched Randolph around the same time on the sitcom "Angie" (1979-1980). When I was a kid, I'd watch a lot of things; anything; a lot of dumb things. I haven't seen Angie in almost 25 years, but I'm pretty sure, it's not very good. At the time I watched it because I had just seen co-star Robert Hays in Airplane!, which at age 9 I'm sure I thought especially hilarious. (I ended up giving Hays many, many chances for Airplane! to pay off again, but, as we all know now, it never did.)

Donna Pescow (who I may have had a little boy crush on) was Angie Falco, a middle class Italian-American who marries the wealthy Brad Benson, and she soon learns... she's in a sitcom. Debralee Scott, Doris Roberts, Tim Thomerson and, of course, John Randolph co-starred.

Randolph, would go on to win a Tony in 1987 for the play "Broadway Bound."

He also appeared in Prizzi's Honor (1985) as Angelo 'Pop' Partanna; as Clark Wilhelm Griswold, Sr. in Christmas Vacation (1989); and on the short-lived, but decent (if memory serves) sitcom "Grand" (1990), which co-starred Bonnie Hunt, John Neville and Pamela Reed.

Left to right: Tom Hanks, Dabney Coleman, John Randolph in 1998's You've Got Mail.

He also may be well known today for playing Roseanne's father on "Roseanne," and Tom Hanks' grandfather (Dabney Coleman's father) in "You've Got Mail."

Randolph was born Emanuel Hirsch Cohen, on June 1, 1915, in New York, New York. In the 1930s Randolph joined the Group Theatre in New York led by Lee Strasberg. Group members (including Elia Kazan, Clifford Odets, John Garfield, Howard Da Silva, and Lee J. Cobb) tended to be left-wing, and wanted to produce plays that dealt with important social issues.

He went to Columbia University and then was first seen on Broadway in 1937's "Revolt of the Beavers." He then served in the Air Force in World War II, then resumed what seemed at the time to be an increasingly successful acting career.

His first films were Jules Dassin's The Naked City (1948) and Henry Hathaway's Fourteen Hours (1951). Between 1948 and 1951 he appeared on television on episodes of "Actor's Studio," "The Philco Television Playhouse," "Kraft Television Theatre," "The Philco Television Playhouse," "The Web," and "Danger."

But in 1951, Randolph found himself on a list of "Communist sympathizers." He appeared as a "hostile witness" before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee and was effectively blacklisted from movies, TV and radio commercials for the next dozen years.

Randolph described himself as an "old radical" who became politically active in the 1930s; rallying for convicted spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg; and later marching with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

"The hearing was like a three-ring circus. You were surrounded by this tremendous spotlight of publicity: newspapers, television cameras, radio broadcasters. And all the hate groups were there every day in the first three or four rows. If you hadn't been blacklisted by that time, you knew you definitely were going to be. I went in with this attitude: You have no right to ask me what my political opinions are. And it's none of your business whether Joe Schlamps is a Communist or a Socialist or a Republican or a Democrat. That's his right. I would refuse to answer questions of that sort. They started with their whole rigmarole: What's your name? Where did you go to school? What shows have you been in? I was concerned that just answering, "Yes, I was a member of the Ibsen Theater," would open up an area. "Who else was there?" Suddenly you're mentioning eight other actors. What if they had some stoolie say the Ibsen Theater was run by a bunch of Commies? As much as you plan, you may open up an area that would lead to other people getting smeared. When they asked, 'Are you working now?' I said, 'With no intention to comment about this committee hearing, I'm in a play called Much Ado About Nothing.'" -- from http://www.hrcr.org/ccr/randolph.html

These people were then called to appear before the HUAC. Ten of them: Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Albert Maltz, Adrian Scott, Samuel Ornitz, Dalton Trumbo, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson and Alvah Bessie refused to answer any questions. Known as the Hollywood Ten, they claimed that the 1st Amendment of the United States Constitution gave them the right to do this. The House of Un-American Activities Committee and the courts during appeals disagreed and all were found guilty of contempt of congress and each was sentenced to between six and twelve months in prison.

Larry Parks was the only actor in the original nineteen people named. Parks agreed to give evidence to the HUAC and admitted that he had joined the Communist Party in 1941 but left it four years later. When asked for the names of fellow members, Parks replied: "I would prefer, if you would allow me, not to mention other people's names. Don't present me with the choice of either being in contempt of this Committee and going to jail or forcing me to really crawl through the mud to be an informer."

Randolph with Hume Cronyn in There Was a Crooked Man (1970).

The House of Un-American Activities Committee insisted that Parks answered all the questions asked. The HUAC had a private session and two days later it was leaked to the newspapers that Parks had named names. Leo Townsend, Isobel Lennart, Roy Huggins, Richard Collins, Lee J. Cobb, Budd Schulberg and Elia Kazan, afraid they would go to prison, were willing to name people who had been members of left-wing groups. If these people refused to name names, they were added to a blacklist that had been drawn up by the Hollywood film studios.

Randolph was one of those named as a member of the Communist Party. He appeared in front of the House of Un-American Activities Committee in 1955 but refused to name names. At the time Randolph was appearing on Broadway in Wooden Dish. Encouraged by right-wing politicians and certain newspapers, people demonstrated outside the theatre calling for Randolph to be sacked. Supported by other actors in the production and his union, Randolph kept his job. However, Randolph was blacklisted and could not appear in Hollywood or on television.

Quotes from Randolph:

"My picture appeared on the front pages of the Herald Tribune and the New York Times the day I testified in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. We were living at 107th Street then. The phone stopped ringing, except for hate calls. At three or four in the morning, you'd hear: 'Jew-Commie,' 'Kike-bastard,' 'Go back to Russia.' Suddenly your best friends disappeared because they were too scared. Hysteria was all around us.

"I appreciated how difficult it was for those Hollywood actors who fought back. The stakes were high. Morris Carnovsky and Howard Da Silva and J. Edward Bromberg, all those wonderful actors who worked all their lives on Broadway and never made much money. They were the great creators of the Group Theater. They were a stimulus to those who were young and looked up to these actors who finally went to Hollywood and made it.

"Phil Loeb was another tragic figure. He'd been in many Broadway shows, a distinguished actor. He was an officer of Actors Equity and one of the big fighters for every decent thing we ever had, like rehearsal pay. He was fired from The Goldbergs (a successful television show). The network admitted they were giving in to outside pressure. After that, Phil Loeb committed suicide."

He was lucky enough to be able to survive in theatre for the most part (although at one point, a Broadway show he was in was picketed by "anti-Red" zealots. Throughout the 1950s, Randolph was featured in major stage productions including: Come Back Little Sheba, The Visit, Sound of Music and Case of Libel.

In 1963, he was finally allowed to guest-star on a network TV program, The Defenders. The episode was called "Blacklist," -- and condemned the reactionary right-wing policy of destroying artists because of their political views. Ironically, Randolph was almost denied the role when CBS complained that he hadn't been "cleared."

Some of Randolph's appearances since then include: Pretty Poison (1968), Smith! (1969), There Was a Crooked Man... (1970), Little Murders (1971), Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), the police chief in Serpico (1973), Earthquake (1974), The New Original Wonder Woman (1975) (TV-Movie), All the President's Men (1976) as the voice of John Mitchell (apparently Randolph was a dead ringer for former attorney general John Mitchell, and he played Mitchell in the 1979 TV-miniseries Blind Ambition), King Kong (1976), the mini-series "Washington: Behind Closed Doors" (1977), and the TV-Movie Nero Wolfe (1977).

John Randolph also appeared on dozens of TV shows, including: "Slattery's People," "Mannix," "Mission: Impossible," "Bonanza," "The Bold Ones," "Hawaii Five-O," "Night Gallery," "The Name of the Game," "The Rookies," "All in the Family," on several episodes of "The Bob Newhart Show" as "Junior Harrison," "Police Story," "Medical Center," "Kojak," the "Columbo" episode of "Swan Song" (1974), "McMillan and Wife," "Lou Grant," "Vega$," "M*A*S*H," "Trapper John, M.D.," "Nero Wolfe," "Dallas," "Bret Maverick," "Quincy," "Family Ties," "Voyagers!," "Dynasty," as a character named "Ward Beaumont" (an obvious hybrid of actor Hugh Beaumont and his "Leave It to Beaver" character of "Ward Cleaver") on "The Facts of Life," "Emerald Point N.A.S.," "Who's the Boss?," "The Equalizer," "Matlock," the grandfather on "Roseanne," "Married... with Children," "Frank Costanza" in episode: "The Handicap Spot" of "Seinfeld" (episode # 4.22; 13 May 1993), "ER" in 1994, and, past age 80, on "Touched by an Angel" in 1996.

Giving the big fuck you to HUAC and it's supporters, Randolph has more recently accepted the German Democratic Republic's Paul Robeson Award; and served on the National Council for US-Soviet friendship. He has also served on the board of directors of all three major performing guilds: SAG, AFTRA and Equity.

He continued to appear in plays until four years ago.

He was often stopped on the street by people who asked if they knew him, said his daughter-in-law, Kate Randolph. "He'd say, 'Yes, I've been in your living room many times,'" she said.

He is survived by two children, a granddaughter and a brother. His wife, Sarah Cunningham, died of an asthma attack at the 1986 Oscar telecast ceremony.

After 1998's You've Got Mail, Randolph appeared in the films The Dogwalker (1999), The Real Guernika (1999), and Sunset Strip (2000), where he co-starred among a cast of young stars: Simon Baker, Anna Friel, Nick Stahl, Rory Cochrane, Adam Goldberg, Stephanie Romanov, Jared Leto, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Krista Allen and Judy Greer.

During the filming of The Dogwalker, John was also involved with the production of the 50th anniversary event, "Hollywood Remembers The Blacklist." It was his desire to remain active as a member of the Screen Actors Guild Board of Directors, hoping to serve as a constant reminder and educator about that very dark piece of recent history.