Peter Boyle, whose five-decade career spanned almost every entertainment medium including theater, died on December 12 at New York Presbyterian Hospital, according to the Associated Press. The cause was multiple myeloma and heart disease. Boyle survived a 1990 stroke and went on to co-star in 10 seasons of the popular sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond as Ray Romano's father. He also bounced back from a heart attack suffered on the Raymond set in 1999.
Born in Philadelphia on October 18, 1935 some sources list the year as 1933, Boyle spent three years in a monastery before abandoning his religious studies. He moved to New York to study acting with Uta Hagen and had an early stage appearance in 1961 in Shadow of Heroes. He toured with The Odd Couple from 1965-67 as an Oscar Madison understudy, dropping out in Chicago to join the improvisational comedy troupe Second City.
Boyle first achieved screen fame as the racist title character in Joe 1970, released at about the same time he was appearing on Broadway in Paul Sills' Story Theatre. His only other Broadway credit was the short-lived The Roast, directed by Carl Reiner, in 1980. That same year, Boyle and Tommy Lee Jones co-starred in the infamous off-Broadway premiere production of Sam Shepard's True West, which ran for two weeks at the Public Theater and was disavowed by the playwright. His final New York stage appearance was a brief stint in The Exonerated, which ran off-Broadway from October 2002 to March 2004.
Boyle's many memorable films included The Candidate, Young Frankenstein featuring his rendition of "Puttin' On the Ritz", Taxi Driver and, more recently, Johnny Dangerously, The Dream Team, Malcolm X, The Santa Clause, The Shadow, Dr. Doolittle and Monster's Ball. He won an Emmy Award for playing clairvoyant Clyde Bruckman on The X-Files and was nominated five times for his performance as curmudgeon Frank Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond.
