Obituaries aren’t really my thing and this is not one, so I’d encourage you to look elsewhere to read about the fascinating life and career of actor John Mahoney, who recently died at age 77. (One surprising fact I just learned — he was English!)* But before you leave please allow me to offer up my personal tribute to an actor who was so good that he could be totally believable as a villain, but could also play a character so likeable that he seemed like an old friend.
I especially want to talk about the latter, and that’s not too surprising when you consider that Mrs. BG and I just finished going through all 264 episodes of Frasier on Netflix. (We’d seen them before, but it had been years — the show was on from 1993 to 2004.) So not only did the timing of his death seem a little startling to us, but watching him almost every day for a year left me with an indelible picture of Marty Crane, his character on the show.
Maybe it’s because I identified with an occasionally cantankerous old guy with a heart of gold and a twinkle in his eye, but whatever the case he was like an old friend, and people who knew Mahoney said that persona fit him best. So for me, John Mahoney will always be Marty Crane.
* The last video below shows him using a phony British accent, probably an inside joke at the time — Frasier had a ton of those.
Geezer Music Club 
He Was a really great actor. I loved him in Frasier. He was also quite good as Steve Carell’s father in the film Dan In Real Life (2007). I recommend that one!
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I don’t think I saw that movie. A small but good role he had that I liked — and that showed a different side of him — was in The American President, the one with Michael Douglas and Annette Bening. Mahoney played her boss who had to take her to task for getting chummy with the president. He was hard-edged and serious, brought her down to earth in a sober, no-nonsense way, but his character wasn’t a villain.
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Hi BG, your daughter here. Actually, we saw that movie at the theater! He was also great in one of my teenage favorites, “Say Anything”, as the dad to Ione Skye’s character. Lastly, I suspect you also identify with Marty Crane’s taste in recliners — that orange and green thing looks mighty familiar from my childhood. đ
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What a nice surprise! Fellow geezers, meet my daughter. đ
You know, I got to thinking later about that movie he’d mentioned, and it seemed a little familiar, but…guess it didn’t stick with me. And yeah, ‘Say Anything’ was one of his better ones — his character was very human; fundamentally decent but flawed, as it turned out.
PS I knew I liked that recliner of his. đ
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