George Segal dies, actor of “Virginia Woolf” and “Goldbergs”

George Segal, Oscar-nominated actor for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”) Who worked into old age, in the comedy series “The Goldbergs,” died Tuesday in Santa Rosa, California, his wife said. He was 87 years old.

“The family is devastated to announce that this morning George Segal died of complications from a bypass surgery,” Sonia Segal said in a statement.

George Segal was one of the biggest comedy film stars of the 1970s. But his most famous role was in the poignant drama “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” of 1966, based on the acclaimed play by Edward Albee.

He was the last surviving member of a small cast nominated for the Academy Award for this work: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton for their lead roles, and Sandy Dennis and Segal for their supporting characters. Women won, men did not.

Younger audiences probably know him as the editor of Jack Gall magazine on the NBC series “Just Shoot Me!”, Which he played from 1997 to 2003, and as his grandfather Albert “Pops” Solomon in the series ABC “The Goldbergs” since 2013.

“Today we lost a legend. It was a real honor to be a small part of George Segal’s incredible legacy,” said The Goldbergs creator Adam Goldberg, who based the show on his childhood in the 80s. “Luckily, I ended up choosing the perfect person to play Pops. Like my grandfather, George was a boy of spirit with a magic spark.”

During her best years in Hollywood, she played an intellectual lying next to Barbra Streisand, as a carefree prostitute, in 1970’s “The Owl and the Pussycat”; to an unfaithful husband alongside Glenda Jackson in 1973’s “A Touch of Class”; to a helpless gambler alongside Elliot Gould in Robert Altman’s “California Split” (1974); and a suburban bank robber alongside Jane Fonda in 1977’s “Fun with Dick and Jane.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWgIOb_U2Hc

Ready to be a film gallant, his profile has been steadily rising since his first film, “The Young Doctors” in 1961. His first starring role was in “King Rat “(” The Leader of the Evil Ones “), as a vile prisoner in a Japanese prison camp during World War II.

In “Virginia Woolf” she played Nick, part of a young couple invited for a few sips who attends the bitterness and frustration of a middle-aged couple.

Director Mike Nichols needed someone accepted by star Elizabeth Taylor, and turned to Segal when Robert Redford declined. According to Mark Harris, Nichols’ biographer, the director said Segal was “close enough to the young god he needed for Elizabeth, and witty and funny enough to fight with all this humiliation.”

Segal died just 10 years after Taylor.

The film brought him fame, but in the late 70’s “Jaws” and other action tapes changed the nature of Hollywood movies, and the light comedies in which Segal stood out went go out of style.

“Then I got a little older,” he said in an interview in 1998. “I started playing urban parents. And that character became Chevy Chase and after that he really had nowhere to go.”

Except for the 1989 hit “Look Who’s Talking,” Segal’s films in the 1980s and 1990s did not shine. He turned to television and starred in two failed series, “Take Five” and “Murphy’s Law.”

But in 1997 he was successful in David Spade’s comedy “Just Shoot Me!” like Gall, who despite his harsh attitude hires his daughter (Laura San Giacomo) and keeps on the payroll a useless messenger (Spade) simply because he has affection for them.

Series actor Brian Posehn was one of many who paid tribute to him on Tuesday night.

“I grew up watching it, with its total old-school charm and natural cadence for comedy,” he said. “Making scenes with him was one of the highlights of my life, but getting to know him a little bit and making him laugh was even more great.”

Throughout his long career, Segal played the banjo for fun and became a fairly consummate musician with the instrument he chose as a child. He played with his own band, the Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band.

Born in 1934 in Great Neck, New York, Segal, the third son of a malt and beer merchant, began entertaining at age 8 by doing magic tricks for neighboring children. He attended boarding school Quaker in Pennsylvania and, as a graduate student at Columbia University, set up the Bruno Linch and His Imperial Band, for which he played the banjo.

After graduating he worked unpaid at the New York theater Circle in the Square doing everything from selling tickets to acting as a substitute. He studied acting with Lee Strasberg and Uta Hagen and made his professional debut in an off-Broadway production of Molière’s “Don Juan” that lasted just one night.

After a Broadway role in Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh,” he was drafted into the military. In 1957, when he was discharged, he returned to the stage and began receiving small roles in cinema.

In 1956 Segal married television story editor Marion Sobel, with whom he had his daughters Elizabeth and Polly before divorcing in 1981. He married his second wife, Linda Rogoff, in London in 1982, and 14 years later widowed.

Eventually he reconnected with Sonia Schultz Greenbaum, who had been his girlfriend about 45 years earlier in high school, and a few months later contracted a third marriage.

“She helped me get through the worst days of my life just by listening,” Segal said in 1999. “It was magical.”