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Dangerkitty2020 · 12-13-2006, 11:42 AM

Sad news, everyone. Peter Boyle passed away today at the age of 71.

"Young Frankenstein" is one of my all-time favorite movies - his death is quite heart-breaking.

"Who's brain did you get?"
"Abby."
"Abby, who?"
"Abby . . . Normal."

Quote:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Peter Boyle, who played the tap-dancing monster in "Young Frankenstein" and the curmudgeonly father in the long-running sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond," has died. He was 71.

Boyle died Tuesday evening at New York Presbyterian Hospital. He had been suffering from multiple myeloma and heart disease, said his publicist, Jennifer Plante.

A member of the Christian Brothers religious order who turned to acting, the tall, prematurely balding Boyle gained notice playing an angry workingman in the 1970 sleeper hit "Joe," playing an angry, murderous bigot at odds with the emerging hippie youth culture.

Briefly typecast in tough, irate roles, Boyle began to escape the image as Robert Redford's campaign manager in "The Candidate" and left it behind entirely after "Young Frankenstein," Mel Brooks' 1974 send-up of horror films. (Blog: An appreciation)

The latter movie's defining moment came when Gene Wilder, as scientist Frederick Frankenstein, introduced his creation to an upscale audience. Boyle, decked out in tails, performed a song-and-dance routine to the Irving Berlin classic "Puttin' On the Ritz."

It showed another side of the Emmy-winning actor, one that would be exploited in countless other films and perhaps best in "Everybody Loves Raymond," in which he played incorrigible paterfamilias Frank Barone for 10 years. (Watch Peter Boyle on the red carpet .)

"He's just obnoxious in a nice way, just for laughs," he said of the character in a 2001 interview. "It's a very sweet experience having this happen at a time when you basically go back over your life and see every mistake you ever made."

When Boyle tried out for the role opposite series star Ray Romano's Ray Barone, however, he was kept waiting for his audition -- and he was not happy.

"He came in all hot and angry," recalled the show's creator, Phil Rosenthal, "and I hired him because I was afraid of him."

But Rosenthal also noted: "I knew right away that he had a comic presence."

To read the full article, click here.

Jon Liu · 12-13-2006, 11:50 AM

that's sad... he'll always have a place in my family's hearts!

Quo · 12-13-2006, 02:37 PM

"Werewolf?"
"There wolf."

Young Frankenstien is hilarious. And Peter Boyle was a total riot.

D_Litch · 12-13-2006, 03:25 PM

I am sad. Steve Irwin and Peter Boyle in the same year

Wondermonkey · 12-13-2006, 06:42 PM

It's very sad, that movie is one of the funniest movies of all time. I sadly, didn't even recognize its brilliance until I watched it with Danger. She was reciting lines and acting out scenes, it was brilliant. I can't believe he was only 71.

He was also in one of my favorite X-Files episodes ever.