I don’t watch many situation comedies on television anymore, but one that was always a favorite was Everybody Loves Raymond, and one of reasons for that was Peter Boyle’s character Frank Barone. So, it was sad to hear today that he had passed away:
Peter Boyle, 71, a prolific film and television actor who was a working-class bigot in “Joe,” the tap-dancing monster in Mel Brooks’s horror spoof “Young Frankenstein” and the crotchety father in the long-running sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond,” died Dec. 12 at New York Presbyterian Hospital. He had multiple myeloma and heart disease.
After abandoning an early career as a monk, Mr. Boyle became a member of the Second City improvisational acting troupe in Chicago. His bald pate, rubbery face and hulking physique all but guaranteed his career as a character actor.
He managed to dazzle critics in two extraordinarily different early roles: as the hippy-hating factory worker in John G. Avildsen’s “Joe” (1970) and the zipper-necked, loveable monster in “Young Frankenstein” (1974).
And while most people will remember his 1990s career on television, that performance in Young Frankstein was just funny as hell:
