‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ dad Peter Boyle dies in NYC

‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ dad Peter Boyle dies in NYC

Peter Boyle, the actor who transformed from an angry workingman in “Joe” to a tap-dancing monster in “Young Frankenstein” and finally the comically grouchy father on “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.

“It’s like losing a spouse,” Doris Roberts, who played his wife on “Raymond,” said in a statement. “I’m going to miss my dear friend, so unlike the character he played on television. He’s a brilliant actor, a gentleman, incredibly intelligent, wonderfully well read and a loving friend.”

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

Briefly typecast in tough, irascible 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. 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 Boyle, one that would be best exploited in the sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond,” in which he played curmudgeonly paterfamilias Frank Barone for 10 years.

“He’s just obnoxious in a nice way, just for laughs,” Boyle said of the character in a 2001 interview. “It’s a very sweet experience having this (success) 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.”

Patricia Heaton, who played Boyle’s daughter-in-law on “Raymond,” said in a statement, “Peter was an incredible man who made all of us who had the privilege of working with him aspire to be better actors. … he was loved by everyone that knew him and loved by his many fans who cherished his talent.” Read more