George Segal

George Segal (born February 13, 1934) is an American actor and musician. Segal became popular in the 1960s and 1970s for playing both dramatic and comedic roles. Some of his most acclaimed roles are in films such as Ship of Fools (1965), King Rat(1965), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967), Where's Poppa? (1970), The Hot Rock (1972), Blume in Love (1973), A Touch of Class (1973), California Split (1974), For the Boys (1991), and Flirting with Disaster (1996). He was one of the first American film actors to rise to leading man status with an unchanged Jewish surname—thus paving the way for Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand.

He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and has won two Golden Globe Awards, including the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his performance in A Touch of Class.

On television, he is best known for his roles as Jack Gallo on Just Shoot Me! (1997–2003) and as Albert "Pops" Solomon on The Goldbergs (2013–present).

Segal is also an accomplished banjo player. He has released three albums and has also performed the instrument in several of his acting roles and on late night television.

Early life
George Segal Jr. was born in Great Neck, New York, to Fannie Blanche Segal (néeBodkin) and George Segal Sr., a malt and hop agent.[1][2][3] He is the youngest of four children; oldest brother, John, who worked in the hops brokerage business and was an innovator in the cultivation of new hop varieties,[4] middle brother, Fred, a screenwriter,[2] and a six-year-old sister, Greta, who died of pneumonia before Segal was born.[5]

Segal's family was Jewish, but he was raised in a secular household. A paternal great-grandfather ran for governor of Massachusetts as a socialist.[6] When asked if he had a bar mitzvah, Segal stated: "I'm afraid not. I went to a Passover Seder at Groucho Marx's once and he kept saying, 'When do we get to the wine?' So that's my Jewish experience. I went to a friend's bar mitzvah, and that was the only time I was in Temple Beth Shalom. Jewish life wasn't happening that much at the time. People's car tires were slashed in front of the temple. I was once kicked down a flight of stairs by some kids from the local parochial school".[6]

All four of Segal's grandparents were Russian immigrants.[5][7] His maternal grandparents changed their surname from Slobodkin to Bodkin.[5] He first became interested in acting at the age of nine, when he saw Alan Ladd in This Gun for Hire.[3] "I knew the revolver and the trenchcoat were an illusion and I didn't care," said Segal. "I liked the sense of adventure and control."[8]

He states: "I started off with the ukulele when I was a kid in Great Neck. A friend had a red Harold Teen model; it won my heart. When I got to high school, I realized you couldn't play in a band with a ukulele, so I moved on to the four-string banjo."[9]

When his father died in 1947, Segal moved to New York City with his mother.[10] He graduated from George School in 1951, and attended Haverford College.[11] He graduated from Columbia College of Columbia University in 1955 with a Bachelor of Arts in performing arts and drama.[9][10] He studied at the Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg and Uta Hagen.[12]

Early Performances
Segal became a janitor at Circle in the Square.[8] In 1956 Segal appeared in a production of Moliere's Don Juan in New York.[13] The same year he got a job as an understudy in a Broadway production of The Iceman Cometh.[5][14]

After serving in the United States Army, he appeared in Antony and Cleopatra for Joseph Papp and joined an improvisational group called The Premise, which performed at a Bleecker Street coffeehouse.[15][16]

His early TV appearances included The Closing Door (1960) and episodes of Armstrong Circle Theatre.

He made his film debut in The Young Doctors (1961), in a support role.

Segal appeared in the well-known World War II film The Longest Day (1962) for Fox, playing a US Ranger in a sequence alongside teen idols such as Fabian, Paul Anka and Tommy Sands.[17]

Following this, Segal went into the Broadway show Gideon (1961–62) by Paddy Chayefsky which ran for 236 performances.[18][19]

He was in episodes of The United States Steel Hour and Naked City.[20]

He returned to Broadway in Rattle of a Simple Man(1963), an adaptation of a British hit, with Tammy Grimes and Edward Woodward. It only ran for 93 performances.

Segal guest starred on episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Channing, The Doctors and the Nurses and Arrest and Trial. He had a small role in the film Act One (1963).

He had a more prominent part in Invitation to a Gunfighter (1964), alongside Yul Brynner. "I'm not sure what got me hot, it may have been a Naked City," he said later.[21]

Columbia Pictures
Segal came out to Hollywood from New York to star in a TV series with Robert Taylor. When that was cancelled after four episodes (it was never shown), he was signed to make The New Interns for Columbia.[22] Columbia liked his work so much they put him under long-term contract.[23] The role earned him the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year.[8]

Columbia put him in the cast of Stanley Kramer's acclaimed ensemble drama Ship of Fools(1965) with Vivien Leigh and Lee Marvin.

They then gave him the title role as a scheming P.O.W. in King Rat (1965) (a role originally meant for Frank Sinatra). The film was a box office disappointment.[24][25][26]

Segal returned to television, playing Biff in an acclaimed production of Death of a Salesman (1966) alongside Lee J. Cobb.

For Columbia he played an Algerian paratrooper captured at Dien Bien Phu, who leaves the French army to become a leader of the FLN, in Lost Command (1966).[27]

Segal was loaned to Warner Bros for Mike Nichols' classic adaptation of the Edward Albee play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?(1967). He played the young faculty member, Nick, a role for which he was nominated for an Oscar.[28]

Stardom
Segal was top-billed as a British secret service agent in The Quiller Memorandum (1966), a co-production between Fox and Rank.

For the Fox he played Peter Gusenberg, a Cagney-esque gangster in The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967), directed by Roger Corman.

Segal played another gangster in a TV version of The Desperate Hours (1967) directed by Ted Kotcheff. For the same director he played George in a TV version of Of Mice and Men (1968) with Nicol Williamson.[29]

He returned to feature films with Bye Bye Braverman (1968) for Sidney Lumet, then played a perplexed police detective in No Way to Treat a Lady (1968).

Segal went to Italy to star in The Girl Who Couldn't Say No (1968) with Virna Lisi, then to Africa for The Southern Star (1969) based on a Jules Verne novel and Yugoslavia for The Bridge at Remagen (1969), a World War Two film.

Back in Hollywood, Segal played a man laying waste to his marriage in Loving (1970). He followed this with Carl Reiner's celebrated[30] dark comedy[31] Where's Poppa? (1970), which became a major cult favorite.

None of these films had been particularly popular but Segal had a big hit with the film version of The Owl and the Pussycat (film)(1970), starring alongside Barbra Streisand.[32]

He played a hairdresser-turned-junkie in Born to Win (1971)[33] then supported Robert Redford in Peter Yates' heist comedy The Hot Rock (1972).[34]

Segal briefly returned to television by appearing in a TV movie, The Lie (1973), based on a script by Ingmar Bergman.

Stardom Peak
Segal became really established as a movie star when he played a comically unfaithful husband in Melvin Frank's A Touch of Class(1973), opposite Glenda Jackson. The film was a box office hit and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. For A Touch of Class, he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, which was the second Golden Globe of his career.[35]

He went on to play the titular midlife crisis victim in Paul Mazursky's acclaimed romantic comedy Blume in Love (1973),[36] and was a dangerous computer scientist in The Terminal Man (1974), from a novel by Michael Crichton.[8]

He starred alongside Elliott Gould as a gambling addict in Robert Altman's classic California Split (1974)[37] and starred in a thriller, Russian Roulette (1975).[8]

Segal was considered a big enough star by this time to turn executive producer on The Black Bird (1975) which he also starred in; the film was a box office disappointment.[38]

More popular was The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox (1976), where he teamed with Goldie Hawn under the direction of Frank, and Fun with Dick and Jane (1977), where he played a bank robber opposite Jane Fonda, for Kotcheff.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Segal appeared frequently on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, nine times as a guest and once as a guest host. His appearances were marked by eccentric banter with Johnny Carson and were usually punctuated by bursts of banjo playing.[15] In 1976, Segal co-hosted the Academy Awards.

He was an heroic ride inspector in Rollercoaster (1977), and a faux gourmet in Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (1978), again for Kotcheff.[39]

Segal was reunited with Jackson and director Melvin Frank in Lost and Found (1979) but the film was not a success. Neither was The Last Married Couple in America (1980) with Natalie Wood.

Segal famously pulled out of the lead role in Blake Edwards' hit comedy 10 (1979).[15] He did a comedy Carbon Copy (1981), which was not a hit.

TV Movies
Beginning in the 1980s, Segal began to appear in a number of television films, such as The Deadly Game (1982), Trackdown: Finding the Goodbar Killer (1983), The Cold Room (1984), The Zany Adventures of Robin Hood (1984), Not My Kid (1985) and Many Happy Returns (1986).. He did a Canadian film, Killing 'em Softly (1982).

In 1985 he returned to Broadway in a short-lived production of Requiem for a Heavyweight by Rod Serling. That year he had a support role in Stick (1985) for Burt Reynolds.[40]

Segal starred in a sitcom, Take Five (1987) which was created by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel. It was based on Segal's own life, being about a man who recently got divorced and played banjo "I don't have any hesitations about putting so much of myself before the audience in this role," said Segal. "I was looking for a comfortable format and that's what they've given me."[41] But the show only ran a few episodes before being cancelled.

He tried another series Murphy's Law (1988–89) but it only lasted 13 episodes.

His career had dipped during this decade. He later reflected:

Segal was in Run for Your Life (1988), All's Fair (1989), and The Endless Game (1989), then had his biggest hit in a while with Look Who's Talking (1989), in which Segal had a support role.

1990s
In the 1990s Segal was seen in For the Boys (1990), and toured in a play Double Act.[43]

He was in Time of Darkness (1991), Un orso chiamato Arturo (1992), Me Myself and I (1992), Look Who's Talking Now (1993), Army of One (1993) with Dolph Lundgren, Taking the Heat (1993), episodes of Murder, She Wrote and Burke's Law, Direct Hit (1994), Deep Down (1994), Seasons of the Heart (1994), and Picture Winows (1994).[44]

He was in episodes of High Tide (1996), and was in Following Her Heart (1994), The Babysitter (1995), The Feminine Touch (1995), It's My Party (1996), and The Making of a Hollywood Madam (1996).

He had a series of high profile roles: Flirting with Disaster (1996), The Cable Guy (1996), and The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996). Then he was in a number of episodes of The Naked Truth and Tracey Takes On as well as doing voice work on The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest.

"It's a total roller-coaster ride," he said of his career. "Freelance actors are essentially gamblers: You're gambling on yourself, and blindly, because there's nothing to substantiate your feelings. It all comes down to luck."[45]

Just Shoot Me
From 1997 to 2003, however, Segal had his most prominent role in years when he starred in the NBC sitcom Just Shoot Me! as Jack Gallo, the owner and publisher of a New York City fashion magazine.[15] He was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy in 1999 and 2000 as well as a Satellite Award in 2002 for this part. The show lasted for seven seasons and 148 episodes.

During the series' run, Segal appeared in Houdini (1998) and The Linda McCartney Story (2000) (playing Lee Eastman).

In 1999 he briefly performed in Yasmina Reza's Art during its run on Broadway. In 2001 he reprised his performance on the West End.[46]

When the series ended Segal was in Heights (2005), Fielder's Choice (2005), and Three Days to Vegas (2007) as well as episodes of shows like Boston Legal.

Segal played Murray Berenson in three episodes of the television series Entourage (2009) and was in 2012 (2009), and Love & Other Drugs (2010).

He starred in the TV Land sitcom Retired at 35 (2011–2012).[47][48][49]

In 2018, he guest starred on an episode of The Simpsons in which he reprised his role from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.[50][51]

The Goldbergs
Segal currently appears on the ABC sitcom The Goldbergs (2013–present), playing the eccentric but loveable grandfather of a semi-autobiographical family based on that of series creator Adam F. Goldberg.[52] The series entered its second season in September 2014[53][54][55] and is currently (2018) in its sixth season.

His later performances include Elsa & Fred (2014).

In 2017, Segal received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the category of Television.[56][57]

Music
A banjo player, at Haverford College and Columbia University, he formed Bruno Lynch and his Imperial Jazz Band. He played with a dixieland jazz band while in college at Columbia that had several different names. When he booked a gig, he would bill the group as Bruno Lynch and his Imperial Jazzband. The group, which later settled on the name Red Onion Jazz Band, later played at his first wedding.[11]

In the Army, his band was called Corporal Bruno's Sad Sack Six.[9]

In 1967, Segal released his debut LP, The Yama Yama Man. The title track is a ragtime version of the 1908 tune "The Yama Yama Man" with horns and banjos. Segal released the album at a time when he appeared regularly playing banjo on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.[9]

In the same year, Segal played banjo and sang with The Smothers Brothers when they performed Phil Ochs'"Draft Dodger Rag" on their CBS television show.

In 1974, he played in A Touch of Ragtime, an album with his band, the Imperial Jazzband. During the 1970s and 1980s he made frequent television appearances with the "Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band", whose members included actor Conrad Janis on trombone. In 1981, they performed live at Carnegie Hall.[58] Recent engagements in Los Angeles have included guest spots with the award-winning residency Guitarology.[citation needed]

In addition to playing banjo while appearing on The Tonight Show, Segal has played the instrument in several of his acting roles, including several episodes of The Goldbergs.[citation needed]

In 2005, Segal played Dr. Dreck, a Jewish rapper, in the short film Chutzpah, This Is, although he did not perform his own raps.[59]The group Chutzpah has releeased two albums since.[citation needed]

Personal life
Segal has been married three times. He married film editor Marion Segal Freed in 1956, and they were together for 26 years until their divorce in 1983.[60] They have two daughters. From 1983 until her death in 1996, he was married to Linda Rogoff, a one-time manager of The Pointer Sisters, whom he met at Carnegie Hall when he played the banjo with his band,[61] the Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band.[20] He married his former George School boarding school classmate Sonia Schultz Greenbaum in 1996.[3]

Film

 * 1965: Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year, for The New Interns – Won (along with Chaim Topol and Harve Presnell)
 * 1967: Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor, for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – Nominated
 * 1967: Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – Nominated
 * 1969: BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, for No Way to Treat a Lady – Nominated
 * 1974: Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, for A Touch of Class – Won

Television

 * 1983: CableAce Award for Best Actor in a Theatrical or Non-Musical Program, for Deadly Game – Nominated
 * 1999: Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy, for Just Shoot Me! – Nominated
 * 2000: Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy, for Just Shoot Me! – Nominated
 * 2001: Satellite Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy, for Just Shoot Me! – Nominated

Other honors

 * 2017: Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame