Longtime Character Actor Joe Mantell Dies at 94
Co-starred in the original live television version of Marty, and earned an Oscar nomination for the feature version.
Joe Mantell, an actor best known for his performance in the television and motion-picture versions of Marty, died September 30, 2010, at the Providence Tarzana Medical Center, after a long illness. He was 94.
Mantell was born December 21, 1920, in New York City. He began his career as a stage actor and in the late 1940s broke into feature films with a role in The Undercover Man.
He found steady work in the live television era of the early 1950s, including episodes of Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse, Studio One in Hollywood, Kraft Theatre and Alcoa Theatre.
Marty, written by Paddy Chayefsky, originated as a 1953 installment of Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse. It starred Rod Steiger as an everyman butcher who finds love with a similarly reserved schoolteacher. Mantell costarred as Marty’s friend Angie, with whom he exchanges memorable dialogue:
Angie: What do you feel like doing tonight?
Marty: I don't know, Ange. What do you feel like doing?
Marty won four Oscars, including best picture and best actor for Borgnine. Mantell received a nomination for best supporting actor.
Mantell also appeared in the films Beau James, with Bob Hope, The Sad Sack, with Jerry Lewis, and Chinatown, with Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway.
In Chinatown, he delivered the film’s famously cynical last line: “Forget it, Jake — it’s Chinatown.”
His final film role came in the 1990 release The Two Jakes, a sequel to Chinatown starring Nicholson and Harvey Keitel.
The majority of his work was in television, and he had guest roles in dozens of series, including The Untouchables, Combat!, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Wanted: Dead or Alive, The Twilight Zone, My Three Sons, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Mannix, Ironside, All in the Family, Maude, Lou Grant, Fantasy Island, Barney Miller and more.
He is survived by his wife, three children and two grandchildren.