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Paul Benedict
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Paul Benedict (September 17, 1938 – December 1, 2008) was an American actor who made numerous appearances in television and movies beginning in the 1960s. He is probably best recognized for his roles as The Number Painter on the PBS children's show Sesame Street, and as the quirky English neighbor "Harry Bentley" on the CBS sitcom The Jeffersons.
dict was born in Silver City, New Mexico, the son of Alma Marie (née Loring), a journalist, and Mitchell M.
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Paul Benedict (September 17, 1938 – December 1, 2008) was an American actor who made numerous appearances in television and movies beginning in the 1960s. He is probably best recognized for his roles as The Number Painter on the PBS children's show Sesame Street, and as the quirky English neighbor "Harry Bentley" on the CBS sitcom The Jeffersons.
Biography
Early life
Benedict was born in Silver City, New Mexico, the son of Alma Marie (née Loring), a journalist, and Mitchell M. Benedict, a doctor. He grew up in Massachusetts. As a young man, he suffered from acromegaly, a pituitary disorder that affects the extremities and face, which accounted for his slightly oversized jaw and large nose.
Film & TV work
Benedict was best known for his role as Harry Bentley on the television show The Jeffersons. He played this role from 1975 when the show began until 1981, and then returned in 1983 and remained until the end of the show in 1985. His character was an Englishman who lived in the apartment next door to George and Louise Jefferson. He worked at the United Nations as a translator and was a bachelor. He was liked by all of the other characters on the show except for George Jefferson, who found him annoying, but they became more friendly as the show progressed. Harry was also known for telling long, and often boring stories, about his past particularly about his childhood and relatives in England.
In the movie The Goodbye Girl (1977) starring Richard Dreyfuss, Benedict played the stage director of a production of Richard III in which Richard III was to be portrayed in the play as a stereotypical gay man. He was in a short scene in the mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap (1984), playing the awkward desk clerk who checks in the band. Called a "twisted old fruit" by the band's manager Ian, he replies, "I'm just as God made me." In the 1990 film The Freshman, he played the condescending NYU film school professor of Matthew Broderick's main character. He also made a memorable appearance as the incorrectly assumed title character in the 1996 film Waiting for Guffman, another mockumentary involving many of the same writers and actors.
Benedict also played the role of a slave trader in Dino De Laurentiis' Mandingo opposite James Mason and Perry King in 1975. Perhaps his best known movie role was of the reverend Lundquist in the 1972 Sydney Pollack film Jeremiah Johnson. He also appeared on one episode of Seinfeld as a newspaper editor who was questioned by Elaine about a cartoon in the newspaper.
Theater
In addition to his varied film and television roles, Benedict was an accomplished theater actor as well, having appeared on Broadway multiple times, notably in Eugene O'Neill's 2-character play Hughie in 1996 (performing with Al Pacino) at Circle in the Square, and more recently in The Music Man in 2000–2001.
In 2007, Benedict performed as "Hirst" in Harold Pinter's No Man's Land at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
As a director, Benedict directed Frank Conroy's Any Given Day on Broadway. Off-Broadway, he directed the original production of Terrence McNally's Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune, and Kathy Najimy and Mo Gaffney's The Kathy and Mo Show, which won an Obie Award.
Death
On December 1 2008, Benedict was found dead at his home in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. He was 70 years old.
External links
- article at Somerville, MA "Wicked Local" Off-Broadway weblink about No Man's Land
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