Notable Deaths in 2021
Charles Grodin
As class president in fifth grade he was impeached for “talking incessantly.” But acting with bone-dry understatement, Charles Grodin (April 21, 1935-May 18, 2021) could steal entire scenes with just a look.
His dead-pan humor enriched such films as “The Heartbreak Kid,” “Heaven Can Wait,” “Real Life,” “Seems Like Old Times,” “The Woman in Red,” “The Lonely Guy,” “The Great Muppet Caper,” “Movers & Shakers,” “Ishtar,” and “Dave,” as well as “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Catch-22.” He starred as the father in “Beethoven” and its sequel, “Beethoven’s 2nd.” Grodin is perhaps best remembered for the action-comedy “Midnight Run,” as an embezzling accountant being escorted cross-country by Robert De Niro’s bounty hunter, being chased by both the feds and the mob.
On Broadway, he costarred with Ellen Burstyn in the comedy, “Same Time, Next Year,” and directed the plays “Lovers and Other Strangers,” “Thieves” and “Unexpected Guests.” He stepped away from acting for a time beginning in the early ’90s, and became a columnist and talk-show host on CNBC and MSNBC. He appeared as a commentator on CBS’ “60 Minutes II,” and shared an Emmy for writing 1977’s “The Paul Simon Special.”
Grodin also wrote several pithy books, including “It Would Be So Nice If You Weren’t Here: My Journey Through Show Business”; “How I Got to Be Whoever It Is I Am”; “How I Get Through Life”; and “I Like It Better When You’re Funny,” describing how his late-night TV “act,” in which he brought a cringe-y, combative persona to his conversations with the likes of Johnny Carson and David Letterman, actually played out on “The Tonight Show”:
“It’s not that easy to make America uncomfortable, but I had evidently succeeded to an alarming degree,” he wrote. “I had even made my friends uncomfortable when they watched me on the show. They would tell me they’d leave the room when I came on, or stay and watch peeking through their fingers. What was I doing to cause such discomfort? I was kidding around. The problem was that only Johnny and a minority of viewers seemed to know it. So when Johnny would ask, ‘How are you?’ and I would refuse to answer, because I said I didn’t believe it mattered to him how I felt — millions shuddered at the rudeness of it all. Plenty laughed, but more shuddered.”
