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“It saddens me to say that my father, Jerry Stiller, passed away from natural causes,” his son said in a tweet.
“He was a great father and grandfather and the most dedicated husband to Anne for about 62 years. She will be greatly missed. I love you dad,” wrote Ben, who followed in his father’s comical footsteps and became a box office star. with movies like Tropic Thunder, Dodgeball and There Something About Mary.
Jerry Stiller was a multi-talented artist who appeared in a variety of films, playing Walter Matthau’s crime buddy in the thriller The Taking of Pelham One Two Three and Divine’s husband Wilbur Turnblad in John Waters Hairspray’s Twisted Comedy. .
He also wrote an autobiography, Married to Laughter, about his 50-plus-year marriage to his soulmate and comedy cohort Meara, who died in 2015. And his countless television commercials included everything from Murder She Wrote to Law & Order. _ along with 36 appearances alongside Meara on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Stiller, while a minor player in Seinfeld, created some of the most enduring moments of the Emmy-winning show: co-creator and model for the brother, a bra for men; a Korean War cook who inflicted food poisoning on his entire unit; an always simmering salesman who controls his explosive temper with the mantra shouted: “Serenity now!”
Jason Alexander, his former television son in Seinfeld, said Stiller “was perhaps the kindest man I had the honor to work with. He made me laugh as a child and was with him every day.” Billy Eichner added. “Seeing Jerry Stiller on screen instantly made you happy. ”
Stiller earned an Emmy nomination in 1997 for his indelible performance “Seinfeld”. In an Esquire interview in 2005, Stiller recalled that he was out of a job and was not the first choice for the role of Frank Costanza, father of Jason Alexander’s neurotic George.
“My manager had retired,” he said. “I was about 70 years old and had nowhere to go.”
Initially she was told to play the role of a milquetoast husband with a dominant wife, Estelle, played by Estelle Harris. But the character wasn’t working _ until Stiller suggested his reincarnation as an exaggerated crank that matched his wife scream for scream.
This fueled the seventies’ career, earning him a place as Vince Lombardi in a Nike commercial and the role of another over-the-top father in the long comedy “King of Queens.”
While known as a crazy father on the small screen, Stiller and his wife Meara raised two children at their lifelong home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side: their daughter Amy, who became an actress, and their son Ben. , who would perhaps be the most famous Stiller as a writer, director, and actor.
He and Ben acted together on “Shoeshine,” which was nominated for a 1988 Academy Award in the short subject category.
Stiller was considerably quieter and more thoughtful in person than in character _ although just as fun. The son of a bus driver and a housewife, Stiller grew up in the era of the Brooklyn Depression. His inspiration to enter the world of entertainment came at the age of 8, when his father took him to see the Marx Brothers in the comedy classic “A Night at the Opera”.
Years later, Stiller met Groucho Marx and thanked him.
Stiller earned a drama degree from Syracuse University after serving in World War II, and then headed to New York City to launch his career. There was a brief participation in Shakespeare’s theater, including a $ 55 a week job with Jack Klugman on “Coriolanus”.
But his life and career took off after meeting Meara in the spring of 1953. They married that fall.
The seemingly incompatible couple _ he was a short, stout Jewish guy from Brooklyn, she a tall Irish Catholic from the Long Island suburbs _ also shared an immediate chemistry on stage. They soon appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and in operating nightclubs across the country.
The couple also wrote and performed radio commercials, most memorably a series of bits for a little-known wine called Blue Nun. The duo’s ads boosted sales by 500%. Ben Stiller recalled trips with his sister to California when his parents were heading west to make television appearances.
The couple appeared as a team in dozens of film, theater, and television productions. One of them was After-Play, a 1995 off-Broadway show written by Meara.
Actor Michael McKean honored Stiller on Twitter as “a great comic actor and a splendid man. He and his wife, Anne, were royalty but they would have laughed in your face if you had said so. And then they hugged you so much.” ”
Jerry Seinfeld also shared a tribute, posting a photo of himself with “The Last Two People in the World,” a 1967 comedy album by Stiller and Meara. Seth Rogen tweeted, “It made me laugh until I cried many times.” ‘
Stiller joined Seinfeld in 1993, and moved to King of Queens when the other Jerry & Company went off the air in 1998. He also appeared in Ben Stiller’s modeling parody, Zoolander, released in 2001.
