George Segal

At 87 years old, George Segal has this physical status:

George Segal (born February 13, 1934) is an American actor and singer.

Segal became well-known in the 1960s and 1970s for playing both dramatic and comedic roles.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1965) Some of his best known roles include Ship of Fools (1965), King Rat (1965), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1965). (1966) The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967) Where's Poppa? (1972), A Touch of Class (1973), Blume in Love (1973), and A Touch of Class (1976), For the Boys (1991), and Flirting with Disaster (1996).

He was one of the first American film actors to earn leading man status with an unashamed Jewish surname, opening the way for Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Strobsand's Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. He has received two Golden Globe Awards, including the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his role in A Touch of Class. On television, he is best known for his appearances on Just Shoot Me! Albert "Pops" Solomon on The Goldbergs (1997-2003) and later as Albert "Pops" Solomon (2013–present). Segal is also a natural banjo player.

He has released three albums and appeared on several of his actor roles as well as on late night television.

Early life

George Segal Jr. was born in New York City, the youngest of four children to Fannie Blanche Segal (née Bodkin) and George Segal Sr., a malt and hop agent. He spent a large portion of his childhood in Great Neck, New York. Both four of Segal's grandparents were Russian-Jewish immigrants, and his maternal grandparents changed their surname from Slobodkin to Bodkin. As a socialist, a paternal great-grandfather ran for governor of Massachusetts. John, his oldest brother, worked in the hops brokerage industry and was a pioneer in the growing of new hop varieties; Fred, his middle brother, died of pneumonia before he was born; Greta's sister was dead of pneumonia.

Segal's family was Jewish but he was raised in a secular household. Segal replied if he had had a bar mitzvah: "Yes, there was."

Segal became interested in acting when he saw Alan Ladd in This Gun for Hire. "I knew the revolver and the trench coat were an illusion, but I didn't care," Segal said. "I liked the sense of adventure and control." He began playing the banjo at a young age, later stating, "I started with the ukulele when I was a child in Great Neck." My heart was won by a friend's red Harold Teenage model; it stole my heart. I found out that a ukulele could not be used in a band, so I moved on to the four-string banjo when I got to high school.

Segal and his mother moved to New York City after his father died in 1947. He graduated from George School, a Quaker board school in Pennsylvania, in 1951, and attended Haverford College. He graduated from Columbia College of Columbia University in 1955 with a Bachelor of Arts in performing arts and drama. He played banjo at Haverford and also at Columbia, where he performed with a dixieland jazz band with several different names. Bruno Lynch and his Imperial Jazz Band will bill the group as Bruno Lynch and the Imperial Jazz Band when he booked it. At Segal's first wedding, the group, which later adopted the name Red Onion Jazz Band, appeared.

Segal served in the US Army during the Korean War. When he was there, he performed with Corporal Bruno's Sad Sack Six.

Personal life and death

Segal was married three times. Marion Segal Freed, a film editor from 1956, moved on to work as an associate producer or editor on three of his films. They had two children and were together until their divorce in 1983. Linda Rogoff, a one-time director of The Pointer Sisters, whom he met with his band, The Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band, from 1983 to 1996. In 1998, he married Sonia Schultz Greenbaum, his former George School boarding school classmate.

Segal spent part of his life in Sonoma County when he was not filming The Goldbergs in Los Angeles.

Segal died of complications from bypass surgery in Santa Rosa, California, on March 23, 2021, at the age of 87.

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Career

Segal spent time in college and service with Lee Strasberg and Uta Hagen, and then gained a job as an understudy in the 1956 off-Broadway production of The Iceman Cometh starring Jason Robards. Joseph Papp appeared in Antony and Cleopatra for Joseph Papp, and he formed The Premise, an improvisational group that appeared in a Bleecker Street coffeehouse and whose ranks included Buck Henry and Theodore J. Flicker. Segal continued to appear on Broadway with Paddy Chayefsky's Gideon (1961–62), a British hit, as well as Rattle of a Simple Man (1963), a British hit starring Tammy Grimes and Edward Woodward.

In 1961, he was signed to a Columbia Pictures film debut in The Young Doctors, making his film debut in The Young Doctors. Segal appeared in several television shows in the early 1960s, including Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Armstrong Circle Theatre, and Naked City, as well as the well-known World War II film The Longest Day (1962). He appeared in Act One (1963) and was one of the most prominent participants in the western Invitation to a Gunfighter (1964), alongside Yul Brynner.

Segal came from New York City to star in a TV series with Robert Taylor that never aired. Nonetheless, he appeared in Columbia Pictures' medical drama The New Interns (1964), and the studio put him under long-term contract. Harve Presnell and Chaim Topol were among the year's most coveted New Star of the Year honoring his contribution.

In 1965, Segal starred as an egocentric painter in a team cast led by Vivien Leigh and Lee Marvin in Stanley Kramer's acclaimed drama Ship of Fools, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. He also appeared as a scheming P.O.W. in the same year. King Rat, the well-regarded war drama, was originally intended for Frank Sinatra) and received acclaim for both performances. He portrayed in several film appearances in Berlin, including the titular role of a Cactuy-esque gangster and an Algerian paratrooper who becomes a leader of the FLN in Lost Command (1966), and a Cagney-esque gangster in Roger Corman's The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967).

Segal appeared in numerous popular television films, including Biff in a acclaimed production of Death of a Salesman (1967), and George in an adaptation of Of Mice and Men (1968). Ted Kotcheff directed both of the films, with whom he appeared in multiple times.

For Mike Nichols' directorial debut Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) A now-classic recreation of Edward Albee's play. After Robert Redford had to drop the role, Nichols had previously directed Segal in a 1964 Off-Broadway play titled The Knack and cast him again in Woolf. Segal played Nick, the young faculty member of the four-person ensemble piece, alongside Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and Sandy Dennis. The film, which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture and later received a National Film Registry, is certainly Segal's most well-known, and for his role, he was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe.

The Yama Yama Man, Segal's debut album, was released in the same year. The title track is a ragtime version of the 1908 tune "The Yama Yama Man" with horns and banjos. Segal's album was released at a time when he appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson was on banjo on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Segal appeared on Phil Ochs' "Draft Dodger Rag" on CBS television in the same year as they performed banjo and sang with The Smothers Brothers.

Segal appeared in numerous film roles, many with major studios and becoming a key figure in the New Hollywood movement, more than ten years after his success with Woolf. Where's Poppa? Carl Reiner's best-known dark comedy Where's Poppa? (1970), a lead role in Sidney Lumet's Sidney Braverman (1968), starred Robert Redford in Peter Yates' acclaimed romantic comedy Blume in Love (1972), starred Elliott Gould as a gambling addict in Robert Altman's classic California Split (1974), which is regarded by some as the best gambling film of all time.

Segal played a philandering husband in Melvin Frank's continental romantic comedy A Touch of Class (1973) opposite Glenda Jackson, one of his most popular roles. Jackson was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, Oscar for her role, and Segal received the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, his second Golden Globe award of his career.

He appeared in a number of other leading roles in various genres during this period. In No Way to Treat a Lady (1968), a man who laid waste to his marriage in Loving (1970), and a hairdresser-turned-junkie in Born to Win (1971). The Owl and the Pussycat (1970), Segal and Barbra Streisand's written by his former improv teammate Buck Henry's book The Terminal Man (1974), as a heroic ride inspector in Rollercoaster (1977), and as a wealthy serial restauranteur in Who Kills the Great Chefs of Europe, Segal and Barbra Streisand were both popular; although Segal played against stereotype in The Terminal Man (1976), a romantic comedy starring Segal and in The Pus (1970) in (2005), (2007) (1978) The Girl Who Couldn't Say No (1968), Russian Roulette (1975), and The Black Bird (1975) were among Segal's other films starring Segal from this period.

Segal appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in the 1970s and 1980s, often as a guest and occasionally as a host. Johnny Carson's eccentric banter was usually punctuated by bursts of banjo playing. Segal performed banjo while on the Tonight Show, as well as singing in other roles, including Blume in Love.

Segal's music career flourished during this period as well. Segal's band, The Imperial Jazz Band, released a collection of Ragtime in 1974, in which Segal played the banjo. He appeared on television with the "Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band," whose members included actor Conrad Janis on trombone, and in 1981 they appeared live at Carnegie Hall.

Gene Kelly, Goldie Hawn, Walter Matthau, and Robert Shaw co-hosted the Academy Awards in 1976 with Kevin Kelly, Gene Kelly, Goldie Hawn, Walter Matthau, and Robert Shaw.

In another European-set romantic comedy, Lost and Found (1979), Segal reunited with his Touch of Class co-star Jackson and director Frank, but the film was not a success. With Natalie Wood, neither was The Last Married Couple in America (1980). Segal's lead role in Blake Edwards' hit comedy 10 (1979), was largely cut out of the film by Edwards, who was replaced by Dudley Moore and sued by Edwards.

Segal had less prominent roles in films such as Denzel Washington's film debut (1981), Burt Reynolds' crime thriller Stick (1985), and the popular family sitcom Look Who's Talking (1989). Rather, he began to appear more often in television shows, including The Deadly Game (1982), for which he received a CableAce Award nomination for best actor in a theatrical or non-musical film, The Cold Room (1984), and Robin Hood's (1984). He appeared in two short-lived television series, the semi-autobiographical sitcom Take Five (1987) and Murphy's Law (1988–89). He returned to Broadway in 1985 for a Heavyweight by Rod Serling, and in 1990 toured in a play called Double Act.

Later in life, he reflected on his work: Eventually, he reflected on his work history:

However, Segal re-established himself as a good character actor in the 1990s after this relatively dry period. Despite being involved in some less well-known films such as For the Boys (1991), To Die For (1995), To Die For (1994), It's My Party (1996), and The Cable Guy (1996). In addition,, he appeared on several television shows, including Murder She Wrote and The Larry Sanders Show, as well as Seasons of the Heart (1994), Houdini (1998), and The Linda McCartney Story (2000). He appeared in Yasmina Reza's Art on Broadway for a brief period of time in 1999, and in 2001, he revived his appearance in the West End.

Segal appeared in the NBC workplace sitcom Just Shoot Me! from 1997 to 2003, his most prominent role in years. Jack Gallo, the influential yet often forgetful owner and publisher of a New York fashion magazine, is known as Jack Gallo. In 1999 and 2000, he was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy, as well as a 2002 Satellite Award. The series, which also starred David Spade and Laura San Giacomo, and others, and it aired between legendary sitcoms Friends and Seinfeld.

Segal appeared in supporting roles in films such as Heights (2005), 2012 (2009), and Love & Other Drugs (2010) after finishing his run on Just Shoot Me. He also performed more often as a voice actor in Studio Ghibli's The Tale of the Princess Kaleido (2013) and a comedic adaptation of his Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. In a 2018 episode of The Simpsons, The Simpsons had a starring role. In Elsa & Fred (2014), he appeared alongside Christopher Plummer in his most recent film appearance. Murray Berenson, a talent manager on three episodes of Entourage (2009), appeared in documentaries such as Boston Legal, Private Practice, and Pushing Daisies, and appeared in Comedian short films such as Chutzpuh, This Is and Retired, along with his Bye Bye Braverman co-star Jessica Walter.

Segal had another blast when he appeared on ABC's The Goldbergs (2013–2021), as Albert "Pops" Solomon, the eccentric but lovable grandfather of a semi-autobiographical family based on the life of series creator Adam F. Goldberg. Segal was part of the regular cast up to his death in March of that year. Segal had appeared in most, but not all, episodes on television, and, as in some of his earlier roles, he appeared on camera many times in the banjo.

Segal was named as a celebrity on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the category of Television in 2017.

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