Jerry Stiller, of the comedy team Stiller and Meara, movies, theater, and a couple of obscure TV shows.
Mr. Stiller’s accomplishments as an actor were considerable. He appeared on Broadway in Terrence McNally’s frantic farce “The Ritz” in 1975 and David Rabe’s dark drama “Hurlyburly” in 1984. Off Broadway, he was in “The Threepenny Opera”; in Central Park, he played Shakespearean clowns for Joseph Papp; onscreen, he was seen as, among other things, a police detective in “The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three” (1974) and Divine’s husband in John Waters’s “Hairspray” (1988). But he was best known as a comedian.
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The comedy partnership of Mr. Stiller and Ms. Meara flourished for more than a decade and found a new outlet when they began doing commercials. But they eventually went their separate ways professionally — although they remained happily married and continued to perform together from time to time. Ms. Meara died in 2015.
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Mr. Stiller remained active throughout his 80s. He was typically manic in a series of commercials for Capital One Bank, seen on television and heard on radio in 2012.
That same year, he played a group-therapy patient in the independent film “Excuse Me for Living.” In 2014, he provided the voice for the title character in an unorthodox animated television special, “How Murray Saved Christmas.”
“How Murray Saved Christmas” from “Great But Forgotten“.
There’s a great story at the end of the NYT obit that I won’t spoil here.
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