Larry Blyden

All you want to know about Larry Blyden

Larry Blyden

Born Ivan Lawrence Blieden
June 23, 1925
Houston, Texas, USA
Died June 6, 1975
Agadir, Morocco
Occupation Actor, director, producer
Spouse(s) Carol Haney (1955-1962)

Larry Blyden (June 23, 1925 - June 6, 1975) was an American Tony Award winning actor and game show host, best known for his appearances on Broadway and as the host of the game show What's My Line?

Contents

Biography

Personal life

Born Ivan Lawrence Blieden in Houston, Texas, and died in Morocco in a car accident. He was Jewish. He was married to actress and dancer Carol Haney (1925-1964) from 1955 to 1962. The couple had 2 children, Joshua (b.1957) and Ellen (b.1960).

Career

Blyden's career had three distinct phases. For most of his career, he was known as a good, solid character actor for TV and also as a highly in demand Broadway actor. For television is concerned, he starred in one sitcom, "Harry's Girls", which ran from 1963 to 1964. In this adaptation of the Robert E. Sherwood play "Idiot's Delight", Blyden starred as Harry, who was a vaudeville style performer constantly getting into trouble and falling in love. Blyden also did many guest performances on dramatic anthology series such as Playhouse 90, Omnibus, The Loretta Young Show and many others along with The Twilight Zone and other non-anthology dramatic programs. Although he was generally cast as a nice guy, his two Twilight Zone episodes display an impressive range as he takes on two very different jerks: the tough-talking hood who dies and finds the afterlife a little too pleasant in the classic episode "A Nice Place to Visit", and the titular vain, cowardly cowboy star in the comedic episode "Showdown with Rance McGrew".

Blyden was an in-demand Broadway and off-Broadway actor. He starred in shows such as Mister Roberts (where he played the role later played by Jack Lemmon in the film version), Harold, Foxy, The Apple Tree and a revival (which he helped produce) of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for the role of Hysterium, a slave. His performance in Flower Drum Song as Sammy Fong also was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical.

Late in his career, he became a game show presenter and emcee, starting with Personality in 1967. He also hosted You're Putting Me On, The Movie Game and finally and most successfully, What's My Line?. When he died, he was about to host the Mark Goodson-Bill Todman produced show, Showoffs, which was eventually hosted by Bobby Van.

Blyden also had a brief and rather uneventful film career. He played secondary parts in the films Kiss Them For Me (1957), The Bachelor Party (1957), and On A Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970).

In 1974, Blyden appeared in a play in New Haven, CT with the Yale Repertory Theatre. A musical comedy named The Frogs, by Burt Shevelove, and freely based on a play written by Aristophanes in 405 B.C., the music and lyrics were by Stephen Sondheim. Blyden played Dionysos. One of his fellow castmates was Michael Vale, Xanthias, who would later become Fred the Baker in a long-running series of commercials for Dunkin' Donuts. Notable in the chorus of this production of The Frogs, were a young Meryl Streep and Sigourney Weaver, both students at the Yale School of Drama. Choreographer, and also appearing as a Hand Maiden and the Innkeeper's Wife, was Carmen de Lavallade.[1]

References

  1. ^ original program from this production by the Yale Repertory Theatre

External links

Preceded by
Wally Bruner		 Host of What's My Line?
1972–1975		 Succeeded by
Show ended
v • d • e
Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical

David Wayne (1947) · Myron McCormick (1950) · Russell Nype (1951) · Yul Brynner (1952) · Hiram Sherman (1953) · Harry Belafonte (1954) · Cyril Ritchard (1955) · Russ Brown (1956) · Sydney Chaplin (1957) · David Burns (1958) · Russell Nype (1959) · Tom Bosley (1960) · Dick Van Dyke (1961) · Charles Nelson Reilly (1962) · David Burns (1963) · Jack Cassidy (1964) · Victor Spinetti (1965) · Frankie Michaels (1966) · Joel Grey (1967) · Hiram Sherman (1968) · Ron Holgate (1969) · René Auberjonois (1970) · Keene Curtis (1971) · Larry Blyden (1972) · George S. Irving (1973) · Tommy Tune (1974) · Ted Ross (1975)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Blyden"

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