Tony Randall

From Philosopedia

Randall, Tony (26 Feb 1920 - 17 May 2004)

Randall was born as Arthur Leonard Rosenberg, the only child of Mogascha Rosenberg, an art and antiques dealer, and his wife, Julia Finston.

His talent for mimicry brought notes home from teachers to his parents begging, "Please stop him from making faces!"

He attended Northwestern University for one year before enrolling in the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre. Randall also studied under choreographer Martha Graham.

During World War II, he served in the Army Signal Corps, then returned to the stage. Randall portrayed the character based on H.L. Mencken in the 1955 Broadway production of Inherit the Wind. New York Herald Tribune reviewer Walter Kerr wrote that Randall uttered "juicy sarcasm with great finesse."

In 1942, he married Florence Randall, who died in 1992. He married Heather Harlan Randall on 17 November 1995. His children are Julia Laurette Randall (born 11 April 1997) and Jefferson Salvini Randall (born 15 June 1998).

Randall's career in television took off when he played the overbearing history teacher, Harvey Weskit, on Mr. Peepers (1952-1955). His film roles, mostly comedies, included a recurring role as foil in the Rock Hudson/Doris Day movies. Randall portrayed the "brain" in Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex But Were Afraid to Ask (1972).

A critic of rightwing cuts to the arts, Randall founded and funded the National Actors Theater in New York in 1991, to ensure that classic plays would be available to the public at reasonable ticket prices. Randall was a well-known opera aficionado and booster. His wife of 54 years, nee Florence Gibbs, died in 1992, and he remarried a young woman, Heather Harlan, in 1995, with whom he had his first and only child at age 77. In his autobiography, Which Reminds Me, he suggested for his epitaph: "I'm not going to take this lying down."

Randall went on record that his own mortality weighed heavily on him. “Every day, I read the obits. And there isn’t a day I don’t know someone in there,” he told Libby Copeland of The Washington Post.

An atheist who doesn’t believe in an afterlife, he added, “I wish I believed I’d see my parents again, see my wife again. But I know it’s not going to happen.” (The Week, 10 Oct 2003)

Randall died in his sleep of complications from pneumonia, which he contracted following bypass surgery. He is interred at the Westchester Hills Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

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