Guare, John

Guare, John, 1938-, American playwright, b. New York City; grad. Georgetown Univ. (B.A., 1960), Yale Univ. (M.F.A., 1963). Guare's freewheeling, satirical plays are the antithesis of "kitchen sink" naturalism, with darkly comic situations sometimes veering into violence. Frequently dealing with family relationships and people seeking escape from their daily lives, they flout dramatic conventions with such devices as monologues, asides, songs, and pantomime. Early works include the off-Broadway Muzeeka (1968) and the popular semiautobiographical The House of Blue Leaves (1971). He scored his biggest hit with Six Degrees of Separation (1990), a tragicomedy about the havoc wrought on an upper-class family by a charming young con artist; the play explores issues of manners, class, and race. Guare also wrote the screenplay for the 1993 screen version and for Louis Malle's film Atlantic City (1980). Among Guare's other plays are Landscape of the Body (1977); a trilogy dealing with a 19th-century Nantucket family—Lydie Breeze (1982), Gardenia (1982), and Women and Water (1990)—and Lake Hollywood (1999).

(born Feb. 5, 1938, New York, N.Y., U.S.) U.S. dramatist. After studying at the Yale School of Drama he began staging short plays in New York City. In 1971 he earned critical acclaim for his farcical play The House of Blue Leaves. Two Gentlemen of Verona (1972, with Mel Shapiro), a rock-musical version of William Shakespeare's comedy, won him Tony and New York Drama Critics Circle awards. His later works include Six Degrees of Separation (1990; film, 1993) and Four Baboons Adoring the Sun (1992).

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John Mahoney (born June 20, 1940) is an award-winning English American actor, best known for playing Martin "Marty" Crane, the retired police officer father of Kelsey Grammer's Dr. Frasier Crane, in the popular American TV series Frasier (NBC, 1993-2004).

Biography

Early life

Mahoney, the seventh of eight children, was born in Blackpool, England - the town to where his mother was evacuated as the Mahoneys' home city of Manchester was bombed during the Second World War and the town where he started school at St Joseph's College, Blackpool. After the war, the Mahoneys moved back to Manchester. Mahoney grew up in the Withington area of the city and discovered acting at the Stretford Youth Theatre. His father, Reg, was a baker. Mahoney moved to the United States as a young man when his older sister, Vera, a war-bride living in rural Illinois, agreed to sponsor him. He studied at Quincy University, Illinois, before joining the United States Army to speed up the citizenship process and to become a U.S. citizen; he received citizenship in 1959. He lived in Macomb, Illinois and taught English at Western Illinois University in the early 1970s, before finally settling in Oak Park, Illinois. He served as editor of a medical journal through much of the decade.

Career

Early career

Ready for a change, Mahoney took acting classes at St. Nicholas Theater that inspired him to quit his day job and pursue acting full time, and after a stage production in 1977, fellow actor John Malkovich encouraged him to join Steppenwolf Theatre. He did so, and went on to win the Clarence Derwent Award as Most Promising Male Newcomer, and, in 1986, Broadway's Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performance in John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves.

He made his film debut in 1980, and has played supporting roles in such films as Suspect and Moonstruck (both 1987 and both starring Cher), Eight Men Out, Frantic and Betrayed (all three 1988), Say Anything... (1989), Barton Fink (1991), The Water Engine (1992), In the Line of Fire (1993), Striking Distance (1993), The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), The American President (1995), Primal Fear (1996), Antz (1998) and The Broken Hearts Club (2000). Although he has often played "good guy" roles, Mahoney has occasionally gone into "bad guy" territory, for example in Reality Bites, in which he played a diva talk show host who torments Winona Ryder's character.

Frasier

He appeared in Frasier from its inception in 1993 until the final episode in 2004, and received numerous Emmy and Golden Globe award nominations for this role. Incidentally, Mahoney also appeared in an episode of Cheers as an inept jingle writer, including a brief conversation with Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer), whose father he would later play.

Voice work

He also provided the voices for several characters in the animated film Antz (1998), as well as Whitmore in Atlantis: The Lost Empire, General Rogard in The Iron Giant (1999), and Kronk's Papi in Kronk's New Groove (succeeded by Jeff Bennett in The Emperor's New School). In 2007, he provided the voice of Sideshow Bob's father, Dr. Robert Terwilliger Sr. in "Funeral for a Fiend", an episode of The Simpsons. This reunited him with his Frasier co-stars Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde Pierce, who voiced the characters of Sideshow Bob and Cecil, respectively.

Current career

Mahoney co-starred as The Old Man in the Broadway revival of the play Prelude to a Kiss at the American Airlines Theater in a limited-run engagement from previews February 17, 2007 through April 29, 2007. He appeared in season 13 of ER as an elderly drag queen in the episode, "Somebody to Love", and in the 2007 romantic comedy film Dan in Real Life, co-starring as the father of Steve Carell and Dane Cook. In March of 2008 he opened in the world premiere of Better Late at the Northlight Theatre. He is also the narrator for Midwest Airlines commercials.

Personal life

Mahoney lost all traces of his original Mancunian accent while serving in the U.S. Army, but he did resurrect it once on Frasier, while mocking Daphne Moon (played by English actress Jane Leeves) in the episode Look Before You Leap. In 2003, he returned to his home in Oak Park, Illinois, to work with the Chicago Steppenwolf Theatre again.

Mahoney is the uncle of Illinois State Senator John Sullivan.

References

External links

• NBC biography: John Mahoney
• Centerstage.net: John Mahoney
• Q&A: John Mahoney at Broadway.com