The Legion of "Hey, It's That Guy!" Character Actors loses another of their number: " 'Law & Order' Judge Doris Belack Dies at the Age of 85"
Probably her most well-known roles were as the soap opera producer in Tootsie, any number of appearances on Law & Order, and one appearance on Barney Miller as Bernice Fish, in the episode that introduced Detective Dietrich.
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...Actually , remember my " Jackie Coogan's Line " post/s , which I intended as a running " not quite ' us ' enough to get their own post " continuing RIPs thread ?
Or , was it Jackie Cooper ? Simialr names , y'know !!!!!
Jeff of Earth-J said:
It isn't? I thought I put it there ...
...And , as Thread-Hijak'ing Lad steps in , speaking of " lesser " ( in a comics sense ) celebrities , this man , in the year of Beatles and Stones and Supremes and Zimmy , rather rocked my 6-year-old pop chart , and just died , at 87...........
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPcXepBgaZg&feature=fvsr
Doris Belack's role in Tootsie was small, but she stood out, because she carries herself with strength and dignity.
One of my favorite performances of hers was a role on Chicago Hope -- the other hospital show set in the Windy City -- as the wife of an Orthodox rabbi who went in for a heart transplant.
It didn't go well; the nurse carrying the heart into the operating theater dropped it on the floor.
And accidentally kicked it across the room.
What to do? Well, they found it, cleaned it and went on with the operation. But it didn't take, and the rabbi died.
At shiva, the grief-stricken nurse told the widow all of this, and the next morning, she was in a meeting with the top hospital administrators, threatening a malpractice lawsuit. As the nurse's admissions had left the hospital exposed, as they say, the hospital's lawyer had to make this go away, and fast. And what he came up with was so diabolical, it was brilliant -- especially because it sounded so reasonable:
He said, "Let's do an autopsy."
That way, of course, they could pinpoint the exact, specific cause of death. However, it might take two weeks to conclude, but we'll try to expedite it -- without compromising the accuracy of the findings, of course ...
"No," says the widow. An Orthodox man -- a rabbi, no less -- is obligated to be buried within three days of death. And she could hardly dither about matters of money when his immortal soul is at stake. You could see it in her face that this was hard but the right thing to do. (The lawyer, on the other hand, left the meeting carrying back-breaking bucketloads of guilt.)