Charles Sidney Grodin was an American actor, comedian, author, and television talk show host.
38 Facts About Charles Grodin
2.
Charles Grodin then took supporting roles in Mike Nichols's Catch-22, the 1976 remake of King Kong, and Warren Beatty's Heaven Can Wait.
3.
Charles Grodin co-starred in the action comedy Midnight Run and in the family film Beethoven.
4.
Charles Grodin made his acting debut in 1958 appearing in the NBC anthology series Decision.
5.
Charles Grodin then appeared in numerous TV serials throughout the next decade.
6.
Charles Grodin made frequent appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and Late Night with David Letterman.
7.
Charles Grodin won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special for the Paul Simon Special alongside Chevy Chase, Lorne Michaels, Paul Simon, and Lily Tomlin.
8.
Charles Grodin portrayed Carl Shapiro in the miniseries Madoff.
9.
Charles Grodin wrote eight books and three plays and became a talk show host on CNBC and in 2000 a political commentator for 60 Minutes II.
10.
Charles Grodin was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Orthodox Jewish parents, Theodore, who owned a store that sold wholesale supplies, and Lena, who worked in her husband's business and volunteered for disabled veterans.
11.
Charles Grodin's maternal grandfather was an immigrant from Russia who "came from a long line of rabbis" and moved to Baltimore at the turn of the 20th century.
12.
Charles Grodin graduated as valedictorian from Peabody High School, where he was elected class president all four years.
13.
Charles Grodin attended the University of Miami but left without graduating to pursue acting.
14.
Charles Grodin studied acting at HB Studio in New York City under Uta Hagen.
15.
Charles Grodin's film debut was an uncredited bit part in Disney's 1954 film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
16.
Charles Grodin had a small but pivotal part playing an obstetrician in the 1968 horror film Rosemary's Baby.
17.
Charles Grodin directed Simon and Garfunkel's television special Songs of America in 1969.
18.
Charles Grodin subsequently appeared in several films during the decade, including the 1976 version of King Kong, the hit 1978 comedy Heaven Can Wait, and Albert Brooks's 1979 comedy Real Life.
19.
Charles Grodin both starred in and wrote the screenplay for 11 Harrowhouse.
20.
Charles Grodin appeared that same year opposite Lily Tomlin in The Incredible Shrinking Woman.
21.
Charles Grodin appeared in the 1986 CBS prime-time-soap sendup Fresno, playing the evil son of a raisin matriarch.
22.
Charles Grodin was cast against this type as a scheming CIA agent in Ishtar.
23.
In 1977, Charles Grodin hosted an episode of the NBC sketch show Saturday Night Live, where the entire episode revolved around his forgetting that the show was live, and he proceeded to wreck sketches because of his failure to prepare accordingly.
24.
Charles Grodin's many talk show appearances from the 1970s to the early 2020s often included confrontational and mock angry segments.
25.
Charles Grodin's career took a turn in 1992, when he played the nervous family man George Newton in the kids' comedy Beethoven, opposite Bonnie Hunt.
26.
Also in 1993, Charles Grodin played the role of Harrison Winslow in the film Heart and Souls.
27.
That same year saw the much-delayed release of Clifford, in which Charles Grodin portrayed the frustrated uncle opposite Martin Short's title role.
28.
In 2004, Charles Grodin wrote The Right Kind of People, an off-Broadway play about co-op boards in certain buildings in Manhattan.
29.
Charles Grodin's commentaries were heard on New York City radio station WCBS and other affiliates of the CBS Radio Network, as well as on the CBS Radio Network's Weekend Roundup.
30.
Charles Grodin had several supporting roles in films, including Barry Levinson's The Humbling and Taylor Hackford's The Comedian.
31.
Charles Grodin had a prominent supporting role in Noah Baumbach's While We're Young, playing a celebrated documentary filmmaker and the father of one of the lead characters.
32.
Charles Grodin portrayed the philanthropist and defrauded investor Carl J Shapiro in the 2016 miniseries Madoff on ABC based on the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme debacle.
33.
Charles Grodin's final movie was An Imperfect Murder: The Private Life of a Modern Woman, released in 2017.
34.
Charles Grodin was a prolific author and published his final book in 2013.
35.
Charles Grodin had two children: daughter Marion, from his marriage to Julie Ferguson, and son, Nicholas, from his marriage to Elissa Durwood.
36.
Charles Grodin died from multiple myeloma at his home in Wilton, Connecticut, on May 18,2021.
37.
Charles Grodin is mentioned as a hero of Mac and Dennis in an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
38.
Charles Grodin was referenced in three different episodes of The Simpsons.