R.I.P. George Segal

[Reza]

Sidney Lumet's Bye Bye Braverman was a comedy in which Segal played one of four Manhattanites in a car on their way to a funeral in Brooklyn in which the widow is played by Jessica Walter. Segal and Walter were the last surviving members of a cast that included Jack Warden, Godfrey Cambridge, Sorrell Booke and Alan King as the rabbi.

You missed Joseph Wiseman who plays one of the four friends and it's a toss-up between him and Jessica Walter as to who is more bitchy.

[Reza]

Same here. I don't recall much about it. It wasn't one of my favorites although anything with Jessica Walter is worth a look even if, as here, she's only in one scene toward the end.

I'm watching Bye Bye Braverman. It's actually quite hilarious and Jessica Walter has quite a lengthy and very funny scene at the start of the film as the bitchy grieving widow who comes on to George Segal.

[Big Magilla]

Same here. I don't recall much about it. It wasn't one of my favorites although anything with Jessica Walter is worth a look even if, as here, she's only in one scene toward the end.

[Mister Tee]

Bye Bye Braverman sounds interesting. Do you both like it?

Disclaimer: I saw the movie, for the first and only time, in 1977. Not sure my memory can be trusted.

At the time, I thought it was a mess but a fascinating one -- for late 60s Sidney Lumet, uncharacteristically and boldly comic. It seemed to me an early warm-up for the tone he later used more successfully in Network.

I think I can safely say you're unlikely to shrug it off as bland. You might hate it, but you'll know you've seen something.

Totally forgot Jessica Walter was in it.

[Sabin]

Bye Bye Braverman sounds interesting. Do you both like it?

[Big Magilla]

Sidney Lumet's Bye Bye Braverman was a comedy in which Segal played one of four Manhattanites in a car on their way to a funeral in Brooklyn in which the widow is played by Jessica Walter. Segal and Walter were the last surviving members of a cast that included Jack Warden, Godfrey Cambridge, Sorrell Booke and Alan King as the rabbi.

[Mister Tee]

I hadn't realized, till reading Mark Harris' Mike Nichols biography, that Segal did The Knack for Nichols off-Broadway prior to his being cast in Virginia Woolf.

Nick is the traditionally thankless role in Virginia Woolf (the only role that's never won an Oscar or Tony), but it spring-boarded Segal to some sort of stardom nonetheless (though he already had King Rat under his belt). For a period, he seemed to be everywhere, in interesting if not necessarily successful films like Bye Bye Braverman, Where's Poppa?, Loving, Blume in Love, and as Biff in the excellent TV Death of a Salesman. I loved his teamwork with Gould in California Split. Apart from The Owl and the Pussycat and maybe Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?, I can't say I loved his comedies (the dread A Touch of Class and The Black Bird are particularly vile). But he kept his career afloat an impressively long time, working in TV all the way up to today. Six decades of steady acting work is a resume anyone can take pride in.

[OscarGuy]

We're talking what I grew up with and I didn't see Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf until well after Just Shoot Me had passed.

[Reza]

My primary familiarity with him was through the sitcom Just Shoot Me. They used him quite well.

Ship of Fools, King Rat, Virginia Woolf, The Owl and the Pussycat, Where's Poppa?, The Hot Rock, Blume in Love, A Touch of Class, California Split, The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox, Fun With Dick and Jane.....you've seen none of these? A very popular star during the 1960s & 1970s.

I agree he was also very good on the sitcom Just Shoot Me.

[OscarGuy]

My primary familiarity with him was through the sitcom Just Shoot Me. They used him quite well.

[Jefforey Smith]

This is a rough one (and so close to Oscar time). His co-star Glenda Jackson's unexpected Oscar win is why I enjoy analyzing and discussing upsets so much.

(And he was great in "The Hot Rock" with Robert Redford.)

[Big Magilla]

Good actor, though not always used appropriately. He was the last remaining supporting Oscar nominee of 1966. Leading actors Alan Arkin and Michael Caine and leading actresses Anouk Aimee and Vanessa Redgrave are still with us.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s I would often see films being made in New York. One I remember vividly, though I can't recall what film it was, was George Segal going into a restaurant or another building, I can't recall which.

I found it both fascinating and ridiculous that the director would make him go through the door over and over to get a shot that would be just a blink of an eye in the finished film. I thought it was an extremely wasteful exercise.

[anonymous1980]

Story.

R.I.P.