Peter Richard Boyle (October 18, 1935 – December 12, 2006) was an American actor. He is known for his work as a character actor on film and television and received several awards including a Primetime Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
He is known for his role as the patriarch Frank Barone on the CBS sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond from 1996 to 2005. For his role he received seven nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. For his role as Clyde Bruckman in the Fox science-fiction drama The X-Files in 1996 he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series.
On film, he starred as the comical monster in Mel Brooks's film spoof Young Frankenstein (1974). He won praise in both comedic and dramatic parts in Joe (1970), The Candidate (1972), The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), F.I.S.T. (1978) and Where the Buffalo Roam (1980). He later took supporting roles in Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), The Shadow (1994), That Darn Cat (1997), and The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002).
Peter Richard Boyle was born in Norristown, Pennsylvania, the son of Alice (née Lewis) and Francis Xavier Boyle. He was the youngest of three children and had two elder sisters. He moved with his family to nearby Philadelphia.
His father, Francis, was a Philadelphia TV personality from 1951 to 1963. Among many other roles, he played the Western show host Chuck Wagon Pete, as well as hosting the after-school children's program Uncle Pete Presents the Little Rascals, which showed vintage Little Rascals and Three Stooges comedy shorts alongside Popeye cartoons. He also appeared at times on Ernie Kovacs' morning program on WPTZ (now KYW-TV).
Boyle's paternal grandparents were Irish immigrants, and his mother was of mostly French, English, Scottish and Irish descent. He was raised Catholic and attended St. Francis de Sales School and West Philadelphia Catholic High School for Boys. After graduating from high school in 1953, Boyle spent three years in formation with the De La Salle Brothers, a Catholic teaching order. He lived in a house of studies with other novices earning a Bachelor of Arts degree from La Salle University in Philadelphia in 1957, but left the order because he did not feel called to religious life.
While in Philadelphia, he worked as a cameraman on the cooking show Television Kitchen hosted by Florence Hanford.
After graduating from Officer Candidate School in 1959, he was commissioned as an ensign in the United States Navy, but his military career was shortened by a nervous breakdown. In New York City, Boyle studied with acting coach Uta Hagen at HB Studio while working as a postal clerk and a maitre d'.
1966–1971: Early roles and breakthrough
In 1963, Boyle was hired for the Wayside Theatre's opening season. One of his starring roles that year was in Summer and Smoke by Tennessee Williams. Boyle played Murray the cop in a touring company of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple, leaving the tour in Chicago and joining The Second City ensemble there. He had a brief scene as the manager of an indoor shooting range in the critically acclaimed 1969 film Medium Cool, filmed in Chicago.
Boyle gained acclaim for his first starring role as the title character, a bigoted New York City factory worker, in the 1970 movie Joe. The film's release was surrounded by controversy over its violence and language. During this time, Boyle became close friends with actress Jane Fonda, and he participated with her in many protests against the Vietnam War. After seeing people cheer at his role in Joe, Boyle refused the lead role in The French Connection (1971), as well as other film and television roles that he believed glamorized violence. However, in 1974, he starred in a film based on the life of murdered New York gangster "Crazy" Joey Gallo, called Crazy Joe.
1972–1995: Character actor roles
His next major role was as the campaign manager for a U.S. Senate candidate (Robert Redford) in The Candidate (1972). In 1973, he appeared in Steelyard Blues with Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland, a film about a bunch of misfits trying to get a Catalina flying boat in a scrapyard flying again so they could fly away to somewhere with not so many rules. He also played an Irish mobster opposite Robert Mitchum in The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973). Boyle had another hit role as Frankenstein's monster in the 1974 Mel Brooks comedy Young Frankenstein, in which, in an homage to King Kong, the monster is placed onstage in top hat and tails, grunt-singing and dancing to "Puttin' on the Ritz". Boyle said at the time, "The Frankenstein monster I play is a baby. He's big and ugly and scary, but he's just been born, remember, and it's been traumatic, and to him the whole world is a brand-new, alien environment. That's how I'm playing it". Boyle met his wife, Loraine Alterman, on the set of Young Frankenstein while she was there as a reporter for Rolling Stone. He was still in his Frankenstein makeup when he asked her for a date. Through Alterman and her friend Yoko Ono, Boyle became friends with John Lennon, who was the best man at Boyle and Alterman's 1977 wedding. Boyle and his wife had two daughters, Lucy and Amy.
Boyle received his first Emmy nomination for his acclaimed dramatic performance in the 1977 television film Tail Gunner Joe, in which he played Senator Joseph McCarthy. He was more often cast as a character actor than as a leading man. His roles include the philosophical cab driver Wizard in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), starring Robert De Niro; a bar owner and fence in The Brink's Job (1978); the private detective hired in Hardcore (1979); the attorney of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson (played by Bill Murray) in Where the Buffalo Roam (1980); a corrupt space mining-facility boss in the science-fiction film Outland (1981), opposite Sean Connery; Boatswain Moon in the (1983) pirate comedy Yellowbeard, also starring Cheech and Chong, Madeline Kahn, and members of the comedy troupe Monty Python.
In 1984, he played a local crime boss named Jocko Dundee on his way to retirement, starring with Michael Keaton in the comedy film Johnny Dangerously, a psychiatric patient who belts out a Ray Charles song in the comedy The Dream Team (1989), also starring Michael Keaton; a boss of an unscrupulous corporation in the sci-fi movie Solar Crisis (1990) with Charlton Heston and Jack Palance; the title character's cab driver in The Shadow (1994), starring Alec Baldwin; the father of Sandra Bullock's fiancée in While You Were Sleeping (1995); the corporate raider out to buy Eddie Murphy's medical partnership in Dr. Dolittle (1998); the hateful father of Billy Bob Thornton's prison-guard character in Monster's Ball (2001); Muta in The Cat Returns (2002); and Old Man Wickles in the comedy Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004). Boyle was also in all three of The Santa Clause films. In the original, The Santa Clause (1994), he plays Scott Calvin's boss Mr. Whittle. In The Santa Clause 2 (2002) and The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (2006), he plays Father Time. In cameo roles, he can be seen as a police captain in Malcolm X (1992), and as a drawbridge operator in Porky's Revenge (1985). In 1992, he starred in Alex Cox's Death and the Compass, an adaptation of Jorge Luis Borges' La Muerte y la Brujula. However, the film was not released until 1996.
His New York theater work included playing a comedian who is the object of The Roast, a 1980 Broadway play directed by Carl Reiner. Also in 1980, he co-starred with Tommy Lee Jones in an off-Broadway production of playwright Sam Shepard's acclaimed True West. Two years later, Boyle played the head of a dysfunctional family in Joe Pintauro's less well-received Snow Orchid, at the Circle Repertory.
In 1986, Boyle played the title role of the television series Joe Bash, created by Danny Arnold. The comedy drama followed the life of a lonely, world-weary, and sometimes compromised New York City beat cop, whose closest friend was a prostitute, played by actress DeLane Matthews.