Robert Alan Beuth (born November 30, 1957) is an American actor, artist, and dramatist best known for portraying television character roles, with more than 50 to his name over a career now spanning four decades. He has worked prolifically in both comedy and drama, but is most notable for portraying the role of Mueller on two seasons of the syndicated talk-show spoof Night Stand with Dick Dietrick, in 1996 and 1997. Beuth also has an extensive repertoire in commercials, in feature films, and (in particular) on stage, where his work encompasses acting, playwriting, and – most renownedly – the design and sculpting of theatrical masks and puppets.
Beuth was born on November 30, 1957, in Albany, New York, third of four children to Philip R. Beuth, a program director at television station WTEN, and Elizabeth C. née Yost, a homemaker. At that time, Philip was just starting out on what would prove to be a long and prestigious career with the Capital Cities Television Corporation, the broadcasting conglomerate newly founded by various members of WTEN's management team; consequently, the family moved around repeatedly during Robert's youth, as Philip advanced through a succession of managerial positions at Capital Cities-owned stations such as WSAZ in Huntington, West Virginia and, ultimately, KFSN in Fresno, California. There, Beuth attended Tenaya Junior High School and Bullard High School, graduating from the latter in 1975.
Beuth's interest in the dramatic arts began in childhood, but was initially stymied by lack of opportunities in his then-hometown of Huntington. However, the family's aforementioned move to Fresno in 1971 brought them into contact with "dozens of lifestyle amenities absent in Appalachia", including local theater; accordingly, Beuth quickly became a fixture in the Fresno Community Theater's children's program. By 1974, he had graduated to the main troupe, earned a reputation for ably portraying "rascal[ly characters] who make up in brass for what they lack in size", and was singled out for particularly rave reviews for his performance as the Cowardly Lion in their staging of The Wizard of Oz that December.
Following his high school graduation, Beuth briefly joined the Good Company Players, a dinner theater troupe operating out of the Fresno Hilton, before enrolling in the theater program at Fresno State University. A highlight of his two-year tenure at Fresno State was his performance at the 1976 American College Theatre Festival in Washington, D.C. as part of the cast of The Liberty Dance of Henry Sparrow, an original play authored by one of his own professors, Edward F. EmanuEl. Beuth also continued his work with the Fresno Community Theater during this time, garnering a Best Character Actor award for his turn as Herod in their production of Jesus Christ Superstar.
After leaving Fresno State in 1977, Beuth relocated to New York City and enrolled in acting classes at the William Esper Studio on the advice of family friend Wayne Rogers to secure professional work. Although he kept busy on a part-time basis in regional and summer-stock theater (notably with a 1981 stint with Montclair State University's Summerfun Theater, in which his performance as Ensign Pulver in Mister Roberts earned him comparisons to "a young Jack Lemmon", and a headline-making star turn in the Lake George Dinner Theatre's staging of Greater Tuna), Beuth later described this period of his life as a "jump into obscurity", in which success proved stubbornly elusive and he was forced to supplement his income with stints working as a waiter and a house painter.
Although at first wholly devoted to theater, by 1982 Beuth had made some sporadic guest appearances on daytime soap operas, and worked for three years as a studio page for NBC's Saturday Night Live. In 1986, disillusioned with his lack of career advancement and with the encouragement of his father (who had recently been promoted as vice-president of early morning programming at ABC Entertainment), Beuth left New York for Los Angeles to try his hand in earnest at television acting. He initially regarded the move solely as a means of earning enough exposure and name recognition to one day return to the New York stage; however, his signing with the talent agency of Cunningham, Escott & Dipene led almost immediately to a steady flow of television work. Within a year, he accumulated credits for guest appearances on L.A. Law, Remington Steele, and Newhart, and a commercial in which he featured opposite Australian actor Paul Hogan just after Hogan's breakout role in Crocodile Dundee. Notwithstanding this new dimension to his career, Beuth still managed to retain a presence on the live stage, principally as a player in the Sunday Company of the improv and sketch comedy troupe The Groundlings.
The apex of Beuth's career in television came in January 1996, midway through the first season of the syndicated talk show spoof Night Stand with Dick Dietrick, when he was cast in the role of Mueller. Taking over for Peter Siragusa, who had played the essentially identical character "Miller" for the series' first 25 episodes, Beuth was the doggedly loyal but perpetually browbeaten showrunner and sidekick opposite the show's host and namesake, portrayed by fellow Groundlings alum Timothy Stack. (Indeed, the supporting cast of Night Stand was also replete with former Groundlings, prominently including Lynne Marie Stewart, Shirley Prestia, and Christopher Darga.) Beuth's role as Mueller would continue for the remainder of the series' two-season run, totaling 72 episodes in all.
In the years since the cancellation of Night Stand, Beuth has continued to accumulate a lengthy résumé of television work. A notable highlight of his later career is Slanted, a 2010 comedic web series created by Andrea Lwin and adapted from her autobiographical one-woman show of the same name, which chronicled her life as a second-generation Chinese-American aspiring to be a Hollywood actress. Beuth took an integral part in conceiving and developing the character of sleazy talent agent Marty Phister, which he played for two of the series' six episodes and for which he received an award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series at the 2011 LAWebFest.
Beuth has also acted in a number of feature films over the course of his career, again generally in small character roles, including Hollywood blockbusters such as When Harry Met Sally..., In the Line of Fire, and Outbreak. New York Times critic Janet Maslin credited Beuth's appearance as mill worker Cy Ippeston in the 1990 horror movie Graveyard Shift for helping lend a certain "quirky appeal" to an otherwise uneven film adaptation of Stephen King's identically-titled short story.
Beuth's most notable effort as a playwright is Stories of the Season, which he created and wrote in collaboration with Robert George Harrison, an old acquaintance from his community theater days in Fresno. First staged as a production of the Pacific Theatre Ensemble of Culver City, California, the play's initial run in December 1992 earned praise from Los Angeles Times drama critic Sylvie Drake for its unusual structure and thematic influences: performances typically began with light hors d'oeuvres in the playhouse lobby and then proceeded to a stage sparsely appointed with a small selection of costumes and theatrical masks along with ten elaborately gift-wrapped boxes, five of which would be chosen by audience members to come onstage and open. Each box contained a printed story – described by the critic as "regenerative fables [that] draw heavily on mythology, miracles, and American Indian lore" – which would then be acted out by the production's five-person cast. These segments were interwoven with Christmas carol singalongs, conversations between cast and audience regarding personal holiday traditions, and other participatory elements.
Stories of the Season was revived the following year in an updated version that incorporated several new stories, some with a Hanukkah theme, and in the years since has itself become something of a holiday tradition among Southern California's theatrical community. Subsequent revivals have been staged locally by the Gascon Theater Center and the Echo Theater Company, and the show has also occasionally been taken on the road to out-of-town destinations such as Santa Fe, New Mexico and Stony Brook, New York.