John Randolph spent forty years playing the man behind the desk: chairmen, chiefs, fathers, the person the plot has to get past. He did it with so little fuss that you notice him mostly afterwards, which is the job done.
Fi1m perspective
In Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) two talking chimpanzees are brought before a Presidential commission, and the man in the chair is John Randolph. Zira announces that she does not care for bananas and the commission laughs with her rather than at her. It is the happiest stretch in the whole series, and Randolph is the one presiding over it. A year later, in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972), he is chairing a commission again. That is the career in two films: when a script needed somebody official at the head of the table, it called him.
He came from the stage, Group Theatre summers and a Broadway debut in 1938 in Coriolanus, and then the screen work stopped. He was blacklisted from film, television and radio after 1948 and did not get back until John Frankenheimer gave him the lead in Seconds (1966), as Arthur Hamilton. It was the biggest part he would have on screen. What followed was thirty years of supporting work: Chief Sidney Green for Sidney Lumet in Serpico (1973), Clark Griswold Sr in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), Schuyler Fox in You've Got Mail (1998), a last screen appearance in 2003. He kept up the stage all along.
The best of the supporting parts is Angelo 'Pop' Partanna in John Huston's Prizzi's Honor (1985), father to Jack Nicholson's hitman. We rated the film highly, and we will be honest: our review found room for Nicholson and Kathleen Turner and none for him. That is not an oversight. It is how he worked. He played fathers and officials the way good ones behave, without asking for attention, and the scenes he was in belonged to whoever was arguing with him.
We will own a smaller confession. We had the commission hearing in Escape down as a favourite long before we checked who was in the chair, and it turned out to be Randolph. That is the first-hand test of a character actor of his sort: the scene stays with you and the face comes second. It says nothing against him. Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter were always going to take that film, and he let them.
The reservation, and it is the only one anybody makes, is that he was more than the desk. The stage kept casting him large and gave him the grandfather in Broadway Bound (1987), and Seconds showed what he could carry on screen. Films did not ask again. If you want to see what he might have been, start with Seconds; if you want the trade he settled into and mastered, Prizzi's Honor and the two Apes commissions will do it, and you may need to look twice to find him.
Biography
John Randolph was an American actor known for his work in film, television and on stage. Born Emanuel Hirsch Cohen in New York City on 1 June 1915, he began his career in the Federal Theatre Project and made his Broadway debut in the late 1930s. He was blacklisted in the 1950s but returned to prominence with a leading role in the 1966 film Seconds.
Randolph appeared in films including Serpico (1973), Prizzi's Honor (1985) as Angelo 'Pop' Partanna, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989) and You've Got Mail (1998). On television he had recurring roles in series such as Seinfeld and Roseanne. He won a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award for his performance in the 1987 Broadway production of Broadway Bound. He was married to actress Sarah Cunningham until her death in 1986 and died in Hollywood, California, on 24 February 2004.
