Richard Dysart
Birthday: Born in 1929-03-30 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Deathday: 2015-04-05
Richard Allen Dysart (March 30, 1929 – April 5, 2015) was an American actor. He is best known for his role as senior partner Leland McKenzie in the television series L.A. Law (1986–1994), for which he won a 1992 Primetime Emmy Award as Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series after four consecutive nominations. In film, he held supporting roles in The Hospital (1971), Being There (1979), The Thing (1982), Mask (1985), Pale Rider (1985) and Wall Street (1987). Description above from the Wikipedia article Richard Dysart, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
TV Credits
L.A. Law
Character: Leland McKenzie
L.A. Law is an American television legal drama series that ran for eight seasons on NBC from September 15, 1986, to May 19, 1994. Created by Steven Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher, it contained many of Bochco's trademark features including a large number of parallel storylines, social drama and off-the-wall humor. It reflected the social and cultural ideologies of the 1980s and early 1990s, and many of the cases featured on the show dealt with hot-topic issues such as abortion, racism, gay right...
Columbo
Character: Max Duval
Columbo is a friendly, verbose, disheveled-looking police detective who is consistently underestimated by his suspects. Despite his unprepossessing appearance and apparent absentmindedness, he shrewdly solves all of his cases and secures all evidence needed for indictment. His formidable eye for detail and meticulously dedicated approach often become clear to the killer only late in the storyline....
All in the Family
Character: Russ DeKuyper
Archie Bunker, a working class bigot, constantly squabbles with his family over the important issues of the day....
Maude
Character:
Well-educated and upper middle class, Maude Findlay is the archetypal feminist of her generation. She lives in suburban Tuckahoe, New York, with her fourth husband, Walter, their divorced daughter, Carol, and grandson Phillip....
Baretta
Character:
Baretta is an American detective television series which ran on ABC from 1975 to 1978. The show was a milder version of a successful 1973–74 ABC series, Toma, starring Tony Musante as chameleon-like, real-life New Jersey police officer David Toma. While popular, Toma received intense criticism at the time for its realistic and frequent depiction of police and criminal violence. When Musante left the series after a single season, the concept was retooled as Baretta, with Robert Blake in the title...
E! True Hollywood Story
Character:
E! True Hollywood Story is an American documentary series on E! that deals with famous Hollywood celebrities, movies, TV shows and also well-known public figures. Among the topics covered on the program include salacious re-tellings of Hollywood secrets, show-biz scandals, celebrity murders and mysteries, porn-star biographies, and "where-are-they-now?" investigations of former child stars. It frequently features in-depth interviews, actual courtroom footage, and dramatic reenactments. When aire...
Cannon
Character:
Cannon is a CBS detective television series produced by Quinn Martin which aired from March 26, 1971 to March 3, 1976. The primary protagonist is the title character, private detective Frank Cannon, played by William Conrad. He also appeared on two episodes of Barnaby Jones. Cannon is the first Quinn Martin-produced series to be aired on a network other than ABC. A "revival" television film, The Return of Frank Cannon, was aired on November 1, 1980. In total, there were 124 episodes....
Hallmark Hall of Fame
Character:
Hallmark Hall of Fame is an anthology program on American television, sponsored by Hallmark Cards, a Kansas City based greeting card company. The longest-running primetime series in the history of television, it has a historically long run, beginning during 1951 and continuing into 2013. From 1954 onward, all of its productions have been shown in color, although color television video productions were extremely rare in 1954. Many television movies have been shown on the program since its debut, ...
Doctors' Hospital
Character:
Doctors' Hospital is an American medical drama that ran on NBC during the 1975–1976 season....
Spawn
Character: Nicholas Cogliostro (voice)
Todd McFarlane's Spawn is an animated television series which aired on HBO from 1997 through 1999. It is also released on DVD as a film series. It is based on the Spawn comic series from Image Comics, and was nominated for and won an Emmy in 1999 for Outstanding Animation Program. An unrelated series titled Spawn: The Animation is in production since 2009, with Keith David reprising his role as the titular character. Like the comic book, the series features graphic violence, sexual scenes, and e...
The Defenders
Character: Mr. Westfall
The Defenders is an American courtroom drama series . It starred E. G. Marshall and Robert Reed as father-and-son defense attorneys who specialized in legally complex cases, with defendants such as neo-Nazis, conscientious objectors, civil rights demonstrators, a schoolteacher fired for being an atheist, an author accused of pornography, and a physician charged in a mercy killing....
The Andros Targets
Character: Dr. Kipness
James Sutorious star as Mike Andros, a newspaper investigative reporter who seeks out corruption and injustice in this this action-drama series....
Batman: The Animated Series
Character: Dr. Bartholomew (voice)
Vowing to avenge the murder of his parents, Bruce Wayne devotes his life to wiping out crime in Gotham City as the masked vigilante "Batman"....
Lincoln
Character: Judge David Davis
Sandburg's Lincoln is a six-part mini-series starring Hal Holbrook as Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States. ...
Movie Credits
Back to the Future Part III
Character: Barbwire Salesman
The final installment of the Back to the Future trilogy finds Marty digging the trusty DeLorean out of a mineshaft and looking for Doc in the Wild West of 1885. But when their time machine breaks down, the travelers are stranded in a land of spurs. More problems arise when Doc falls for pretty schoolteacher Clara Clayton, and Marty tangles with Buford Tannen....
The Thing
Character: Dr. Copper
In the winter of 1982, a twelve-man research team at a remote Antarctic research station discovers an alien buried in the snow for over 100,000 years. Soon unfrozen, the form-changing creature wreaks havoc, creates terror... and becomes one of them....
Being There
Character: Dr. Robert Allenby
A simple-minded gardener named Chance has spent all his life in the Washington D.C. house of an old man. When the man dies, Chance is put out on the street with no knowledge of the world except what he has learned from television....
Mask
Character: Abe
A boy with a massive facial skull deformity and his biker gang mother attempt to live as normal a life as possible under the circumstances....
The Day of the Locust
Character: Claude Estee
Hollywood, 1930s. Tod Hackett, a young painter who tries to make his way as an art director in the lurid world of film industry, gets infatuated with his neighbor Faye Greener, an aspiring actress who prefers the life that Homer Simpson, a lone accountant, can offer her....
Prophecy
Character: Trevor Isley
When a dispute occurs between a logging operation and a nearby Native American tribe, Dr. Robert Verne and his wife, Maggie, are sent in to mediate. Chief John Hawks insists the loggers are poisoning the water supply, and, though company man Isley denies it, the Vernes can't ignore the strangely mutated wildlife roaming the woods. Robert captures a bear cub for testing and soon finds himself the target of an angry mutant grizzly....
The Hospital
Character: Dr. Welbeck
Dr. Bock, the chief of medicine at a Manhattan hospital, is suicidal after the collapse of his personal life. When an intern is found dead in a hospital bed, it appears to Bock to be a case of unforgivable malpractice. Hours later, another doctor, who happens to be responsible for another case of malpractice, is found dead. Despondent, Bock finds himself drawn to Barbara, the daughter of a comatose missionary....
Pale Rider
Character: Coy LaHood
A mysterious preacher protects a humble prospector village from a greedy mining company trying to encroach on their land....
Warning Sign
Character: Dr. Nielsen
An accident occurs in an ultra-secret government biological weapons laboratory spreading a sinister bacteria....
The Terminal Man
Character: Dr. John Ellis
As the result of a head injury, brilliant computer scientist Harry Benson begins to experience violent seizures. In an attempt to control the seizures, Benson undergoes a new surgical procedure in which a microcomputer is inserted into his brain. The procedure is not entirely successful....
Day One
Character: President Harry S. Truman
Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard leaves Europe, eventually arriving in the United States. With the help of Einstein, he persuades the government to build an atomic bomb. The project is given to no-nonsense Gen. Leslie Groves who selects physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer to head the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, where the bomb is built. As World War II draws to a close, Szilard has second thoughts about atomic weapons, and policy makers debate how and when to use the bomb....
Truman
Character: Henry L. Stimson
Biographical account of America's President for the latter part of WWII. Shows Truman's rise from small-town nobody to leader of the USA, his decision to use the Atomic Bomb against Japan, and subsequent election as the US' post-war President....
The Hindenburg
Character: Lehman
Colonel Franz Ritter, a former hero pilot now working for military intelligence, is assigned to the great Hindenburg airship as its chief of security. As he races against the clock to uncover a possible saboteur aboard the doomed zeppelin he finds that any of the passengers and crew could be the culprit....
Todd McFarlane's Spawn
Character: Cogliostro (voice)
There is a war going on between Heaven and Hell. Earth is the battlefield. Human souls are the prize. On the front lines, where good and evil collide, is a soldier in search of his past and his future. Spawn, formerly known as Al Simmons, is a CIA hitman whose death causes him to seal a deal with the devil so that he can return to his wife Wanda. Instead, the devil transforms him into 'hell-spawn,' a dark warrior who battles the forces of evil on Earth--and in himself--to uncover the truth about...
Bogie
Character: Jack Warner
The Humphrey Bogart story from the early '30s until his death, covering the period as a struggling young actor through movie stardom and his marriages to Mayo Methot and Lauren Bacall....
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
Character: Master Bryant
In February, 1962, as the civil rights movement reaches Bayonne, Louisiana, a New York journalist arrives to interview Jane Pittman, who has just turned 110. She tells him her story dating back to her earliest memories before slavery ended. In between the chapters of her life, the present-day struggles of Blacks in Bayonne, urged on by Jimmy, are dramatized....
Proteus: A Nineteenth Century Vision
Character: The Ancient Mariner (voice)
The animated documentary Proteus explores the nineteenth century's engagement with the undersea world through science, technology, painting, poetry and myth. The central figure of the film is biologist and artist Ernst Haeckel, who found in the depths of the sea an ecstatic and visionary fusion of science and art....
An Enemy of the People
Character: Aslaksen
A small forest town is trying to promote itself as a place for tourists to come enjoy the therapeutic hot springs and unspoiled nature. Dr. Stockmann, however, makes the inconvenient discovery that the nature around the village is not so unspoiled. In fact, the runoff from the local tanning mill has contaminated the water to a dangerous degree. The town fathers argue that cleaning up the mess would be far too expensive and the publicity would destroy the town's reputation, so therefore news of t...
It Happened One Christmas
Character: Peter Bailey
It's Christmas Eve 1944 in the small town of Bedford Falls, New York. A despondent and suicidal Mary Bailey Hatch is praying for guidance on what to do about an incident no fault of her own which threatens her name and the community standing of her longtime family business, the Bailey Building and Loan, which she took over after the passing of her father. What Mary does not know is that most in town, including her husband George Hatch and their children, are also praying for her. All the prayers...
Six Against the Rock
Character: Warden James Johnston
In May of 1946, Alcatraz inmate Bernie Coy initiates a carefully thought out plan to escape the island prison. His plan, carried out with five accomplices, falls apart when they can't obtain a key to unlock a door leading to the yard....
The Sporting Club
Character: Spengler
The wealthy members of an exclusive backwoods retreat face an existential threat from both a disgruntled former manager as well as a subversive, anarchistic current member....
The Lost Man
Character: Barnes
A gang of black militants plots to rob a factory to finance their "revolutionary struggle."...
Malice in Wonderland
Character: Louis B. Mayer
Struggling actress Hedda Hopper can't get a break in Hollywood, even though an acquaintence of hers is the extremely powerful gossip monger Louella Parsons - maker and breaker of careers (and lives) through her daily syndicated newspaper column. The big movie moguls, fed up with Parson's power over their stars, decide to de-claw her by setting up gossip Hopper as a competitor in the rumour industry. What they couldn't forsee was that Hopper would become as big as Parsons -- and every bit as much...
Your Alcohol I.Q.
Character: Self
Just how much do you know about alcohol consumption? Take this video quiz to find out!...
Jay Leno's Family Comedy Hour
Character: Self
Jay Leno hosts "Jay Leno's Family Comedy Hour," a one hour special featuring a humorous look at the American family....
First, You Cry
Character: Dr. Brennerman
The story of television news correspondent Betty Rollin and her battle with breast cancer, and how her subsequent mastectomy changed her marriage, her philosophy and her entire life....
Meteor
Character: Secretary of Defense
After a collision with a comet, a nearly 8km wide piece of the asteroid "Orpheus" is heading towards Earth. If it hits it will cause an incredible catastrophe which will probably extinguish mankind. To stop the meteor NASA wants to use the illegal nuclear weapon satellite "Hercules" but discovers soon that it doesn't have enough firepower. Their only chance to save the world is to join forces with the USSR who have also launched such an illegal satellite. But will both governments agree?...
People vs. Jean Harris
Character: Judge Russell R. Leggett
This dramatic re-enactment premiered a mere nine weeks after the actual headline-making trial of the refined private school headmistress who was convicted of the murder of her unfaithful lover, Dr. Herman Tarnower, the famed "Scarsdale Diet" author....
Moving Target
Character: Arthur Cambridge
A teenage musician goes on the run from killers and the police when he returns home to find his home empty and his family gone....
The Ordeal of Dr. Mudd
Character: Edwin Stanton
The story of the doctor who faced charges of conspiracy after he assisted John Wilkes Booth by setting his broken leg after he had assassinated Abraham Lincoln....
The Crazy World of Julius Vrooder
Character: Father
After returning home from the war, Vietnam veteran Julius Vrooder resides in a veteran's hospital, where he has been vaguely diagnosed as "psychiatrically impaired." Taking the news with an air of initially lighthearted defiance, Vrooder escapes and sets up camp under a highway, where he builds a paranoia-driven booby-trapped bunker for himself. Falling in love with not-so-bright nurse Zanni, Vrooder soon plans to elope with her to a remote Canadian outpost....
Petulia
Character: Motel Receptionist
Dr. Archie Bollen is having a midlife crisis. He's just divorced his wife and is establishing a new life for himself. One night, he catches the eye of Petulia Danner, a charming, free-spirited young woman. Petulia's vibrant personality hides her fear of her abusive husband, David, whose father is a powerful society figure. As Petulia and Archie's feelings for each other grow, they must decide what it is they truly want....
Everything Is Terrible! The Movie
Character: Self (archive footage)
The fine folks at EIT have spent years digging thought thrift establishments, video caverns, and haunted houses throughtout the country in order to create the most mind-melting VHS mash-up imaginable. Literally thousands of hours of video gold have been chopped up into millions of pieces and gluded back together into an ever-multiplying bizarre path to allegorical self-enlightenment and surreal resurrection. Obviously!...
Panther
Character: J. Edgar Hoover
Panther is a semi-historic film about the origins of The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The movie spans about 3 years (1966-68) of the Black Panther's history in Oakland. Panther also uses historical footage (B/W) to emphasize some points....
Todd McFarlane's Spawn 2
Character: Cogliostro
Upon his return to "life", Spawn seeks out Wanda, who had apparently got over the grief of having lost Al and married another man, Al's best friend Terry Fitzgerald with whom she seemingly had a daughter, Cyan. Terry, a respectable man, works for a man named Jason Wynn. Wynn is a black-market arms dealer, amongst other things (such as the head of certain government organizations, one of which dispatched Al and his team to Vietnam), and is revealed to be the man responsible for the death of Al Si...
Todd McFarlane's Spawn 3: The Ultimate Battle
Character: Cogliostro
Spawn is still on his quest to return to his love, Wanda, but is still in trouble. He is guided though by Cogliostro, who is the only one who can give him his humanity back....
The Court-Martial of George Armstrong Custer
Character: President Ulysses S. Grant
General Custer is on trial for the deaths of his men at the Battle of Little Bighorn....
The Falcon and the Snowman
Character: Dr. Lee
The true story of a disillusioned military contractor employee and his drug pusher childhood friend who became walk-in spies for the Soviet Union....
Riding with Death
Character: Leonard Driscoll
Agent Sam Casey is in a satellite explosion and the radiation turns him invisible. He gets a watch that keeps him visible, and he uses it to switch from visible to invisible. He is assigned to transport a chemical called Tripolydine, which is purported to be the most efficient fuel; when the cover is blown on that and he uncovers and stops the Tripolydine fraud, he must then stop a terrorist from blowing up race cars....
Blood & Orchids
Character: Harvey Koster
Hester Murdoch is found naked and nearly beaten to death by four young Hawaiian men on the beach and taken to the hospital. Some of the men didn't want to get involved, fearing they might be blamed, because she was white, but do so anyway. Almost immediately everyone suspects they are to blame. When Hester's politically influential mother Doris finds out what really happened, she fearing a scandal, forces her daughter to blame the men who rescued her, of raping and beating her. It's up to detect...
Missing Children: A Mother's Story
Character: Hunter Burgess
A young mother hands her children into what she thinks is a childcare center while she finds a new home, but returns to find that they have been adopted out without her knowledge....
L.A. Law: The Movie
Character: Leland McKenzie
Reunion movie from the popular TV series reunites most of the original cast from the Los Angeles law firm of McKenzie-Brackman. In the eight years since the series ended, the founding senior partner, Leland McKenzie, has retired and left Douglas Brackman, Jr. as the senior managing partner. New employees to the firm are Brackman's over-achieving son Jason, who's at odds with his father, and ambitious and conniving associate Chloe Carpenter at odds with others. Former partner Michael Kuzak, now a...
A Child Is Missing
Character: Riley Hallihan
A hermit living in the Washington Mountains stumbles upon a boy who has been kidnapped. He does everything in his power to save the boy but he becomes a suspect....
The Last Days of Patton
Character: Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower
Gen. George S. Patton now works a desk job for the U.S. military after World War II. In the midst of dealing with the difficulty of adapting to his dramatic change of lifestyle, Patton is involved in an auto wreck that leaves him in critical condition. While his body fails him, Patton introspectively reminisces about his relationship with his spouse, Beatrice; his childhood; and his days on the WWI battlefields....
Love with the Proper Stranger
Character: Accountant (uncredited)
Angie Rossini, an innocent New York City sales clerk from a repressive Italian-American family, engages in a short-lived affair with a handsome jazz musician named Rocky Papasano. When Angie becomes pregnant, she tracks down Rocky hoping he'll pay for her abortion....
Mickey's 60th Birthday
Character: Leland McKenzie
This film combines live action/original animation and library animation. Mickey steals a magic hat from a Sorcerer and is put under a spell by the angry magi so that no one will recognize him until he finds his own magic within. While Mickey is on his quest, network news teams around the country desperately try to find the famous, beloved mouse who has mysteriously disappeared. On his quest, Mickey goes into the "Cheers" bar, meets up with the characters from "Family Ties", and winds up on Disne...
Wall Street
Character: Cromwell
A young and impatient stockbroker is willing to do anything to get to the top, including trading on illegal inside information taken through a ruthless and greedy corporate raider whom takes the youth under his wing....
Churchill and the Generals
Character: Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower
The complicated relationship between Winston Churchill and the leaders of the British army during World War II....
Hard Rain
Character: Henry Sears
An armored car driver tries to elude a gang of thieves while a flood ravages the countryside....
Bitter Harvest
Character: Dr. Morton Freeman
A farmer's herd sickens and dies, then his family and neighbors fall ill, so he bucks the state agricultural establishment as he pursues the politically-explosive investigation of how his farm, family, and friends came to be poisoned....
Shadow Game
Character:
Workers in a high-powered New York business office are stranded on the 50th floor when the power fails during the East Coast blackout of 1965....
L.A. Law: Pilot
Character: Leland McKenzie
Pilot episode for the TV series introduces the lawyers and employees of McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney and Kuzak, a Los Angeles law firm, in dealing with their courtroom cases and personal matters out of the courthouse. While the entire office deals with the unexpected death of one of the founding senior partners, Norman Chaney, junior partner Michael Kuzak reluctantly takes on the defense of a wealthy and spoiled young man, accused with two friends, of raping a woman dying from leukemia. While inte...