Dear, sweet, funny Marvin Kaplan passed away in his sleep either early this morning or late last night. He was 89 and he was still acting and producing and writing, right up until either early this morning or late last night.
You might know him from his recurring role on the TV series, Alice. You might know him as the voice of many cartoon characters, including Choo Choo on Top Cat. You might know him from his roles in movies, including The Great Race, The Nutty Professor (the original), Wake Me When It's Over and so many more, including hundreds of guest roles on television and before that, radio.
You must know him from his role in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World as one of the two attendants — Arnold Stang was the other — who demolished an entire gas station brawling with Jonathan Winters. After Mickey Rooney passed, Marvin became the "person in that movie who was still alive and had the largest role." (I believe that honor now passes to Carl Reiner or if we count screen time instead of lines, Barrie Chase.) Marvin loved turning out for the many Mad World "reunion" panels at screenings and he was as funny at them as he was in the film.
Marvin was — like you couldn't guess from his accent — from Brooklyn where he graduated law school, decided he didn't want to be a lawyer and in 1947 moved out to Hollywood to try and get work writing for radio and perhaps break into playwriting. Acting was something he thought might be fun to try, also. He got a job as stage manager at the Circle Theater, which was mounting a play directed by Charlie Chaplin. Later, he got a small role in a play at the Circle and one night, Katharine Hepburn came to see it.
She recommended Marvin for a part in the movie she was then starting…and as a result, Marvin Kaplan made his screen debut in Adam's Rib, starring Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, directed by George Cukor. After that, there was no stopping him. He landed or was offered role after role, including a regular part on Meet Millie, which was a popular radio program from 1951 to 1954 and later a TV series. He was rarely out of acting work until late in life when he was confined to a wheelchair. And he was not all that unhappy about not acting much because it gave him time to write and direct plays and films.
I was so pleased to know Marvin and to direct him on a number of cartoon shows. You want to know how you directed Marvin Kaplan? You told him, as I did, "Try to sound like Marvin Kaplan." He'd usually respond, "I'll do my best" and he always did. The only difficulty we had — and he was well worth this minor accommodation — is that we had to print out a Large Type version of the script for him because his eyes were very poor. (We had to do that for Don Knotts, too.) Even with that handicap, he was great on darn near every take.
Marvin actually talked like that in real life and he was bursting with great anecdotes. He'd worked with everyone and remembered everything worth remembering. Though he played nebbishy characters on screen, that was not Marvin. He was a man of great passions and integrity, who was known to be quite militant about political causes and issues within the Screen Actors Guild.
He even occasionally played roles that were not what you'd think of as Marvin Kaplan roles. I once saw him portray a serious, outraged rabbi in a production of The Dybbuk by S. Ansky. You would never have known it was him without a glance at the Playbill — and even then, you would not have believed it.
You can learn more about him at his website or by reading Kliph Nesteroff's fine interviews with the man. Here's Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four.
Just a fine actor and a fine gentleman. If you never got to meet him, I'm sorry. You would have found him to be delightful. Absolutely delightful.