Mark Blum obit

Mark Blum, Fixture of Off-Broadway & Loved Character Actor, Dies at 69

He was not on the list. First person to make the list from Covid 19 pandemic.

Mark Blum, an esteemed character actor and staple of the off-Broadway scene, has died at age 69. According to SAG-AFTRA, Blum passed away due to complications from coronavirus, a viral pandemic that shuttered Broadway on March 12 and recently took the life of Terrence McNally.

Blum, who became a fixture of the New York theater community over a 40-year long career on stage,

appearing in acclaimed productions of Table Settings (1980) and Gus and I (1989) off-Broadway and Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers (1991) on Broadway, was born in 1950 in Newark, New Jersey.

As an adolescent, Blum said trips into New York to see Broadway made him fall in love with theater, though acting never seemed to be in his future as a young boy. “I never for a minute at that age considered it for a career,” he told The New York Times in 1980. “I was raised in one of those basic middle-class Jewish families in the suburbs, and that just wasn’t something somebody thought about.”

Blum attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he gravitated toward theater classes. After graduating in 1972 as a theater major, Blum was accepted to the University of Minnesota’s graduate program in association with the Guthrie Theater. After, Blum toured with the National Shakespeare Company. He’d later owe to his time there the most important theatrical training of his career. “You can try anything you want to try,” he told The New York Times about his classical training. “It’s the old British theory that when you’re young, the best you can do, really, is work out in the provinces and make as many mistakes as you can.”

In 1975, Blum arrived in New York, where he landed a small Broadway role, making his debut opposite Zero Mostel and John Dexter in The Merchant (1977). “What I admired in them was the compassion they brought to everything they did,” he once said about his legendary co-stars. “The key to Zero was that he had no spare time. That’s the way I try to lead my life at this time.” He worked off-Broadway in a handful of Roundabout Theatre Company revues, reading extensively in theaters and movie houses, and, after being spotted by Tony-winning writer James Lapine in the Playwrights Horizons production of Say Goodnight Gracie (1978), was cast in Lapine’s comedy Table Settings (1980). Blum became an up-and-coming name in the theater community overnight.

“Like a lot of young actors, Mark Blum is spending a good deal of his time these days as a waiter,” wrote Lawrence Vangelder in a rare New York Times profile of Blum, only a young off-Broadway actor at the time. “The big difference is that when his stint of hovering and other table matters is ended, he takes a bow and hears the applause of the enthusiastic audiences that are filling the Playwrights Horizons theater.”

Blum’s career continued in earnest off-Broadway, appearing in Key Exchange (1981), Messiah (1984), McNally's It’s Only a Play (1986) and Little Footsteps (1986), before winning an Obie Award in 1989 for his turn as Al, a middle-aged, mediocre gay playwright who travels back in time to meet Gustav Mahler, in Playwrights Horizons’ Gus and Al. “In Mr. Blum’s appealing, weary-eyed portrayal, Al’s self-pity isn’t self-martyrdom so much as rueful hypersensitivity to the modern world with which he is perpetually at odds,” wrote Frank Rich, praising Blum for his high achievement in acting.

Blum—who had memorable roles in Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), Crocodile Dundee (1986), Shattered Glass (2003), Mozart in the Jungle (2014) and You (2018) on-screen—appeared in 17 more off-Broadway productions, including Fern Hill (2019), Amy and the Orphans (2018) and Rancho Viejo (2016) in recent years, virtually always to praise.

After his first stint in The Merchant, Blum returned to Broadway eight more times, where he employed his extensive classical training in first-rate character acting, playing supporting roles that frequently earned him applause. In 1991, Rich called Blum’s Eddie in Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers “vivid.” He appeared in My Thing of Love (1995) and played an adversarial campaign manager in Gore Vidal’s The Best Man (2000), giving off “the heady nervousness that the audience is meant to feel vicariously,” wrote Ben Brantley. In A Thousand Clowns (2001), Blum, playing “a temperamental and insecure television actor,” had “a great time with a self-pitying tantrum,” wrote Bruce Weber in the Times. Blum appeared in The Graduate (2002), Twelve Angry Men (2004) and the 2012 revival of The Best Man. In The Assembled Parties (2013), his last Broadway turn, he “embod[ied] the threats implicit in combative masculinity,” wrote Brantley.

Blum’s often animated and colorful character acting typified his approach to stage work. “The point of being an artist,” he told The New York Times in 1980 as a young man, “is that you have to keep changing and doing new things.”

“There are two kinds of people,” he added about meeting fans at the stage door, humbled that he might curry celebrity from an artform he never dreamed of being able to pursue: “people of the generation before me who tell me I remind them of their sons, and people of my generation. One night, someone wanted simply to tell me I’m him. That’s a good feeling. That means I’m touching something true.”

Blum is survived by his wife, actress Janet Zarish.

Film

Year       Title       Role       Notes    Ref.

1983      Lovesick               Intern Murphy                  

1985      Desperately Seeking Susan          Gary Glass                          

1986      Just Between Friends     George Margolin                             

1986      Crocodile Dundee            Richard Mason                 

1987      Blind Date           Denny Gordon                  

1988      The Presidio       Arthur Peale                      

1989      Worth Winning Ned Broudy                       

1993      Emma and Elvis                 Ben Winchek                     

1995      Miami Rhapsody               Peter                    

1995      The Low Life       Matthew Greenbert                      

1995      Denise Calls Up Dr. Brennan, Obstetrician                            

1996      Sudden Manhattan         Louis                     

1997      Stag       Ben Marks                          

1998      You Can Thank Me Later               Edward Cooperberg                       

2000      Down to You      The Interviewer                               

2003      Shattered Glass                 Lewis Estridge                   

2007      The Warrior Class             Hal Richardson                 

2010      Step Up 3D          NYU Professor                  

2011      The Green           Stuart                   

2011      I Don't Know How She Does It     Lew Reddy                         

2013      Blumenthal         Saul                       

2015      How He Fell in Love         Henry                   

2016      No Pay, Nudity Leon                     

2017      Coin Heist            Mr. Smerconish                               

2019      Love Is Blind       Dr. Klienart                        

Television

Year       Title       Role       Notes

1984      St. Elsewhere     Dr. Vogel              Episode: "Two Balls and a Strike"

1987      Sweet Surrender              Ken Holden         6 episodes

1987      Miami Vice          Sid Shenker        Episode: "Contempt of Court"

1990      Capital News      Edison King         13 episodes

1991      Roseanne            Mike Summers Episode: "Aliens"

1992      Condition Critical              Dr. Howard Zuckerman TV movie

1993      NYPD Blue           Dr. Roland Sachs               Episode: "From Hare to Eternity"

1993–1998          Law & Order       Brooklyn A.D.A. Frank Lazar         2 episodes

1995      Indictment: The McMartin Trial Wayne Satz         TV movie

1995      New York Undercover    Dr. Vincent          Episode: "The Highest Bidder"

1995      C.P.W.   Ben        5 episodes

1995      Law & Order       Michael Aronson              Episode: "Seed"

1996      Wings    Larry Mohr          Episode: "What About Larry"

1996–1999          NYPD Blue           FBI Agent Mike Francis   2 episodes

1997      Ink          Greg Armstrong                Episode: "Face Off"

1997      Frasier John       Episode: "The 1000th Show"

1999      The Sopranos     Randall Curtin    Episode: "Meadowlands"

1999      The West Wing Rep. Katzenmoyer           Episode: "Five Votes Down"

2000      Family Law          Russell Hollenbeck           Episode: "Stealing Home"

2001      Deadline              Rabbi Jonathan Ahrenthal            Episode: "The First Commandment"

2001      Ed           Arnold Bancroft                Episode: "Goodbye Sadie"

2002      The Practice       State's Atty. Michael Scannel      Episode: "Evil/Doers"

2003      Law & Order: Criminal Intent      Dr. Philip Oliver                 Episode: "Con-Text"

2004      CSI: Miami           Jim Rennert        Episode: "Deadline"

2004      Judging Amy       Richard Kinrich Episode: "Slade's Chophouse"

2006      Law & Order: Criminal Intent      Professor Larry Lewis      Episode: "Proud Flesh"

2008      New Amsterdam              Dr. MacVittie     Episode: "Soldier's Heart"

2008      Fringe   Dr. Claus Penrose             Episode: "The Same Old Story"

2009      Law & Order       Expert Doctor    Episode: "Dignity"

2009      Mercy   Dr. Austin            Episode: "I'm Not That Kind of Girl"

2010      The Good Wife Julius Kreutzer   Episode: "Unplugged"

2011      Jesse Stone: Innocents Lost         Dr. Parkinson     TV movie

2011      Law & Order: Special Victims Unit             David Arnoff       Episode: "Personal Fouls"

2012      Pan Am                 Captain Jackson                Episode: "1964"

2014–2018          Mozart in the Jungle       Union Bob           30 episodes

2016      The Blacklist       Noah Shuster     Episode: "Lady Ambrosia (No. 77)"

2017      Difficult People Rabbi Schecter Episode: "Fuzz Buddies"

2018      You        Mr. Mooney       4 episodes

2018      Elementary         Ira Langstrom    Episode: "Bits and Pieces"

2018–2019          Succession          Bill          2 episodes

2019      The Good Fight Julius Kreutzer   Episode: "The One Where the Sun Comes Out"

2020      Almost Family    Dr. Lewis              Episode: "Generational AF"

2020      Billions Dr. Mark Rutenberg        Episode: "The Chris Rock Test"