You may not have recognized the name, but the face was familiar. He had a long career as a character actor and played a business associate of Burke Devlin in a 1966 episode. Sadly, Mr. Hughes passed away at the age of 90 yesterday. This is from The New York Times:
Barnard Hughes, Character Actor, Dies at 90
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
Barnard Hughes, a Tony- and Emmy-award-winning actor who was well-known for playing warm-hearted if not always serious-minded father figures, died yesterday in New York. He was 90.
His death was confirmed by his son, the director Doug Hughes.
Though Mr. Hughes made his acting debut in 1934 at age 19 and already had a solid career in theater and television work, it was the 1978 Broadway production of Hugh Leonard's "Da" that gained him his reputation as a skilled character actor, with a particular gift for jolly old Irishmen whose cheerfulness is tinged with melancholy.
Mr. Hughes played the title role, that of an exasperatingly affable and unambitious Irish widower who haunts the memories of his emigrant son. Walter Kerr, writing about "Da" in The New York Times, said Mr. Hughes was "masterly in the role of a lifetime, working skillfully as a watchmaker with every jewel in place." John Simon, in New York magazine, said that Mr. Hughes "gives one of the greatest performances of this or any year."
Mr. Simon continued: "Put this right alongside the achievements of the Gielguds, Oliviers and Richardsons."
Mr. Hughes beat out Hume Cronyn, Frank Langella and Jason Robards for the best-actor Tony that year and also won a Drama Desk award. He did a reprise of the role of Da for a 1988 movie version, which also starred Martin Sheen.
A frequent presence in soap operas and television series of the 1970's and 1980's, Mr. Hughes won an Emmy for his portrayal of a senile judge on an episode of "Lou Grant." He also starred as an avuncular physician in a short-lived comedy series, "Doc," and as an Irish patriarch in the sitcom "The Cavanaughs."
He had recurring roles on "The Guiding Light," "As The World Turns," "All in the Family," "The Bob Newhart Show" and "Blossom."
Mr. Hughes also had a long film career, appearing in "Midnight Cowboy," "The Hospital," "Where's Poppa?" "Oh God!" "Tron," "Doc Hollywood" and numerous television movies.
Barnard Aloysius Kiernan Hughes was born in Bedford Hills, N.Y. on July 16, 1915, to Irish immigrants. Through high school and his first year at Manhattan College, he worked a series of jobs, including as a salesman at Macy's and a dockworker, before a friend tricked him into auditioning for a repertory company that performed Shakespeare in high schools. He won a tiny role in "The Taming of the Shrew."
Mr. Hughes soon dropped out of Manhattan College and stayed with the company for two years, eventually playing many of the major Shakespeare roles. He then began traveling the country, performing with a repertory company in Chicago and with a comedy troupe that toured the South. After a few years in the army in World War II, he returned to acting.
In 1946, while rehearsing for a show called "Laugh That Off" to be performed at a military hospitals, he met an actress named Helen Stenborg. They married in 1950 and would act alongside each other throughout their careers, appearing together in Mr. Hughes's last performance on Broadway, in the 1999 production of Noƒ«l Coward's "Waiting in the Wings."
In addition to his wife and son, Mr. Hughes's other survivors include a daughter, Laura Hughes of New York; and a grandson, Samuel Hughes Rubin.
For the next three decades, Mr. Hughes performed in Broadway productions like "Advise and Consent," "Nobody Loves an Albatross," "How Now, Dow Jones," "Hamlet" with Richard Burton, and the New York Shakespeare Festival's production of "Much Ado About Nothing," for which he received a Tony nomination for his portrayal of the dim-witted constable, Dogberry.
Speaking of the early years, when he was playing mostly minor parts in film and theater, Mr. Hughes said in a 1978 interview in The New York Times that he could have played the roles "without pants."
"I was always sitting behind something like a desk," he said. "I was a judge or a businessman or a lawyer or a doctor. Nobody saw my bottom half."
In 1981, Mr. Hughes played the rustic schoolmaster in the American premiere of Brian Friel's "Translations" at the Manhattan Theater Club. Frank Rich, in The Times, called Mr. Hughes's performance "especially exciting," adding that "funny as he is, Mr. Hughes always turns his eyes sadly downward, as if he's surveying the defeated landscape of his own soul."
In the 1980's and early 1990's, Mr. Hughes alternated his film and television career with his stage career, acting on Broadway in Lanford Wilson's "Angels Fall" and Craig Lucas's "Prelude to a Kiss." He also performed in Dublin, playing the role of Grandpa in "You Can't Take It With You" at the Abbey Theater in 1989, and playing Da at the Olympia Theater there in 1991.
"I'm a feeler," Mr. Hughes said of his acting approach in the interview with The Times. "As a matter of fact, I think if we had more feelers and less thinkers we'd be a hell of a lot better off -- not only in the theater, either."
