Woody Allen Sidekick was 85

Tony Roberts, the urban supportive actor known for his collaboration with Woody Allen in six films – including Oscar Best Picture Winner Annie Hall – And two Broadway acts, died Friday. He was 85.

Roberts died of complications of lung cancer in his home in Manhattan, his daughter, Nicole Burley, told New York Times.

From Take her, she is mine In 1961 to The Royal Family In 2009, Roberts performed on Broadway 23 times. In between he stepped in for Robert Redford in the original production of Neil Simons Barefoot in the parkdirected by Mike Nichols.

In the long-lasting 1969-70 Broadway Hit Play it again, SamWritten by and starring in Allen, portrayed Robert’s Dick Christie, whose wife has an affair with her best friend, magazine author Allan Felix (Allen).

After Roberts received a best actor Tony Nom for his performance, he and Allen repeated their roles for the 1972 film version at Paramount, directed by Herbert Ross.

The wide shouldered, curly hairy Roberts often played self-insured figures opposite the scraped, neurotic allen-as in Annie Hall (1977), where he was a successful screenwriter producer who goes Hollywood and gets annoyed at Allen’s High-Brow disdain of TV and California.

The filmmaker also threw Roberts in Stardust Memories (1980), A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (1982), Hannah and her sisters (1986) and Radio days (1987).

The two met first in 1966 when Roberts tried to Allen’s play Don’t drink the water. In fact, he tried Four times.

“Producer David Merrick wanted me to be the third lead, but Woody wanted someone else,” he remembered in a 2014 interview. “So I continued to return. Finally Merrick Woody told to come and see me in Barefoot in the park … in the role of Paul. I was in it for 18 months.

“After the show one evening, Woody goes into my dressing room with her then wife, Louise Lasser, and says, ‘You were big. Why are you such a miserable auditions? ‘I still don’t have a good answer to that. But I got the part in Don’t drink the water. “

Roberts said he “could not have exchanged more than two sentences” with Allen on Don’t drink the waterLike ran for 19 months and almost 600 performances. They came closer Play it again, Sam.

IN New York Timesnovelist Christopher Isherwood once wrote that Allen created Roberts’ characters to “mark Suave Charm as opposed to his own unhappy shrub.”

David Anthony Roberts was born in New York on October 22, 1939 and raised on the Upper East side of Manhattan.

His father, Ken Roberts, was a radio reviewer on soap opera on the day, quiz -shows and The shadeThere, Orson Welles contributed; His mother, Norma, worked as a “girl Friday” for Betty Boop and Popeye Commerce Ken Fleischer. Milton Berle dated his mother when they were classmates in high school.

Roberts knew early on he would be an actor. “My dad would take me with him when I was seven, eight, 10 to the recording studio where we would sit in a room, and I would see adults in suits and ties pretend to be the police, the robbers, astronauts, politicians,” he told Bill Boggs in 2016.

“They would act in front of a small piece of metal on a tripod, but their bodies and their expressions were so invested in what their story was. It was like watching adults behave like children. That’s what did it for me. “

However, Roberts’ father did not want him to pursue the profession. Also trying to deter him: his cousin, Everett Sloane, and his father’s best friend, Paul Stewart, two Citizen Kane Actors from Welles’ Mercury Players Company.

However, Roberts was determined and he went to the High School of Music & Art in Manhattan and then Northwestern, where he had a major in speech and theater.

Roberts and Penny Fuller, his girlfriend from college, came to New York after school, and in 1962 he landed a part as a replacement in the Broadway comedy Take her, she is mineProduced by Harold Prince, directed by George Abbott and starring Art Carney.

Fuller got the role of Elizabeth Ashley’s replacement in Barefoot in the parkAnd when Redford was about to take a few weeks off, she got Roberts an audition to act as a backup to Redford’s understore.

Roberts was hired and was then unexpectedly pressed into use as the underrated broke his ankle playing softball. “His break was my big break,” Roberts said often. (Later Robert Reed was hired as Redford’s full -time replacement, but he left performance after about three months and Roberts took over well.)

Merrick was a big fan of Roberts who also threw him (besides Don’t drink the water and Play it again, Sam) on the Broadway in the musical How now, Dow Jones?As he received his first Tony nom; Like Jerry Orbach’s replacement in Simon’s Promises, promises; And in Sugarthe musical version of Some like it hotwhich required him to wear women’s clothing and lipstick.

Roberts’ work in the great white way also included The last analysis; They play our song (as Robert Klein’s sub); Absurd person singular; Victor/VictoriaOpposite Julie Andrews; The story of the allergy’s wife; Sisters Rosensweig; Arsenic and old lace; and The cabaret.

Roberts also had supportive roles in two major films from the 70s in the New York City-Set playing a policeman in Serpico (1973) and a mayor counselor in Roofing by Pelham One to Three (1974).

While you’re doing Annie HallRoberts returned to his trailer on the dressing room at Columbus Avenue to learn that he had been robbed, he Remembered In a 2016 interview.

“When Woody found out, he said, ‘Did they get the manuscript?’ I said, ‘Who cares you have a million (scripts) lying around,’ ‘Roberts said. “About a week later they found it in a trash can a mile away. It was my pleasure to make him aware that (the thieves) thought the manuscript was waste. “

His film resume also included The million dollar duck (1971), Le Sauvage (1975), Just tell me what you want (1980), Key exchange (1985), Blake Edwards’ Switch (1991) and My best friend’s wife (2001).

Roberts Starring in Three TV series: As a lawyer at NBC’s Rosetti and Ryan, As head of a radio psychologist (Lucie Arnaz) at CBS ‘ The Lucie Arnaz show And as one of the men in a CBS adaptation of The four seasons. Everyone was short -lived. Much earlier in his career he performed with Larry Hagman at CBS Soap Opera The edge of the night.

For more than two decades he starred like that. Stone Barrington in a series of audiobooks by Stuart Woods.

His memoir, Do you know me?was released in 2015. Roberts said he released it independently after several book editors told him they would only handle it if he included details of Allen’s personal life.

In the 2014 interview, asked if his frequent work with the filmmaker was “a case of contradictions that attract, or do you think, at some level, Allen really wants him to be you?” Roberts answered with a laugh.

“There have been times when I wanted me to be him,” he said. “I want his gift and his genius and his brain, which is something to enjoy. He is about as knowledgeable about most topics like someone I know – whether you speak music or painting or history or politics. He’s up to that moment with a lot of intellectual input. It’s a pleasure to be nearby. I don’t want his deeper neuroses but I don’t think he would have mine. I mean that. “

Duane Byrge contributed to this report.