ALL DRESSED UP IN BLACK:

Peter Boyle of 'Everybody Loves Raymond' dies (AP, 12/13/06)

Peter Boyle, who played the tap-dancing monster in "Young Frankenstein" and the curmudgeonly father in the long-running sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond," has died. He was 71.

Boyle died Tuesday evening at New York Presbyterian Hospital. He had been suffering from multiple myeloma and heart disease, said his publicist, Jennifer Plante.

A member of the Christian Brothers religious order who turned to acting, the tall, prematurely balding Boyle gained notice playing an angry workingman in the 1970 sleeper hit "Joe," playing an angry, murderous bigot at odds with the emerging hippie youth culture. [...]

He won an Emmy in 1996 for his guest-starring role in an episode of "The X Files," and he was nominated for "Everybody Loves Raymond" and for the 1977 TV film "Tail Gunner Joe," in which he played Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

He was often funny as Ray's dad, but the X-Files episode --Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose -- was as fine an hour of television as has ever been broadcast.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 13, 2006 9:04 PM