Richard Mulligan

Richard Mulligan (November 13, 1932 – September 26, 2000) was an American television, film and character actorknown for his role as Burt Campbell, the loving, protective husband of Cathryn Damon's character, in the sitcom Soap(1977–81). Later, Mulligan had a starring role as Dr. Harry Weston in Empty Nest (1988–95)[1], for which he won both the Emmy Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Lead Actor in a Comedy Series in 1989. Mulligan was the younger brother of film director Robert Mulligan. Mulligan's most notable film role was as General George Armstrong Custer in Little Big Man, whom he portrayed as a borderline psychotic. He also appeared in the disaster movie spoof, The Big Bus (1976), where he was reunited with Larry Hagman, with whom he starred in an episode of I Dream of Jeannie (see above) and the 1966 film "The Group", where he played Dick Brown, Harold's (Hagman) New York artist friend. In 1975, he starred in a radio adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Oblong Box" heard on The CBS Radio Mystery Theater. Mulligan's best-known roles in television were as Burt Campbell in the sitcom Soap (1977–81), for which he won a Best ActorEmmy Award, and as Dr. Harry Weston in the NBC series Empty Nest, a spin-off of The Golden Girls in which his character had appeared in a couple of episodes. Empty Nest ran for seven seasons, and Mulligan won a Best Actor Emmy Award as well as a Golden Globe Award for his performance. He also played Secretary of State William Seward in Lincoln (1988), a TV moviebased on Gore Vidal's novel.
Mulligan returned to perform on Broadway and in films, in which he usually played supporting roles. A notable exception was the black comedy S.O.B. (1981), in which he played a leading character, Felix Farmer, a Hollywood producer-director based upon the film's actual producer-director, Blake Edwards. The film starred Julie Andrews and William Holden and again, featured Larry Hagman. Mulligan was cast as Reggie Potter in the television series Reggie (1983). Lasting for only six episodes, it was a loose adaptation of the popular BBC series The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. In the 1984 film Teachers, he played an eccentric high school history teacher (who in one scene teaches the Battle of the Little Bighorn, once more dressed as General Custer).
In 1985, he guested The Twilight Zone episode "Night of the Meek", where he took on the role of Henry Corwin, an alcoholicdepartment store Santa Claus who becomes the genuine article, in the remake of the 1959 Christmas episode "The Night of the Meek", the character that Art Carney had played in the original version. The next year, he appeared in another episode of the series, "The Toys of Caliban".
Mulligan lent his voice to Disney's 1988 animated film, Oliver & Company, as the oafish Great Dane named Einstein. His final performance was a voice over on Hey Arnold! in 2000 as the voice of Jimmy Kafka, the long mentioned but never seen former friend of Arnold's Grandpa.
Category:Voice Actors
Category:1986