Ralph Manza
Ralph Manza (December 1, 1921 – January 31, 2000) was an American character actor who made over 160 appearances in American film and TV shows. Career. A pre-med student at UC-Berkeley in the early 1940s, Manza was drafted into the United States Army during World War II. He was serving as a medic in the Army when he was assigned to an acting troupe. The diminutive Manza appeared on daytime television briefly in 1963 as an original cast member of the ABC-TV soap opera series "General Hospital", where he played the role of Mike Costello. Manza  went on to become a character actor appearing on many primetime TV series in guest role spots, beginning in the 1950s with the TV crime/drama series "Highway Patrol", and "Alfred Hitchcock Presents". This part of his acting career continued to flourish through the 1960s, with appearances on such shows as "77 Sunset Strip", "McHale's Navy", "Perry Mason", "The Twilight Zone", "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C." and "Gunsmoke", continuing in the 1970s and 1980s on such series such as "Get Smart", "My Three Sons", "Night Gallery", "Police Woman", "The Golden Girls", "Hart to Hart", "Chico and the Man", "Barney Miller" (in  7 episodes), "Benson", "Simon and Simon", "Night Court", "Newhart" and on "Banacek", co-starring as perpetually puzzled chauffeur Jay Drury. He went into the 1990s with appearances on the long-running NBC-TV sitcom series "Seinfeld", CBS-TV's "The Nanny" and NBC-TV's "Friends". Manza also made appearances in several feature films, perhaps most memorably as the actor playing Hitler in Mel Brooks' 1974 comedy "Blazing Saddles" ("They lose me after the bunker scene"), and as the fisherman whose scene in the 1998 "Godzilla" was used as the film's first teaser. Death. Manza died in January 2000  in Scripps Health-Encintas Hospital in Encinitas, California of a heart attack. He had suffered a heart attack three weeks earlier as well, while filming a commercial for Budweiser.