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Vale: Richard Dysart

US actor Richard Dysart, best known for LA Law, has died aged 86.

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US actor Richard Dysart, best known for LA Law, has died aged 86.

He died on Sunday at his home in California following a battle with cancer.

Dysart played Leland McKenzie, the founding partner of the law firm McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney & Kuzak, on L.A. Law, which aired from 1986 to 1994.

He got his start in TV in the 1950s on You Are There before a long list of credits including East Side / West Side, The Doctors and the Nurses, The Defenders, All in the Family, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Baretta, Maude, Doc, Lincoln, Sara, Cannon, Gemini Man, Colombo, Lou Grant, The Seal, Malice in Wonderland, The Last Days of Patton, Marilyn & Bobby: Her Final Affair and Spawn.

Film credits included The Hospital, Being There, Panther, Back to the Future Part III, Wall Street, Pale Rider, The Falcon and the Snowman, The Thing, Meteor, Prophecy, The Hindenburg, Mask and The Day of the Locust.

He frequently played elder roles such as Judge Russell R. Leggett, who presided over the Jean Harris murder trial; the movie mogul Jack Warner; a fictional secretary of defense; Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of war; J. Edgar Hoover, director of the F.B.I.and twice played both Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and President Harry S. Truman.

But it was LA Law for which he was best know, leading the law firm as a sometimes paternal, sometimes ruthless executive who presides over an office full of ambitious and very often randy partners.

Richard Dysart was nominated for Emmy Awards four times and won for outstanding supporting actor in a drama series in 1992.

Source: NY Times

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