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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Actor Eddie Albert dies at age 99


Albert
 (The Spokesman-Review)
Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES – Eddie Albert, the versatile stage, screen and television actor who co-starred as the Park Avenue lawyer who sought happiness down on the farm in the popular 1960s sitcom “Green Acres,” has died. He was 99.

Albert, an outspoken environmentalist and humanitarian activist, died Thursday night at his Pacific Palisades home of pneumonia, said his son Edward Laurence Albert. According to his son, Albert was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease about 10 years ago but still lived an active, full and happy life and remained at his home throughout.

In an acting career that spanned more than six decades, the blond, blue-eyed Albert was initially typecast as what has been described as an amiable fellow with a “corn-fed grin.”

As Gregory Peck’s news photographer pal in “Roman Holiday” (1953), Albert earned the first of his two Academy Award nominations for best supporting actor. His second Oscar nomination came two decades later playing Cybill Shepherd’s wealthy, exasperated father in “The Heartbreak Kid,” the 1972 Neil Simon-Elaine May comedy.

Among Albert’s nearly 100 film credits are “Oklahoma!” “I’ll Cry Tomorrow,” “Teahouse of the August Moon,” “The Sun Also Rises,” “The Joker Is Wild,” “Beloved Infidel,” “The Young Doctors,” “The Longest Day,” “Captain Newman, M.D.” and “Escape to Witch Mountain.”

Albert, who scored critically acclaimed dramatic performances on live television in the 1950s, was particularly memorable when he turned his good-guy screen image on its head – as he did playing the sadistic warden in director Robert Aldrich’s 1974 “The Longest Yard,” starring Burt Reynolds.

Seven months after World War II began, Albert joined the Navy. He was credited with saving scores of Marines from a deadly triple crossfire during the bloody battle for Tarawa in the South Pacific.