{"id":57434,"date":"2025-02-11T08:01:40","date_gmt":"2025-02-11T13:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.moviefanfare.com\/?p=57434"},"modified":"2025-02-11T03:03:37","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T08:03:37","slug":"tony-roberts-a-tribute-to-allens-ally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.moviefanfare.com\/?p=57434","title":{"rendered":"Tony Roberts: A Tribute to Allen’s Ally"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"There would have been a certain bittersweet symmetry if actor Tony Roberts<\/a>–who passed away last Friday at the age of 85–had won either of the two Antoinette Perry Award nominations he received back in 1968-69, just so the headlines could read “Tony-winner Tony Roberts Dies.” As it is, most of the media notices over the weekend referred to him as the on-screen friend to Woody Allen<\/a>, having co-starred in six of the filmmaker\/comedian’s pictures and often serving as the urbane voice of reason to Allen’s neurotic nebbish. In-between his Tony nods and work with Allen came a wide and varied career on stage, screen, and TV that stretched over half a century.<\/p>\n

Like Allen a native New Yorker, Roberts was born in Manhattan in 1939. The son of a radio announcer and an animator, Roberts was also a cousin of Orson Welles regular Everett Sloane<\/a>. After attending New York’s High School of Music & Art and Northwestern University, he set his sights on acting and made his Broadway debut alongside Sal Mineo and Kevin McCarthy in a short-lived 1962 production, Something About a Soldier<\/em>. Roles in such plays as Take Her, She’s Mine<\/em>, Never Too Late<\/em>, and Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park <\/em>were next, along with a 1966 audition for Woody Allen’s Iron Curtain comedy Don’t Drink the Water<\/em>…well, four<\/strong> auditions, to be precise.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cProducer David Merrick wanted me to be the third lead, but Woody wanted somebody else,\u201d Robert said in a 2014 interview. \u201cSo I kept going back. Finally, Merrick told Woody to come see me in Barefoot in the Park<\/em>\u2026After the show one night, Woody walks in to my dressing room with his then-wife, Louise Lasser, and says, \u2018You were great. How come you\u2019re such a lousy auditioner?\u2019 I still don\u2019t have a good answer for that. But I got the part.\u201d\u00a0After Don’t Drink the Water<\/em>, How Now, Dow Jones<\/em> (for which he received his first Tony nomination), Promises, Promises<\/em>, and another Allen comedy, Play It Again, Sam<\/em> (which gave him Tony nom number two) followed.<\/p>\n

\"\"Tony had a few TV roles in the late ’60s before getting his debut movie appearance in the 1971 Disney comedy The Million Dollar Duck, <\/em>playing best friend to leads Dean Jones and Sandy Duncan. Roberts and Duncan would reunite later that year in the film version of Neil Simon’s stage comedy Star Spangled Girl<\/em>. 1972 saw him in his first screen role alongside Allen in Herbert Ross’s adaptation of Play It Again, Sam<\/em><\/a>, with Roberts playing a workaholic husband who doesn’t notice that his nerdy pal (Woody) is falling for Roberts’ wife (Diane Keaton).<\/p>\n

\"\"Tony next showed up as NYPD detective Bob Blair, one of maverick undercover cop Frank Serpico’s (Al Pacino) few allies, in Sidney Lumet’s gritty 1973 drama Serpico<\/em><\/a>, then as the Big Apple’s deputy mayor in 1974’s subterranean thriller The Taking of Pelham One Two Three<\/em><\/a>. His second and best-remembered turn as Allen’s sidekick came in the 1976 Oscar-winning “nervous romance” Annie Hall<\/em><\/a>. As Alvy Singer’s (Allen) comedy-writing pal Rob (the pair refer to each other as ‘Max’; more about this to follow), Tony tries to get Woody to break free of his New York neuroses after he lands a job in Hollywood writing for TV. “You’re an actor, Max,” Alvy exclaims. “You should be doing Shakespeare in the Park.” Ron replies, “I did Shakespeare in the Park, Max. I got mugged. I was playing Richard II and two guys with leather jackets stole my leotard.”<\/p>\n

Roberts would appear in four more Allen projects: as an actor in the surreal and semi-autobiographical Stardust Memories<\/em> (1980); w womanizing doctor in the Bergmanesque romp A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy<\/em><\/a> (1986); a friend asked by Mickey (Allen) and wife Hannah (Mia Farrow) to serve as a sperm donor in Hannah and Her Sisters<\/em> (1986); and a quiz show emcee in the nostalgic Radio Days<\/em><\/a> (1987). In between these projects he appeared in the romcom Just Tell Me What You Want<\/em><\/a> (1980); the Long Island-set horror sequel Amityville 3-D <\/em>(1983); and the Robin Williams drama Seize the Day<\/em><\/a> (1986). He was opposite George Burns in 1988’s body-swap comedy 18 Again!<\/em>; gets killed by a giant mechanical mosquito in the 1991 shocker Popcorn<\/em><\/a>; and was an ad executive blackmailed into hiring womanizer-turned-blonde beauty Ellen Barkin in Blake Edwards’ ’91 reincarnation romp Switch<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"Roberts stayed active on the stage as well, with roles in such Broadway shows as Sugar<\/em>, They’re Playing Our Song<\/em>, and Jerome Robbins’ Broadway<\/em>. In the ’90s and 2000s he could be seen in Wendy Wasserstein’s The Sisters Rosensweig<\/em>; as Toddy opposite Julie Andrews in Victor\/Victoria<\/em>; with Linda Lavin in The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife<\/em> (he was the allergist); as Herr Schultz in the Studio 54 staging of Cabaret<\/em>; and in the 2007 adaptation of the Olivia Newton-John film musical Xanadu<\/em>, in the role of Danny (played on-screen by Gene Kelly). He even was a regular performer on the CBS Radio Mystery Theater<\/em> and did audiobook and podcast work as well.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Roberts was less successful when it came to regular roles on TV. His list of one-season failures included the 1977 legal drama Rosetti and Ryan<\/em>; a 1984 small-screen version of Alan Alda’s The Four Seasons<\/em>; the 1985 sitcom The Lucie Arnaz Show<\/em>; and 1988’s The Thorns. His final performing credit was as Catskills resort owner Max Kellerman in a 2017 made-for-TV version of Dirty Dancing<\/em><\/a>. On Feb. 7 Roberts passed away at his Manhattan home of complications from lung cancer.<\/p>\n

Oh, and the “Max” references in Annie Hall<\/em>? Those stemmed from Roberts giving Allen the monicker after the filmmaker asked him not to call him by his real name while they were shooting on the streets of New York. \u201cWe were friends and had identifiable repartee,\u201d Tony recalled in his 2016 memoir “Do You Know Me?” \u201cThe intimacy you saw was real.\u201d Thanks, Max.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There would have been a certain bittersweet symmetry if actor Tony Roberts–who passed away last Friday at the age of 85–had won either of the two Antoinette Perry Award nominations he received back in 1968-69, just so the headlines could…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9748,"featured_media":57435,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[5596,5584,11354,1371],"coauthors":[11329],"class_list":["post-57434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-articles","tag-actor-profiles","tag-comedy-movies","tag-tony-roberts","tag-woody-allen"],"yoast_head":"\nTony Roberts: A Tribute to Allen's Ally - MovieFanFare<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"MovieFanFare remembers stage\/TV\/film actor Tony Roberts, co-star in six Woody Allen movies, who passed away last week at 85.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.moviefanfare.com\/?p=57434\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tony Roberts: A Tribute to Allen's Ally - 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