Vince O’Brien of Haworth, a character actor whose long career included memorable turns as a debauched businessman in the Broadway musical comedy “Promises, Promises” and an earnest hotel doctor in Woody Allen’s film classic, “Annie Hall,” died Saturday. He was 91. The cause was heart failure, said his son Liam.
Mr. O’Brien was adept at playing authority figures, a consequence of his balding, mature appearance.
“I’ve seen pictures of him as a young man,” his son said, “and he always had that older look.”
He had recurring television roles as a judge on “Law and Order” in the ’90s and the soap operas “Ryan’s Hope” in the ’70s and “The Edge of Night” in the ’60s, and as a sheriff in the cult soap “Dark Shadows,” also in the ’60s.
He was perhaps most recognizable, however, as the Shell Answer Man, in television and print ads for the petroleum company.
Mr. O’Brien said in a 1969 interview with The Record that landing the Shell gig “was so much like hitting the state lottery that I didn’t even worry.” He was appearing at the time in “Promises, Promises,” which was based on Billy Wilder’s 1960 movie, “The Apartment.” Mr. O’Brien was Mr. Eichelberger, one of four executives who used a colleague’s apartment for trysts.
Eight years later, Mr. O’Brien landed in “Annie Hall.” He was in the scene when Woody Allen’s neurotic New Yorker Alvy Singer, in Los Angeles to present at an awards show, was holed up in his hotel room, complaining of stomach distress.
“Why don’t you just try to get a little bit of this down; it’s just plain chicken,” Mr. O’Brien’s sympathetic doctor, proffering a room service plate, tells Singer while girlfriend Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) finishes a call in which the awards show producers agree to find a replacement presenter.
Singer’s stomach “problems” suddenly disappear. “Well, there’s nothing wrong with you, actually, as far as I can tell,” the doctor tells his hypochondriac patient. “You have no fever, no symptoms of anything serious. You haven’t been eating pork or shellfish … ”
The second of nine children, Vincent O’Brien was reared in New Britain, Conn. He served in the Army during World War II and received a drama degree from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1949. He came to New York in 1950, the same year he married his wife, Kate, whom he met at college.
Mr. O’Brien immediately began getting stage and TV work. He appeared in 23 live dramas on CBS’ “Studio One” and received equal billing with Walter Matthau on one show.
In 1953, the O’Briens moved to a 19th century farmhouse in Haworth with their two small children. Their family would grow to 10 children.
“His career was as a New York actor from Day One,” Liam O’Brien said. “He was a working actor — the only job he ever had.”
Mr. O’Brien’s stage credits also include the Broadway play “Advise and Consent” in 1960-61 and productions at the North Jersey Playhouse in Fort Lee, the Playhouse on the Mall in Paramus and the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn. He starred in a Haworth Summer Shakespeare Festival production of the monodrama “Clarence Darrow,” and played Willy Loman in a 1988 production of “Death of a Salesman” at Siena College in upstate New York.
His final film roles were in “Six Degrees of Separation” and “Quiz Show” in the early ’90s. His last stage work was eight years ago in his favorite musical, “The Fantasticks,” at the Ivoryton Playhouse in Connecticut. A quarter-century earlier, he directed a benefit presentation of “The Fantasticks” at his home parish, Sacred Heart R.C. Church.
Liam O’Brien said his father was “a complicated guy in some ways.”
“He was a Catholic of great faith and had certain things that were conservative and Old World about him, but he had a very global view — he was pro-Civil rights, anti-racism,” Liam O’Brien said.
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