Roberts Blossom, American actor (Doc Hollywood, Escape from Alcatraz, Home Alone) died he was , 87.

Roberts Scott Blossom  was an American actor and poet died he was , 87.

(March 25, 1924 – July 8, 2011)

Life and career

Roberts Scott Blossom was born in 1924 in New Haven, Connecticut, and began acting on stage during the 1950s. During the 1960s, he formed Filmstage, a multimedia avant-garde theatrical troupe.^[3]
Blossom graduated from Asheville School in 1941 and attended Harvard University. He acted several theater roles in the 1950s, for which he won the Obie Award four times. He landed his first film roles in the television adaptation of the play Our Town (1959).^{[citation needed]}
In the thriller Deranged, Blossom played the lead role of killer Ezra Cobb. In the Oscar-winning film drama The Great Gatsby (1974), he was accompanied on-screen by Robert Redford. He won the Soapy Award for his role on Another World, on which he appeared from 1976-1977. In 1990, he starred in Home Alone as Old Man Marley. Blossom's other TV credits include Moonlighting, Northern Exposure and In the Heat of the Night.
He retired from acting in the late 1990s to pursue writing poetry. He resided in southern California until his death on July 8, 2011, aged 87. He was formerly married to Beverly Schmidt Blossom, and was later married to Marylin Orshan Blossom, until her death in 1982. He had two children, a daughter (Debbie) and a son (Michael).

Notable film roles

• The Hospital (1971), as the patient Guernsey, who dies as a result of medical malpractice
• Slaughterhouse-Five (1972), as military officer Wild Bob Cody
• Deranged (1974), as a killer based on Ed Gein
• The Great Gatsby (1974), as Mr. Gatz, the father of Jay Gatsby
• The Rimers of Eldritch (1974), as a hypocritical preacher in a decaying Bible Belt town
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), as a farmer who has had several brushes with the paranormal
• Escape from Alcatraz (1979), as Doc, an inmate with a fondness for painting
• Resurrection (1980), as the estranged father of a woman who has had a near-death experience
• Family Reunion (1981), as Phil King
• Christine (1983), as George LeBay, the old man who sells Arnie Cunningham the famous 1958 Plymouth Fury, Christine
• Reuben, Reuben (1983), as Frank Spofford, owner of the Old English Sheepdog, Reuben
• Vision Quest (1985), as Grandpa, Louden Swain's grandfather
• Amazing Stories "Ghost Train" (1985), as Opa Globe
• Home Alone (1990), as Marley, Kevin McCallister's reclusive, unfairly stigmatized snow-shoveling neighbor
• Doc Hollywood (1991), as Judge Evans, the man who sentences Michael J. Fox's character to perform community service but later pardons his case
• The Quick and the Dead (1995), as Doc Wallace

 

To see more of who died in 2010 click here