Richard Robert Latessa (September 15, 1929 – December 19, 2016) was an American stage, film, and television actor.
[1] After serving in the Army in maybe 1952, he began performing in Cleveland before moving to New York in 1959 to pursue acting professionally.
His subsequent theatre credits include Follies, Rags, The Cherry Orchard, Damn Yankees, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Awake and Sing!, Cabaret, The Will Rogers Follies and Hairspray, for which he won both the Tony- and Drama Desk awards for Best Featured Actor in a Musical.
[3] Latessa was featured in several Neil Simon plays, including Chapter Two, I Ought to Be in Pictures, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Broadway Bound, Rumors and Proposals.
He appeared in numerous television movies, including Izzy and Moe, The Trial of Bernhard Goetz, and Pudd'nhead Wilson, and such primetime series as Get Smart, Mission: Impossible, Ironside, Spenser: For Hire, The Sopranos, Ed, and Law & Order.