Millions of people thought they knew the actor John Mahoney from his work in the NBC sitcom “Frasier” — for 11 hit seasons from 1993 through 2004, he played a cranky Seattle police officer who’d taken a bullet in the hip and then been forced to live with his neurotic son. But the famously private Steppenwolf Theatre ensemble member was far more than the Hollywood gossip columnists ever knew.
Mahoney died Sunday at the age of 77 of complications from throat cancer.
For one thing, Mahoney was born British, despite his having no trace of a discernible accent. He was a child of Manchester, England, a wartime evacuee to Blackpool on the Lancashire coast. Born in 1940, he first came to Illinois when he was 11 years old to visit his sister Vera, a war bride. That visit made such an impression on his boyhood self, Mahoney found his way back to Chicago eight years later, under his sister’s sponsorship. And he never went back to Britain to live, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1959.
For another, Mahoney hated Los Angeles and greatly preferred Oak Park, where he lived quietly for years. Once “Frasier” was over, Mahoney refused to participate in the usual nostalgic reunions. He didn’t show up in 2001 when no less than Oprah Winfrey invited the entire cast of the sitcom onto her vaunted talk show. Kelsey Grammer was there. So was David Hyde Pierce. But not Mahoney.
“I just couldn’t be bothered,” Mahoney told the Tribune in 2004. “That kind of thing bores me. I have better things to do with my life. I’m 63, I’ve made a ton of money and I don’t have to worry about my next job. … It’s over. It’s done. Let it go. I don’t want to talk about it for the rest of my life.”
Mahoney was always grateful for what “Frasier” had done for him and took care to say so on numerous occasions. His success on that show meant that, thereafter, he could focus on Chicago theater, his great love, and on the Steppenwolf Theatre in particular. By not having to worry about money, he was able to work on what he wanted — like acting for scale in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” at Chicago’s tiny Irish Repertory Theatre. But over the years, he lavished most of his time and attention on his beloved Steppenwolf, appearing in more than 30 productions in total at the theater, including Conor McPherson’s “The Seafarer” in 2008, perhaps Mahoney’s most devastating performance, if only for the way it emphasized his inherent frailty.
There was something else unusual about Mahoney — he came to the profession that would make him famous uncommonly late. Only in his 40s did Mahoney become a professional actor.
“By the time I started my career, most people had given up and started selling insurance,” Mahoney once said. “I didn’t have so much competition.”
Mahoney’s late bloom happened during the Chicago theater renaissance in the late 1970s. In 1979, his friends John Malkovich and Gary Sinise invited him to join their still-nascent Steppenwolf, after they’d seen him taking acting classes at the St. Nicholas Theatre Company. At the time, the early ensemble members were allowed to sponsor the entrance of others.
There was good reason for that. In 1979, Steppenwolf still was populated by people, all friends, who were 15 or 20 years younger than Mahoney. Plays being plays, Steppenwolf badly needed someone who could take on older male roles.
Slight, ruddy faced and unfailingly good-natured, Mahoney was hired as Steppenwolf’s designated adult, and he relished the role until his final appearance — this past fall in Jessica Dickey’s play “The Rembrandt,” an examination of art and mortality.
Mahoney played a dying poet. His emotional performance was deeply moving, and it was tempting to assume it had something to do with his health, but Mahoney was a formidable actor and this was not the first time he had summoned up tears. Mahoney had been like that from the start, albeit in his quiet way, eschewing all histrionics.
“We were a bunch of kids,” distraught Steppenwolf co-founder Terry Kinney said Monday night, recalling his early years with Mahoney. “John was a little bit older, so that meant he could credibly play 40 years old, and he was such a character actor, so Malkovich brought him over.”
“John was our first grown-up,” said Steppenwolf artistic director Anna D. Shapiro. “He brought gravitas and a whole different way to move through the world. I have loved him since I was a girl. It is very hard for me to believe I will not hear from him again.”
Shapiro’s sentiment was shared by a huge swath of Chicago audiences. Especially in the years following “Frasier,” he was willing to perform on Chicago stages large and small, from the Irish Rep to the Northlight Theatre in Skokie, where he often collaborated with director BJ Jones. Among many other shows in what became a second home, Mahoney appeared in “The Price” by Arthur Miller, “The Outgoing Tide” by Bruce Graham and in an aptly titled Hugh Leonard drama, “A Life.”
“John was beloved by our audience,” Jones said Monday. “The Chicago theater has lost a leading light who embodied the true spirit of ensemble and who served as a role model for us all.”
Mahoney’s body of work is formidable. Aside from “Frasier” and his stage work in Chicago, he appeared in the 1987 Barry Levinson film “Tin Men,” and such movies as “Eight Men Out,” “The Hudsucker Proxy” and, most memorably for many, both “Moonstruck” and “Barton Fink.” On Broadway, Mahoney appeared in the resonant 2007 revival of “Prelude to a Kiss.” Back in 1986, he received a Tony Award for his work in Jerry Zaks’ production of John Guare’s “The House of Blue Leaves.” But he always wanted to come home to Chicago, whose mayor, Rahm Emanuel, said in a statement Monday that Mahoney’s contribution to the city would “endure for generations to come.”
“The city is almost like a person to me,” Mahoney said in 2004. “I can’t tell you why my heart is so full of Chicago, but it’s where I want to be. When I’m not here, I’m not as happy.”
On Monday night, Steppenwolf, which has been suffering through the deaths of several ensemble members in recent months, canceled its planned opening-night performance of the play “You Got Older.” Artists and supporters were instead expected to gather in the theater’s bar and raise a glass to Mahoney, who, some weeks ago, had reminded Shapiro that he did not wish there to be any kind of formal memorial.
“He was the most optimistic curmudgeon I knew,” Kinney said. “And we all loved him for that.”
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
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