David Margulies, who played New York City Mayor Lenny Clotch in the Ghostbusters films and Tony Soprano’s sleazy lawyer Neil Mink on The Sopranos, has died. He was 78.
Margulies, a veteran character actor of more than a dozen Broadway shows, died Monday in New York after a long illness, his representative, Mary Harden, told The Hollywood Reporter.
The busy Margulies recently appeared in episodes of The Good Wife, Blue Bloods, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Happyish, and he was cast as Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel — a famous Ponzi-scheme victim — in the upcoming ABC telefilm Madoff.
Margulies’ film résumé also includes The Front (1976), All That Jazz (1979), Dressed to Kill (1980), Nine 1/2 Weeks (1986), Ishtar (1987), Funny About Love (1990), Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994) and A Most Violent Year (2014).
His “Mayor Clotch” was a thinly disguised reference to 1980s NYC mayor Ed Koch, of course.
A native of Brooklyn and graduate of City College of New York, Margulies made his Broadway debut in a 1973 revival of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh. He went on the appear in such productions as Comedians, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Conversations With My Father, Angels in America (as attorney Roy Cohn), A Thousand Clowns, 45 Seconds From Broadway and Wonderful Town.
A celebration of his life will take place at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 1 at the Pershing Square Signature Center at 480 W. 42nd St. in New York.
Twitter: @mikebarnes4
