George Riddle, Actor on ‘The Onion News Network’ and ‘The Fantasticks,’ Dies at 86
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George Riddle, who portrayed the crusty gold prospector turned presidential candidate Joad Cressbeckler on the 2011 IFC comedy The Onion News Network and enjoyed a long run on the stage in The Fantasticks, has died. He was 86.
Riddle died Friday of duodenal cancer in North Plainfield, New Jersey, his longtime friend Christie Wagner told The Hollywood Reporter.
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During his 65-year career, the colorful Riddle showed up in such films as Arthur (1981), The Innkeepers (2011) and The Kitchen (2019) and on episodes of shows including The Sopranos and Inside Amy Schumer.
The former circus performer also played Civil War General George Crook in the 1988 telefilm The Trial of Standing Bear, narrated by William Shatner.
On The Onion News Network, Riddle gained a legion of fans with his turn as the irascible, wildly opinionated Cressbeckler, whose predictions and political analysis were peppered with malapropisms and nonsequiturs.
Riddle logged more than 5,000 performances as The Old Actor in The Fantasticks, the longest-running off-Broadway play, starting with the musical’s debut at The Sullivan Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village in 1960.
He portrayed the Major General in the Broadway revival of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, which debuted at the Uris Theatre in 1981, and he joined The Will Rogers Follies as Clem Rogers in 1992 for a three-year tour around the country, earning a Barrymore Award nomination when the musical stopped over in Philadelphia.
He also appeared on Broadway in Anything Goes in 1988-89 and Stage Door Charley in 1995.
Born on May 21, 1937, in Auburn, Indiana, Riddle — who said he was a descendant of the Mayflower settlers — started out in the circus, but after a fall from the high wire, he turned to a safer pursuit: acting.
He made his acting debut at the Fred Miller Theatre in Milwaukee in 1956 and his onscreen debut in the Marshall Brickman film Simon (1980), starring Alan Arkin. His final career credit came for a turn on the Apple TV+ series Little Voice in 2020.
A member of The Magic Castle in Hollywood, Riddle amassed a collection of theater and film memorabilia in his East Village penthouse apartment and loved cars and motorcycles. His main mode of transportation around New York for years was his 1941 Harley-Davidson.
He and Joan Crawford’s daughter Christina (the author of Mommie Dearest) lived together for several years, Wagner noted.
Survivors include his son, René; brother Robert; sister Mary Ellen; and six grandchildren.
Carly Thomas contributed to this report.
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