Jack Axelrod, Actor on ‘General Hospital,’ ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and ‘My Name Is Earl,’ Dies at 93

Mike Barnes
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Jack Axelrod, who played a mob boss on General Hospital for three years and had notable guest-starring turns on My Name Is Earl and Grey’s Anatomy, has died. He was 93.

Axelrod died Nov. 28 of natural causes in Los Angeles, his rep Jennifer Garland announced.

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Axelrod showed up in Woody Allen’s Bananas (1971) in one of his first onscreen roles, and his big-screen résumé also included Hancock (2008), Winged Creatures (2008), Little Fockers (2010), Super 8 (2011), J. Edgar (2011) and The Lone Ranger (2013).

Axelrod portrayed mobster Victor Jerome on the ABC soap General Hospital from 1987-89 and the “Electrolarynx Guy” on the NBC comedy My Name Is Earl in 2005-08.

And on the ABC drama Grey’s Anatomy in 2006-07, he stole scenes as the patient Charlie Yost, who spent a long time in a semi-conscious state at Seattle Grace before dying — just as he was about to get in a wheelchair to leave.

He continued to work consistently until 2020, when he retired at age 90.

Born in Los Angeles on Jan. 25, 1930, Axelrod served as a corporal in the U.S. Army, stationed in Germany from February 1953 to February 1955. He then majored in architecture at UC Berkeley and eventually became licensed as an architect in the state of Washington.

Axelrod, meanwhile, studied acting with Uta Hagen at HB Studios in New York for six years, and in 1969 he portrayed Banquo in an off-Broadway production of Macbeth. A year later, he appeared off-Broadway in Gandhi and accompanied the play to Broadway, but it closed on opening night.

Axelrod also worked on television in Kojak, Hill Street Blues, Dallas, Dynasty, Night Court, Knots Landing, Murphy Brown, Everybody Loves Raymond, Star Trek: Voyager, Frasier, Scrubs, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Hot in Cleveland, Shameless, The Office, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Ray Donovan, Baskets and Modern Family.

Axelrod was a theater faculty member at colleges including the University of Wisconsin, University of Michigan, Boston University, Penn State, Temple University, Cal State Northridge, CalArts and Brandeis University and was a guest instructor at the Aaron Speiser Acting Studio in L.A.

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