John Deyle, Actor in ‘Annie,’ ‘Camelot’ and ‘Urinetown’ on Broadway, Dies at 68

Mike Barnes
·2 min read
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John Deyle, who appeared in four Broadway musicals, in more than 100 commercials and as the inept Mr. Science on the first season of Late Night With Conan O’Brien, has died. He was 68.

Deyle died June 22 at his home in Mount Kisco, New York, after a battle with esophageal cancer, his wife, Rebecca Paller, announced.

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While auditioning for a role in the musical adaptation of I Remember Mama in 1978, lyricist Martin Charnin told him that he was “all wrong for this show, but we could use you in Annie,” he recalled.

Deyle then made his Broadway debut in March 1979, joining the ensemble of the Sarah Jessica Parker starrer by playing Louis Howe, Fred McCracken and Bert Healy.

He went on to work in the 1980 Broadway revival of Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot, starring Richard Burton, and in the subsequent U.S. and Australian tours of the famed musical that featured Richard Harris in the lead.

Deyle also was on Broadway in Footloose (as Principal Clark) starting in 1998 and in Urinetown (as Senator Fipp) during its entire 2001-04 run. (He started out with the latter off-Broadway.)

Other stage highlights included playing Bert Bratt in the 1996 national tour of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying; starring off-Broadway as Frankie Cavalier in Pageant in 1992 and as Hucklebee in a 2006 revival of The Fantasticks; and regional stints at the Long Wharf, the Huntington Theater, the Arena Stage, the Walnut Street Theatre, Artpark and Goodspeed.

Born on July 6, 1954, in Rochester, New York, Deyle graduated from Irondequoit High School, received his bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in 1976 and moved to New York to pursue his dream of performing on Broadway.

Years after that was realized, he began checking in as Mr. Science on NBC’s Late Night With Conan O’Brien in 1993.

In commercials — his “bread and butter,” his wife said — he pitched everything from Skippy Peanut Butter and Toblerone Chocolate to Hoover Vacuum Cleaners, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and Just for Men Hair Color (“I thought you were starting to go gray,” his barber character said).

Deyle also worked in such films as Wall Street (1987), Before and After (1996), One True Thing (1998) and Tio Papi (2013) and on episodes of Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, The Good Wife, One Life to Live and All My Children.

In addition to his wife, an arts writer and curator whom he married in 1991, survivors include their son, Oleg; his sister, Kathryn; brother-in-law Ben; aunt Marylin; nephews Stephen, Brian and Jay; and niece Erica.

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