Cliff Gorman | Culture | The Guardian

Cliff Gorman

When Cliff Gorman, who has died of leukaemia aged 65, played the outrageous cult comedian Lenny Bruce in the Julian Barry play Lenny, the critic Clive Barnes wrote in the New York Times: "The play has a virtuoso performance of fevered energy and measured distinction by Cliff Gorman. The first-night audience gave him a standing ovation such as is rarely heard in a theatre, and he deserved every last, hoarse hurrah... Mr Gorman is on that stage for hours and hours and hours, facing the audience, belting the material, and also revealing the scalding anger of a man who didn't want to be misunderstood. This is a performance that cannot fail to make a major star out of Mr Gorman - the man is a consummate actor." There was a similar eulogy from the New York critic Otis L Guernsey Jr.

Yet today, despite further plaudits that Gorman received during a long stage and screen career, his name does not resonate as readily as was expected after that remarkable, Tony-winning performance. Indeed, in 1974, when director Bob Fosse was ready to cast the film version of Lenny, he approached not Gorman but Dustin Hoffman.

Initially, Hoffman declined the role because he had been so impressed by Gorman's performance; it was only after Fosse convinced him that Gorman was not a big enough "name" to get the part that he agreed to do it. And even then, although Hoffman was nominated for an Oscar, his performance was compared unfavourably to Gorman's.

Six years later, Fosse tried to make it up to Gorman by casting him in the semi-autobiographical All That Jazz (1980) as a Lenny-type stand-up comedian. By then, however, Gorman had made six other films, though the only one in which he made much impact was The Boys In The Band (1970), recreating his stage role. Matt Crowley's 1968 off-Broadway play was considered a breakthrough in its presentation of gays, but it relied heavily on stereotypes, especially Gorman's screaming queen Emory, to reassure the mainly straight audiences.

Gorman's Obie-winning performance was so convincing that his agent commissioned newspaper and magazine articles detailing the actor's previous manly jobs as a trucker, an ambulance driver and a probation officer working with juvenile delinquents.

Gorman, who was born in New York, attended the Manhattan high school of music and art, and obtained a bachelor's degree in education from New York University. He did a variety of odd jobs before joining Jerome Robbins's American Theater Lab, which led to The Boys In The Band.

His other stage hit, for which he was nominated for a Tony, was as Leo Schneider, the cynical brother of the recently widowed novelist in Neil Simon's autobiographical Chapter Two (1977). He was very effective in a long monologue detailing the day his sister-in-law died, and also in his views on marriage. "The trouble with marriage is that its relentless," he pronounced. "Every morning, when you wake up, it's still there. I think another 30, 35 years and it'll be over, right?"

In film and television projects, such as Law And Order, and Police Story, Gorman, with his prominent chin, dark, shocked hair and eyebrows, and thick New York accent, was often seen playing sleazy cops and crooks, a far cry from his effeminate portrayal of Emory and his film debut as another gay character in George Cukor's Justine (1969). Most of his film roles were small but showy, following his co-starring with Joe Bologna in the entertaining heist movie Cops And Robbers (1973).

There was also his wood sculptor having a one-night stand with Jill Clayburgh in An Unmarried Woman (1978); the club owner who insults Jack Nicholson in Hoffa (1992); his priceless deadpan gangster in Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog; The Way Of The Samurai (1999); and the alcoholic father of a "mentally-challenged" young man in King Of The Jungle (2001).

He is survived by his wife Gayle.

· Cliff Gorman, actor, born October 13 1936; died September 5 2002

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaKaVrMBwfo9paWirlaV8coCOoKyaqpSerq%2B7waKrrpminrK0esCrq6w%3D