‘THE DUKE’

Charles Grodin, Star of ‘Midnight Run’ and ‘The Heartbreak Kid,’ Dies at 86

The cause was bone marrow cancer, the actor’s son announced.

Charles Grodin, the actor who turned fugitive mob accountant Jonathan “The Duke” Mardukas into a richly sympathetic character in the 1988 classic Midnight Run, died Tuesday at his home in Wilton, Connecticut, according to The New York Times. He was 86. Grodin’s son Nicholas told the newspaper that the cause of death was bone marrow cancer. Born in Pittsburgh, Grodin dropped out of the University of Miami to pursue acting and got his first role in Walt Disney’s 1954 production of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A versatile performer who was equally comfortable playing parts on television, stage, and film, Grodin began his rise to fame in 1962 with a supporting role in the Broadway play Tchin-Tchin, opposite Anthony Quinn. He starred alongside Cybill Shepherd in the 1972 hit, The Heartbreak Kid, and won an Emmy for the first and last time five years later, as a writer on The Paul Simon Special, which was produced by Lorne Michaels. And while he never became a household name like Robert De Niro, Grodin appeared alongside him in the 1988 film Midnight Run as a CPA who stole millions from the Chicago mob. As the two men bicker, Grodin’s character, Jonathan Mardukas, says to bounty hunter Jack Walsh, played by De Niro, “Jack, you’re a grown man. You have control over your own words” To which Walsh replies, “You’re damn right I am, so here are two words for you: shut the fuck up.”