'Raymond' Dad, Peter Boyle, Dead at 71
Actor Suffered From Multiple Myeloma and Heart Disease

Dec. 13, 2006 — - Peter Boyle, who gained fame playing everything from a tap-dancing monster in "Young Frankenstein" to the curmudgeonly father in the long-running TV sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond," has died. He was 71.

Boyle died Tuesday evening at New York Presbyterian Hospital. He had been suffering from multiple myeloma and heart disease, according to his publicist, Jennifer Plante.

Boyle was beginning to gain notoriety playing hard-bitten, angry characters when he took the role of the hulking, lab-created monster in Mel Brooks' 1974 horror film sendup. The movie's defining moment came when Gene Wilder, as scientist Frederick Frankenstein, introduced his creation to an upscale audience, which watched as Boyle, decked out in tails, performed a song-and-dance routine to the Irving Berlin classic "Puttin' On the Ritz."

The role showed another side of the Emmy-winning actor, one that would be exploited in countless other films and perhaps best in "Everybody Loves Raymond," in which Boyle played the incorrigible pater familia Frank Barone for 10 years.

"He's just obnoxious in a nice way, just for laughs," Boyle said of the character in a 2001 interview. "It's a very sweet experience having this happen at a time when you basically go back over your life and see every mistake you ever made."

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I always enjoyed his comedy.