WASHINGTON — Robert Prosky, a supporting actor with hundreds of film, TV and stage credits and whose roles included an avuncular sergeant on the NBC police drama “Hill Street Blues” and a desperate real estate salesman in David Mamet’s play “Glengarry Glen Ross,” died Monday of complications from a heart procedure. He was 77.
He jokingly attributed his success to his paunch and prematurely gray hair, telling The Washington Post, “This hair and this gut are the two reasons I got started as an actor. I could play men 50 when I was 30, maybe 25. I could always play the funny fat man.”
In Prosky’s movie debut, Michael Mann’s “Thief” (1981), he played the vicious patriarch of a ring of Chicago diamond thieves. New York Times film critic Vincent Canby found Prosky “exceptionally effective” as “a Middle Western version of the sort of affable international villains that Sidney Greenstreet once played.”
The part launched Prosky’s career as a film heavy, including the evil garage owner in “Christine” (1983), a corrupt judge in “The Natural” (1984) and a mafia don in Mamet’s “Things Change” (1988).
It was a nice change of pace, Prosky said, to be offered the role of a self-deprecating priest in “Rudy” (1993) who at one point says, “In 35 years of religious study, I’ve only come up with two incontrovertible truths: There is a God, and I’m not Him.”
Portraying TV newsmen also became a specialty. In “Mrs. Doubtfire” (1993), he was a station owner who exchanged quips with Robin Williams. He was a defender of community standards who clashed with journalist Dustin Hoffman in “Mad City” (1997). And he was a longtime executive who gets fired in director James Brooks’s “Broadcast News” (1987).
Prosky’s other film roles included the defense lawyer for accused killer Sean Penn in “Dead Man Walking” (1995) and a judge in a 1994 remake of “Miracle on 34th Street.” In addition, he played many recurring roles on TV, as the big-hearted desk sergeant Stanislaus “Stan” Jablonski on “Hill Street Blues” from 1984 to 1987 and later as a priest accused of murder on the ABC legal drama “The Practice.”
He once said that he turned down the role of a bartender on “Cheers” and was grateful not to have been a part of the hit comedy because the thought of “doing the same role for 6 1/2 years” sent a chill down his spine.
