John Mahoney

The actor John Mahoney died on Sunday, which is fitting.  Mahoney attended Mass at a nearby church we sometimes attend.  He was even said to go to ours on occasion.  Mahoney always looked to be the kind of guy you’d want to shake hands with after the Our Father.

I ran into Mahoney once, in the parking lot at the Sports Authority by our house.  He was getting out of his Jeep, I was walking back to my car, probably after picking up yet another pair of batting gloves for Clare.  Neither of us tried to make eye contact.  We were just two middle-aged guys running errands.  For me, that was normal.  That Mahoney would be doing the same was refreshing.

Mahoney learned to act on the Chicago stage, Steppenwolf to be exact, and could have relocated to the West Coast a long time ago.  His role as Martin Crane in the popular television series “Frazier” necessitated long stretches in Hollywood, but he always came back.  “I can’t tell you why my heart is so full of Chicago,” he was quoted in the Tribune yesterday, “but it’s where I want to be.  When I’m not here, I’m not as happy.”

Early on as a stage actor, Mahoney was pretty anonymous on the street.  Chicaogans aren’t likely to stop and point to anyone who moved them in the second act of last night’s play.    Even after his movie and television success, people here didn’t make a big deal out seeing a movie star (e.g., see Sports Authority, above).  Maybe no one wanted to risk frightening away an actor who (as today’s NYT noted), in character as Martin Crane, chided his son Niles for saying a restaurant had “food to die for.”  The answer could’ve come straight from my own father:  “Niles, your country and your family are to die for.  Food is to eat.”  Just speaking that line gave Mahoney a whole lot of cred.

I’ve read a number of retrospectives on Mahoney’s career; everyone seems to have a favorite stage or screen performance.  Nobody, though, has picked out mine, as White Sox—or should we say Black Sox?—manager Kid Gleason in John Sayle’s movie version of “Eight Men Out.”  Mahoney portrays Gleason as an honest man in an impossible situation.  More than anything, he wants to believe his players are honest, too.  At one point, he calls them the greatest bunch of players he’s ever seen, as if talent and virtue are synonymous.

John Mahoney was an English immigrant.  The role of Kid Gleason made him a Chicagoan.