Say goodbye

Peter Boyle, the dad on "Everybody Loves Raymond," died yesterday night at the age of 71.

He had been suffering from multiple myeloma and heart disease.

Yahoo reports:
While a generation of TV viewers knows him as Frank Barone — with his trademark "Holy crap!" line — Boyle had a respectable career long before "Everybody Loves Raymond" debuted in 1996, including a part in Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver."

He also was close friends with John Lennon, who was best man at Boyle's wedding.

A member of the Christian Brothers religious order who turned to acting, the tall, prematurely balding Boyle gained notice in the title role of the 1970 sleeper hit "Joe," playing an angry, murderous bigot at odds with the emerging hippie youth culture.

Briefly typecast in tough, irate roles, Boyle began to escape the image as Robert Redford's campaign manager in "The Candidate" and left it behind entirely after "Young Frankenstein," Brooks' 1974 send-up of horror films.

The latter movie's defining moment came when Gene Wilder, as scientist Frederick Frankenstein, introduced his creation to an upscale audience. Boyle, decked out in tails, performed a song-and-dance routine to the Irving Berlin classic "Puttin' On the Ritz."

Through his wife, a friend of Yoko Ono, the actor became close friends with Lennon. "We were both seekers after a truth, looking for a quick way to enlightenment," Boyle once said of Lennon.

In 1990, Boyle had a stroke and couldn't talk for six months.

In 1999, he had a heart attack on the "Raymond" set. He soon regained his health, however, and returned to the series.

Despite his work in "Everybody Loves Raymond" and other Hollywood productions, Boyle made New York City his home. He and his wife had two daughters, Lucy and Amy.