George Gaynes
Birth name	George Jongejans
Born	May 16 1917 (1917--) (age 90) Helsinki, Finland
Spouse(s)	Allyn Ann McLerie

George Gaynes (George Jongejans) (born May 16 1917) is a Finnish-born ^[1] American actor.

Career

Gaynes was born in Helsinki, Finland, the son of Iya De Gay (later known as Lady Iya Abdy) and Gerrit Jongejans. He is an accomplished Broadway actor, as well as a film and television star in the United States. He is best known to movie fans as the male lead, John Van Horn, on the soap opera in the movie Tootsie and as Commandant Eric Lassard in the cult classic Police Academy series, and to television fans as the curmudgeonly Henry Warnimont on the NBC series Punky Brewster, in which his wife, Allyn Ann McLerie, guest-starred as his love interest. Also Gaynes has Russian, Finnish and Dutch ancestry.

A United States citizen for most of his life, and blessed with a superb singing voice and an amiable stage presence, Gaynes rapidly built a reputation as a Broadway musical comedy performer in the '40s and '50s (his best-known appearance was in Wonderful Town, the musical version of My Sister Eileen). He had a career on the opera stages of Italy and France before World War II and in the US after the war. He alternated between stage musicals and both comic and dramatic plays, including his role as Bob Baker in the original production of Wonderful Town (1953), Gilbert and Sullivan operettas and as Henry Higgins in the 1964 US tour of My Fair Lady. In television, Gaynes provided Henry Warnimont's voice for the animated series version of Punky Brewster, and directed several episodes of WKRP in Cincinnati. Feature film work highlights include ‘’The Way We Were’‘, ‘’Nickelodeon’‘, and ‘’Tootsie’‘. In 1984 he played Commandant Lassard, the titular leader, in the first of seven Police Academy movies, and audiences of the 1980's may remember him as Frank Smith, the Mafia boss who was after Luke and Laura on the popular soap opera ‘’General Hospital’‘. In 1994, he played Serybryalzov in Louis Malle's acclaimed independent feature, ‘’Vanya on 42nd Street’‘. He was also featured in the 1996 film adaptation of Arthur Miller's ‘’The Crucible’‘.

Entering films and television in the early 1960s, Gaynes was a regular on the TV daytime dramas ‘’Search for Tomorrow’‘ and ‘’General Hospital’‘, and showed up in such movies as ‘’The Group’‘ (1968), ‘’Marooned’‘ (1969) and ‘’Doctor's Wives’‘ (1971). He was terrific in Dustin Hoffman's Tootsie (1981) as the aging, libidinous soap opera actor who tries to put the make on his co-star "Dorothy Michaels," little suspecting that Dorothy is really the certifiably male Michael Dorsey (Hoffman). In 1984, Gaynes was showcased on two different series, one on TV, the other on the big screen. The TV series was Punky Brewster, wherein Punky Brewster was spun off into a cartoon series, Gaynes came along as one of the voice talents. The aforementioned big-screen series was launched with Police Academy (1984), a juvenile comedy that somehow spawned six sequels, all of them featuring Gaynes as long-suffering police chief Lassard. None of his subsequent appearances drew as many laughs as did George Gaynes' setpiece in the first film, in which, while trying to deliver a public speech, he was the unwitting (but increasingly ecstatic) recipient of a prostitute's services.

Gaynes speaks seven different languages.

Selected filmography

Television roles

• Chicago Hope – Brook Austin
• The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd – Arthur Feldman
• Hearts Afire – Senator Strobe Smithers
• Punky Brewster – Henry Warnimont

Personal life

He has been married to Canadian-born stage and television actress and dancer, Allyn Ann McLerie, since December 20 1953, and they have two children.

References

1. ^ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0310960/

External links

• George Gaynes at the Internet Movie Database
• George Gaynes at the Internet Broadway Database

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