As reported by the Associated Press, veteran TV and Broadway actor Fritz Weaver has died. A Tony winner and an Emmy nominee, Weaver appeared in tons of memorable TV shows and a handful of movies. No cause of death has been given. Weaver was 90.
Born in Pittsburgh in 1926, Weaver was a conscientious objector during World War II and didn’t get into acting until the 1950s. His earliest TV roles included Playhouse 90, Studio One In Hollywood, and a TV movie of Jane Eyre. In the ‘60s, he appeared in a pair of classic Twilight Zone episodes: “Third From The Sun” and “The Obsolete Man.” In the former, he played a scientist who steals a space ship so he can save his family from nuclear war, eventually settling on a planet called Earth. In the latter, he’s the Chancellor of a fascist state that sentences a librarian (Burgess Meredith) to death for “obsolescence,” only to find himself later deemed obsolete. He also appeared in the Twilight Zone revival in the ‘80s, playing a priest who discovers that an alien world was destroyed by an exploding sun—the light of which reached the Earth on the day Jesus was born, making it the biblical “Christmas Star.”