Phil Bruns, a familiar-face character actor best known on TV as the cigar-chomping hard-hat dad on the '70s soap-opera parody “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.” .Among his film credits, he played a faithful production manager to the filmmaker played by Peter O’Toole in “The Stunt Man” (1980) and a small-town doctor battling zombies in “Return of the Living Dead, Part II” (1988). He also had roles in “Flashdance” (1983), “The Out-of-Towners” (1970) and “The Great Waldo Pepper” (1975) and appeared on TV in “Route 66,” “The Defenders,” “Sanford and Son,” “M*A*S*H,” “Kojak,” “Naked City,” “Barney Miller,” “Maude” and “Seinfeld” (in which he was the first actor to play Jerry Seinfeld’s father), among many other series. He was 80.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/arts/television/phil-bruns-dad-on-mary-hartman-mary-hartman-dies-at-80.htm
