Gene Dynarski, Actor on 'Seinfeld' and 'Close Encounters of
the Third Kind,' Dies at 86
The Hollywood Reporter
By Mike Barnes
4/24/2020
He also appeared on 'Star Trek,' 'Batman' and 'The X-Files'
and ran a small theater in L.A.
Gene Dynarski, a character actor who appeared in Steven
Spielberg's Duel and Close Encounters of the Third
Kind and played Izzy Mandelbaum Jr., the son of Lloyd Bridges'
character, on Seinfeld, has died. He was 86.
Dynarski died Feb. 27 in a rehabilitation center in Studio City,
playwright Ernest Kearney announced.
The Brooklyn
native also worked twice on the original Star Trek, as the
miner Ben Childress on the 1966 episode "Mudd's Women" and
as Krodak, who represents a city up for Federation membership, on the 1969
installment "The Mark of Gideon."
Dynarski was seen as Benedict, one of Egghead's (Vincent
Price) henchmen, on Batman in 1966, and on a 2000 episode
of The X-Files, his character fell victim to a monstrous bat
creature.
His résumé also included Earthquake (1974), Airport 1975 and All
the President's Men (1976) and Hill Street Blues, The
A-Team, Little House on the Prairie, Starsky and Hutch, Kung Fu, Kojak,
Bonanza and The Monkees, among other TV series.
In 1979, he opened The Gene Dynarski Theatre near
Sunset Boulevard and Western
Avenue in Los
Angeles, with Ed Harris starring in Tennessee
Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth as its first production.
Elisabeth Shue and Tom Hanks were among others who performed there before it
shuttered in the mid-1990s.
Born on Sept. 13, 1933, Dynarski worked as a "pin monkey"
at a bowling alley, served in the U.S. Navy and, after coming to L.A., began getting acting
jobs through noted casting director Lynn Stalmaster. In 1965, he made his
onscreen debut on an episode of the ABC medical drama Ben Casey.
In the 1971 telefilm Duel, Dynarski was a
trucker confronted in a roadside café by Dennis Weaver, who thinks he's the
murderous big-rig driver on his tail, and in Close Encounters of the
Third Kind (1977), he played the supervisor who sends out
Richard Dreyfuss to investigate those mysterious blackouts.
On the 1997 Seinfeld episode "The
English Patient," Dynarski's character and his equally competitive
dad and grandfather (Earl Schuman) all throw out their backs, then blame Jerry
for it. (He and Bridges returned for another episode the following season.)
Dynarski also portrayed Josef Stalin in the 1996
videogame Command & Conquer: Red Alert and won
a Los Angeles Drama Critics' Award for his performance in Among
the Vipers, produced by Kearney at
the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble.
Survivors include his two daughters.
Dynarski, Gene (Eugene
Dynarski)
Born: 9/13/1933, Brooklyn, New
York, U.S.A.
Died: 2/27/2020, Studio City, California,
U.S.A.
Gene Dynarski’s
westerns – actor:
The Big Valley (TV) – 1965 (Pollick)
Iron Horse (TV) – 1967 (Jaster)
The Outcasts (TV) – 1968 (posseman)
Bonanza (TV) – 1969, 1972 (Wheeler, Hostler)
Kung Fu (TV) – 1975 (Fred)
Little House on the Prairie (TV) – 1979 (Jedediah)
Father Murphy (TV) - 1982
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