His daughter, Alex Whitehead-Gordon, stated her father had well being problems after a fall.
Mr. Whitehead constructed a gentle profession in movie and TV, mastering an accent that dripped of self-styled superiority and utilizing only a flick of an eyebrow or a delicate wince with comedic precision. The theater, nevertheless, was the place Mr. Whitehead totally explored his vary as an actor in dozens of roles over greater than 5 many years.
On Broadway, Mr. Whitehead obtained a Tony Award nomination in a 1980 revival of the musical “Camelot” taking part in the endearingly wayward King Pellinore reverse Richard Burton’s King Arthur. Earlier, Mr. Whitehead introduced a comic book contact to Sherlock Holmes with co-star Glenn Shut (whose character hires the detective) in Paul Giovanni’s “The Crucifer of Blood,” which ran on Broadway from 1978 and 1979.
In a uncommon foray into the deeply dramatic, Mr. Whitehead took on the title function in Shakespeare’s “Richard III” on the Previous Globe theater in San Diego in 1985. And even with Richard, Mr. Whitehead infused comedian touches as a counterpoint to the king’s malevolence. “With understated crafty,” famous a Los Angeles Instances assessment, “Whitehead and his character make us detest and snort.”
The theater match effectively into Mr. Whitehead’s love of language and respect for its energy. For each function, Mr. Whitehead stated he first tried to seize the character’s “rhythm and sound” — whether or not the button-down solicitor Mr. Bardolph within the lore-versus-fact comedy “Lettice and Lovage” on Broadway in 1990, or in revivals of the musical “My Honest Girl” as each the eccentric Colonel Pickering or the pompous Henry Higgins.
“Theater is phrases. Sound. The whole lot else is secondary,” he instructed the Province newspaper in Vancouver in 1971. “All the opposite attributes embellish what’s being stated. … I’m extremely suspicious of developments that distract from the phrases.”
Mr. Whitehead was creative director and actor from 1967 to 1977 of the annual Shaw Pageant in Ontario. He started touchdown cameos on tv sequence within the early 1980s together with the thriller sequence “Hart to Hart” and detective drama “Magnum P.I.” He later performed recurring roles as a frazzled butler within the sitcom “Marblehead Manor” (1987-88) and as an uptight neighbor of Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt in eight episodes of the sitcom “Mad About You” (1992-1999).
Within the 1998 season of “Associates,” Mr. Whitehead was the supercilious Bloomingdale’s boss of Rachel Inexperienced (Jennifer Aniston), and he performed a stuffy prep college headmaster in “Frasier” in 1996, utilizing his hawklike look to full comedian impact. The TV roles continued on well-liked dramas together with “The West Wing” as Bernard Thatch, an annoyingly opinionated White Home staffer.
“I feel there are particular issues you possibly can’t study,” he instructed the Los Angeles Instances. “Comedy isn’t just timing as folks most frequently say. It’s every little thing. The way in which you stroll. The way in which you look.”
He mobilized all his snobbish mannerisms for his movie debut within the 1986 comedy “Again to Faculty,” starring Dangerfield as a wisecracking businessman, Thornton Melon, who enrolls in his son’s faculty after giving a serious donation. Mr. Whitehead is the pinnacle of the enterprise college, Philip Barbay, who tries to get Melon expelled.
Of their first encounter, Melon is on the groundbreaking ceremony for a enterprise college constructing he has funded. Barbay, carrying a tweed cap, bow tie and indignant scowl, interrupts the occasion to inform the college’s dean (Ned Beatty) that he doesn’t assume “promoting admission to an clearly unqualified scholar could be very moral or honorable.”
“Hear, Sherlock,” Melon retorts, “whilst you have been tucked away up right here working in your ethics, I used to be on the market busting my hump in the actual world.”
Just a few moments later, Melon scoops up a shovelful of dust and tosses it. It rains down on Mr. Whitehead’s character, sitting in his open-top MG. It has, after all, right-hand British steering.
Francis Edward Paxton Whitehead was born on Oct. 17, 1937, in East Malling and Larkfield in England’s Kent countryside. His father was a lawyer, and his mom, an American-born former actress, was a homemaker. Mr. Whitehead was known as Paxton since boyhood.
He studied on the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Artwork in London and later discovered roles in touring troupes and roles such because the guard Francisco in “Hamlet” in 1958. “However I used to be the bottom of lows,” he instructed the Los Angeles Instances.
A twin British-U. S. citizen, he struck out for the US in 1960 with no particular plans. “Maybe spend a 12 months seeing what occurs and seeing the nation,” he recounted. He by no means returned to stay in Britain full-time and shortly made his option to Broadway, making his debut within the drama “The Affair” in 1962 and returning two years later showing in “Past the Fringe,” the hit British comedy revue.
He appeared on Broadway in additional than a dozen different productions. He additionally carried out at venues throughout Canada and the US, together with roles in farces by French playwright George Feydeau, and taking part in alongside Tim Conway as previous associates in Ron Clark’s comedy “A Bench within the Solar” in 1999 at Connecticut’s Westport Nation Playhouse.
In movies, Mr. Whitehead had small roles alongside Whoopi Goldberg in “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” (1986) and with Diane Keaton and Sam Shepard in “Child Increase” (1987). In “Kate & Leopold” (2001), starring Hugh Jackman and Meg Ryan, Mr. Whitehead performed the uncle of the time-traveling Leopold (Jackman).
Mr. Whitehead’s first marriage, to actress Patricia Gage, led to divorce. His second spouse, Katherine Robertson, died in 2009. Along with his daughter, of Arlington, Va., survivors embody a son, Charles, of Lincoln, Calif., each from his second marriage; a stepdaughter, Heather Whitehead; and 4 grandchildren.
In a 2017 interview, Mr. Whitehead was requested to sum up his life and profession in a single phrase. He responded shortly: “Serendipitous!”