Conrad Janis, 'Mork & Mindy' Star, Dies at 94
Conrad Janis, a busy character actor best known for playing Mindy McConnell's father Frederick on the Robin Williams sitcom Mork & Mindy, has died. He was 94. The actor, who was also a jazz trombonist and owned an art gallery, had over 100 credits to his name.
Janis died of organ failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on March 1, his business manager Dean Avedon told The Hollywood Reporter. He is survived by his two children from his first marriage, Christopher and Carin, and two grandchildren. Janis was married to his third wife, Maria Grimm, for 34 years until her death in September, reports The New York Times.
Janis was born in New York City on Feb. 11, 1928, and began performing as a teenager. He made his Broadway debut in 1945, the same year he starred in the movie Snafu. His next movie, Margie (1946), earned him a contract at 20th Century Fox, but he didn't find much success. One of the notable movies he starred in during the late 1940s was That Hagen Girl (1947), starring Ronald Reagan and Shiley Temple.
After his time at Fox didn't work out, Janis became one of the early regular stars on television. He appeared in dozens of early live television plays during the 1950s. He was seen in episodes of The Untouchables, Stoney Burke, The Doctors and the Nurses, Get Smart, and My Favorite Martian during the 1960s.
Janis was practically unavoidable on television during the 1970s and 1980s. He starred in episodes of Maude, The Waltons, Happy Days, Police Story, The Streets of San Francisco, Kojak, The Jeffersons, The Love Boat, Quark, Laverne & Shirley, The Golden Girls, and Murder, She Wrote.
Janis starred in all four seasons of Mork & Mindy, which starred Williams as the alien Mork and Pam Dawber as Mindy. One of Janis' regrets was never getting a chance to play his trombone on the show. "The producers wouldn't go for it," he told The Albany Democrat-Herald of Oregon in 1990. "We had a really cute script where I got together with my old Dixieland jazz band, but they didn't think it was funny enough."
The actor's long list of movie credits includes Maneater, Bad Blood, Crazy Hong Kong, Mr. Saturday Night, The Cable Guy, The Buddy Holly Story, Brewster's Millions, Oh God! Book II, The Happy Hooker, and Airport 1975. He also continued appearing on Broadway throughout his career, starring in a 1969 revival of The Front Page and Gore Vidal's A Visit to a Small Planet.