Actor Buck Henry Dead at 89

Comic genius and actor Buck Henry, who was one of the most loved names and was known for his satirical sense to comedy has passed away at the age of 89. Henry appeared in the Graduate, What’s Up, Doc?, To Die For and TV’s Get Smart.

Henry, also a two-time Oscar nominee who often appeared onscreen — perhaps most memorably as a 10-time host (all in the show’s first four years) on Saturday Night Live — died of a heart attack Wednesday at a Los Angeles hospital, his wife, Irene, told The Washington Post. He had suffered a stroke in November 2014.

With his sad visage, owlish spectacles, and ubiquitous baseball cap, Henry crafted the persona of a playful egghead. He was described by the late Los Angeles Times film critic Charles Champlin as having the “operative demeanor of a kind of organized Wally Cox.”

“He wasn’t a screenwriter when I asked him to write the screenplay. He improvised comedy,” Nichols recalled in a 2008 interview with Vanity Fair. "He had not, to my knowledge, written anything. And I said, ‘I think you could do it; I think you should do it.’ And he could, and he did.”

At the time, Henry was working in his second season as a story editor for Get Smart, the sidesplitting spy spoof he created with Mel Brooks.

"Turman, Nichols and I related to The Graduate in exactly the same way," Henry told Vanity Fair. "We all thought we were [the book’s protagonist] Benjamin Braddock. Plus, it’s an absolutely first-class novel, with great characters, great dialogue, a terrific theme. Who could resist it? I read it and I said, 'Yes, let’s go.'"

As an actor, Henry was memorable in Milos Forman’s Taking Off (1971) as a father seeking the whereabouts of his runaway daughter; in Catch-22 as Lt. Col. Korn; and in Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) as David Bowie’s business partner.

May his soul rest in peace.