Gerrit Graham wrote the first line of a Grateful Dead song and spent four decades playing the kind of men you cross the street to avoid. He died Tuesday. He was 77. His family announced the death without giving a cause or a location.
The song is "Victim or the Crime," recorded for Built to Last, the Dead's 13th and final studio album, released in 1989. Graham co-wrote it with Bob Weir. The memorable opening line, "Patience runs out on the junkie," was his. The two men met in the 1970s through a mutual friend, and Graham helped his friend out on the track.
Graham's face was familiar long before his name was. He made his onscreen debut as a conspiracy nut in Brian De Palma's Greetings (1968), then returned for the sequel Hi, Mom! (1970), both featuring Robert De Niro in early career roles. He and De Palma had history before the cameras rolled. Graham was born in New York on Nov. 27, 1948, raised in St. Louis, Chicago and Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and attended Columbia University a few years after De Palma graduated. The two managed the school's theater company, the Columbia Players.
Their collaboration peaked with Phantom of the Paradise (1974), where Graham played Beef, a glam rock star electrocuted on stage. It was one of his best-known turns. He reunited with De Palma for Home Movies (1979), starring Kirk Douglas, in which Graham's character runs an EST-like summer camp called "Spartanetics."
The 1970s were busy. Graham played an aspiring country singer in Paul Bartel's Cannonball! (1976), a computer nerd opposite Julie Christie in Demon Seed (1977), and the abusive boyfriend of Susan Sarandon's character in Louis Malle's Pretty Baby (1978). He also appeared in Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw (1976).
In 1980, he was one of the scheming salesmen in Robert Zemeckis' Used Cars, alongside Kurt Russell. The decade brought National Lampoon's Class Reunion (1982), The Annihilators (1985) and Last Resort (1986). By 1990 he was the foster father of Alex Vincent's Andy Barkley in Child's Play 2. He had a role in This Boy's Life (1993), starring Robert De Niro again, this time opposite Leonardo DiCaprio.
Television gave him steady work. He played the ruthless right-hand man of George Kennedy's Carter McKay on CBS' Dallas in 1988-89. He voiced Franklin Sherman, the adoptive dad of Jon Lovitz's character, on the 1994-95 ABC-Fox animated comedy The Critic. Guest spots piled up across Starsky and Hutch, Laverne & Shirley, St. Elsewhere, China Beach, The Larry Sanders Show, Seinfeld, The Wonder Years, Star Trek: Voyager and Law & Order.
He also wrote. Graham wrote on three episodes of the rebooted Twilight Zone in 1985-86, contributed to the films Oliver & Company (1988) and The Little Mermaid (1989), and co-wrote the 1990 short film The Prince and the Pauper with his brother, Sam Graham.
He married Deborah in 1982. She survives him, along with their sons, Jack and Henry, and grandchildren Nolan, Micah, Vera and Joey.
The arc of his career was unusual. He moved from De Palma's counterculture comedies to a Grateful Dead co-write to a franchise horror sequel, never settling into one lane. The Dead recorded his words on their last studio album, and the line about patience running out on the junkie still opens the song. On Tuesday, his family said he was gone.
According to Hollywood Reporter.