SwayBlog

Ever since the reboot – or, to be more precise, “continuation”  – of Frasier was announced, there have been question marks about the absent characters in the new series. Niles and Daphne will not be present, amidst rumours that neither David Hyde Pierce or Jane Leeves were interested in participating in the show, and, inevitably, a whole raft of much-loved supporting figures will not be present. 

But if the revival is a hit, they will be able to return in subsequent series (and, indeed, may well wish to be associated with a successful reboot). There is, however, one much-loved mainstay of the original who will not be coming back: Martin Crane, Frasier and Niles’s loving but perpetually bewildered father, as played by the great John Mahoney, who died in 2018.

Martin was an indispensable part of the original show, grounding his sons’ often high-blown antics in a blue-collar reality that made the contrast between their two worlds all the funnier. Whether he was tending to his beloved Jack Russell terrier – and Frasier’s great nemesis – Eddie, relaxing in the world’s most-loved and least aesthetically appealing armchair (or “recliner” in the show’s parlance), or drinking beer and enjoying watching sports on television with his friends, his profoundly unpretentious persona gave the show a warmth and heart that made him an irreplaceable character.

Frasier’s star Kelsey Grammer acknowledged this when he was discussing the new series, saying that it would “most certainly be honouring him according to his merit” and praised Mahoney personally, saying: “His loss is and was devastating and must be given the proper attention in honour of the extraordinary man he was and the contribution he made to the show and to the acting profession.” 

This tribute has been done properly. Not only is the neighbourhood bar that the characters frequent in the now Boston-set series called Mahoney’s, but the first episode pays explicit homage to him. As its director James Burrows has said: “It’s a wonderful scene at the end of the show… It’s about two and a half, three minutes, without any laughs. You’ve got to be brave to do that.”

If there was any man who deserves such a remembrance, it was Mahoney. Born in Blackpool in 1940, where the family had been evacuated at the outset of the Second World War, he returned to Manchester when the war ended and had what he later described as a grim, dour childhood. As he said to the Guardian in 2002: “I associate Manchester with need and want and ration books... with dirt and smoke and smog and fog. I know all that’s gone now, but that’s what stays in my head.” Although he dabbled in acting at the local children’s theatre while he was there, he left Britain at the age of 18, bound for America and a career in the army before working as an associate editor on medical journals.

He made a deliberate effort to lose his Mancunian accent as soon as he arrived in his newly adopted country – not a trace of it remains in his work on screen – and commented in an interview with the Arts Desk: “I knew I was going to live the rest of my life in the US and I didn’t want to be on the outside looking in. They make such a big deal about it: anyone from the United Kingdom is automatically regarded as brilliant beyond belief. I didn’t want to live with that. I’m not a non-conformist. I wanted to be like everybody else.”

Mahoney began what would eventually become a stellar acting career in Chicago, first under the tutelage of a then-unknown David Mamet, who cast him in his play The Water Engine in 1977, and subsequently with the city’s revered theatre company Steppenwolf, where he worked with the likes of Gary Sinise and John Malkovich, both of whom became lifelong friends. Belying Malkovich’s reputation for being esoteric, even eccentric, Mahoney said of him: “John’s not mysterious or menacing…to me, he’s just a guy from a small town in Illinois, who goes to basketball games – he loves basketball – and who comes over to my house for Thanksgiving dinner and makes the best gravy I’ve ever tasted.” 

Yet Mahoney didn’t achieve wider recognition until he was in his mid-40s, when he won a Tony award in 1986 for his appearance in John Guare’s play The House of Blue Leaves, in which he played a zookeeper who had aspirations of becoming a Hollywood songwriter.

The acclaim that he received finally put him on the radar of casting directors, and after a series of unrewarding bit parts in films, he now began to enjoy the roles that he deserved. Mahoney was a versatile actor in that he could either portray stern-faced authoritarians or jovial everymen – occasionally with the characters shading between the two – and he soon found himself in roles that were considerably meatier than he had been offered before.

He was a villainous judge in the Cher legal thriller Suspect, the baseball manager Kid Gleason in the sports drama Eight Men Out and Ione Skye’s protective father in Cameron Crowe’s romantic comedy Say Anything. The latter may be best remembered now for its famous scene of its star John Cusack holding up a boombox to play Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes to his would-be inamorata. But Mahoney’s nuanced performance in a complex role – it is revealed that he has been embezzling money from his business in order to provide for his daughter’s financial independence – was one of the most memorable parts of an excellent film.

Yet perhaps his best and most striking role at this time came in a single scene in another Cher vehicle, Moonstruck, in which he played a college professor ditched by a younger student in a restaurant. He has a memorable monologue, delivered to Olympia Dukakis, in which he declares that he is “just a burnt out old gasbag” attracted to “this fresh young beautiful face”. But, he goes on to confess, that the relationship will inevitably end when the younger woman realises that he is not the “great guy who’s just brilliant and thinks out loud” but a needy, complex – and, crucially, older – human being who will never be enough for her. 

Mahoney later said of the film: “Moonstruck was my breakthrough in pictures. The restaurant scene was an actor’s dream. It completely changed my career. For the first time audiences were able to see me as I really look. I never envisioned in a million years the movie would be so great or that my role would have so much impact.”

Parts befitting his talent soon followed, including working with the Coen brothers in their comedies Barton Fink and The Hudsucker Proxy; his casting in the former as an alcoholic author loosely based on William Faulkner was a welcome reminder that he could play surreal comedy just as well as conveying gravitas. He was also memorable in the Richard Gere legal thriller Primal Fear as a corrupt DA, if overshadowed by Edward Norton’s star-making role as a duplicitous defendant, and his gravelly tones saw him much in demand for voice work, which included parts in the likes of Antz and The Iron Giant.

Yet it was when he was cast in Frasier in 1993 that he found his defining role. Its co-creator Peter Warren commented: “When we pitched the character of Martin, we said to picture John Mahoney. Warren [Littlebank, NBC President] said if we could get John, he was pre-approved.” Mahoney was still living in Chicago at the time and his only real reservation about filming Frasier was that he had to spend several months of the year living in Los Angeles, where the series was filmed. 

As he said in 2002: “I love the show, I’m immensely proud of being on a show that has been so honoured, but at the same time it’s not where I live, and that’s what drives me crazy. It’s geographical, totally. If the show shot in Chicago, I’d shoot it for 20 years. But I just miss home so much. And I miss stage work. So I’d hate for Frasier to go on without me, but I’m afraid it would have to.”

Rather than this occur, the original series came to an end in 2004, but not before Mahoney had been nominated for two Emmys and two Golden Globes, as well as forming part of the much-lauded ensemble. He remained proud of his work on the show, saying to Time Out in 2008: “Frasier was a classy gig. I didn’t for one minute think it was less prestigious or artistic than doing a play.” Although he did occasionally voice dissatisfaction that Martin wasn’t allowed storylines that dealt, however comically, with the difficulties and indignities of old age; instead, he ended the show married once again, this time to a woman who babysat Frasier and Niles as children.

When it came to Mahoney’s own personal life, he was more opaque. In 2002, he suggested that, like many a confirmed bachelor, “I was never very mature in my relationships with women. First sign of conflict, I was gone. Wouldn’t discuss it, because I was afraid it would lead to an argument.” He went into greater detail about his lack of a romantic life a few years later. “It doesn’t exist for me anymore,” he said. “I think that’s dead and buried. Twenty-three years ago I had cancer of the colon. I had to have major surgery, and I have a colostomy. I really couldn’t have sex after that. I’m very happy by myself and with my friends, but no, I’m definitely not involved with anybody. Nor do I ever look to be.”

To the surprise of much of the public, when he died many tributes noted that he had lived privately as a gay man and was a well-known fixture on the Chicago LGBTQ scene. He may well have been at home working with such openly gay actors as David Hyde Pierce and Edward Hibbert on Frasier, but never chose to discuss his sexuality in interviews. However, there may have been a hint of his inclination in a role that he took in a 2006 episode of the medical drama ER, in which he plays a gay man and former drag queen whose partner is dying of heart trouble, but whose family are reluctant to acknowledge their relationship.

At the end, Mahoney delivers a fiery speech which may well have echoed some of his own thoughts, in which his character says: “As bad as it all may sound, I belong to a rare tribe constitutionally incapable of giving up on fantasy. If I can get up like a lady and sell a torch song to a crowd then I sure as hell can hold onto the hope that maybe, somehow Jimmy’s gonna be okay. We are all liars, just like they said. The makeup, the wig, the padded dress. All a beautiful lie we tell ourselves. But it makes us feel better.”

It was a fine, moving scene, proof that Mahoney was just as skilled at conveying deeply emotional drama as he was at selling hilarious comedy, and a reminder that his death took away one of the greatest actors of his generation. The tribute that the new series of Frasier will pay him is deeply welcome, and undoubtedly deserved, and it is a blessing that there was never any discussion about recasting the role. Because just as there will only ever be one Martin Crane, there will only ever be one John Mahoney.

Frasier is on Paramount+ now

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