As confirmed by The Hollywood Reporter, character actor David Margulies has died “after a long illness.” He was 78.
Margulies was born in Brooklyn in 1937 and started acting in off-Broadway productions at a young age. He got his first role on Broadway in 1973 in a production of The Iceman Cometh, and appeared in more than a dozen other Broadway shows in the decades that followed. Margulies started working in film and television on top of his regular theater work in the late ’70s, appearing in projects like The Front, Kojak, and All That Jazz.
His most famous acting job came in 1984, when he was hired to play Mayor Clotch, a not-so-subtle nod to real-life New York mayor Ed Koch, in Ghostbusters. Clotch was a rare supporter of the Ghostbusters, although he was less interested in stopping paranormal threats than gaining support for a future re-election campaign. Margulies also reprised the role of Clotch in Ghostbusters II.
Margulies’ career continued strong after Ghostbusters, and he appeared in multiple episodes of both Law & Order and Special Victims Unit, as well as in The Good Wife, Happyish, and Blue Bloods. He also appeared in eight episodes of The Sopranos, playing Tony’s lawyer Neil Mink. His final role will be as Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel in an upcoming ABC TV movie about Bernie Madoff.