Barnard Hughes was a renowned American character actor who enjoyed a successful career spanning 61 years and eight decades. He made his Broadway debut in 1939 in Mary McCarthy's "Please, Mrs. Garibaldi", which unfortunately only lasted four performances. Hughes appeared in 22 more Broadway shows, including his last, Noël Coward's "Waiting in the Wings" in 2000.
Throughout his career, Hughes won numerous awards, including the 1978 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his iconic role in "Da" (1988),which also earned him the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play. He received a lifetime achievement Drama Desk Award in 2000.
Born Bernard Aloysius Kiernan Hughes on July 16, 1915, in Bedford Hills, New York, to Irish immigrants Marcella "Madge" (Kiernan) and Owen Hughes, he later changed the spelling of his Christian name on the advice of a numerologist. Hughes attended La Salle Academy and Manhattan College before joining New York City's Shakespeare Fellowship Repertory Co. for two years.
He made his Broadway debut in Shakespeare until 1964, when he played Marcellus to Richard Burton's Hamlet. Off-Broadway, he played Polonius to Stacy Keach's Obie Award-winning Hamlet in 1972. His only other Shakespearean turn on the boards of the Great White Way was as Dogberry in "Much Ado About Nothing" in the 1972-73 season, which brought him his first Tony nomination.
Hughes had a 54-year-long screen career, equally adept in television as in movies. He was a regular on the soap opera Guiding Light from 1961-66. He appeared on various sit-coms, including "The Phil Silvers Show", "Car 54, Where Are You?", "All In the Family", and "The Bob Newhart Show". He eventually headlined his own sit-com, Doc, in the mid '70s, which had a successful first season but was canceled early into its second.
Hughes' breakthrough performance in the movies was arguably in Paddy Chayefsky's The Hospital (1971),where he played a messianic doctor who was a victim of malpractice and turned avenger. He also appeared in Best Picture Oscar winner Midnight Cowboy (1969) as a middle-aged gay mamma's boy who picks up self-styled "hustler" Joe Buck with disastrous consequences.
Hughes married actress Helen Stenborg in 1950 and they remained married until his death on July 11, 2006, five days before what would have been his 91st birthday. The couple had two children, theatrical director Doug Hughes and a daughter, actress Laura Hughes.
