The busy and versatile stage, TV, and film actor Charles Hallahan died last week of an apparent heart attack. Probably most widely known for his work as Capt. Charlie Devane on the TV series Hunter, Hallahan was most at home in the theatre, scoring his greatest artistic triumph in multiple lead roles in The Kentucky Cycle, Robert Schenkkan's epic historical play, in which Hallahan starred both at Seattle's Intiman Theatre and at the Mark Taper Forum. Hallahan did not, however, stay with the show when it moved to Broadway--mainly because, it was said at the time, he had a growing family and a thriving West Coast career in television and film.
That decision typified the career of this quintessential working actor. Indeed, Hallahan's credits are too numerous to mention, but in addition to his work on Hunter and on the first season of Grace Under Fire, a few of his film credits include Dante's Peak, Executive Decision, Dave, Wild Palms, True Believer, and Pale Rider.
But it was his theatre background that formed his craft. A high school athlete in his native Philadelphia, he served as a Navy medic and went on to graduate from Rutgers. He then received a Masters in Fine Arts from Temple University in Philadelphia and went to study under Wiliam Ball at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco in the early 1970s. That's where Warner Shook, now artistic director of the Intiman Theatre, first met Hallahan. The two went on to work together in numerous plays, including three of Brian Friel's.
"His vibrancy and his larger-than-life presence imbued all the plays he was in with such a life force," said Shook, who directed Hallahan in The Kentucky Cycle. "He will be so missed by so many people."
Apart from Kentucky Cycle, his stage work included five seasons at ACT and the role of McMurphy in the long-running Bay Area production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, as well as work at the Old Globe, Los Angeles Theatre Center, South Coast Repertory, the Matrix Theatre, and the Colorado Shakespeare Festival.
Friends say Hallahan's father had died in his 40s of congenital heart problems, and that Hallahan himself had a quadruple bypass in 1982. Hallahan, who owned a home in Ireland and in the Silverlake hills near Hollywood, is survived by his wife, Barbara, sons Seamus and Liam, his mother, Margaret, and his brothers Michael, Kenneth, and Lawrence. A memorial will be held Saturday, Dec. 6 at 12:30 p.m. at the Ca„on Theatre, 205 N. Ca„on Dr., Beverly Hills
