Tom Aldredge

Thomas Ernest Aldredge (February 28, 1928 – July 22, 2011) was an American television, film and stage actor. He won a Daytime Emmy Award for playing the role of Shakespeare in Henry Winkler Meets William Shakespeare (1978). His Broadway stage career spanned five decades, including five Tony Award nominations. He played both the Narrator and the Mysterious Man in the original Broadway cast of Into the Woods. He also appeared on television in programs including Ryan's Hope, Damages, and Boardwalk Empire, with a notable role as Hugh De Angelis on The Sopranos. Life and career Aldredge was born in Dayton, Ohio, the son of Lucienne Juliet (née Marcillat) and William Joseph Aldredge, a colonel in the United States Army Air Corps. He originally planned to become a lawyer and was a Pre-Law student at the University of Dayton in the late 1940s. In 1947 he decided to pursue a career as an actor after attending a performance of the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire. Aldredge carved out a respected career on the Broadway stage that spanned five decades, garnering five Tony Award nominations. He made his Broadway debut as Danny in the 1959 musical The Nervous Set. In 1972 he won a Drama Desk Award for his portrayal of Ozzie, the father of a blinded Vietnam veteran, in David Rabe's Sticks and Bones. He played Henry VIII's fool, Will Sommers, in Richard Rodgers' penultimate musical Rex in 1976. He originated the role of Norman Thayer Jr. in On Golden Pond in 1978, earning a Drama Desk Award nomination. His best-known role, however, was that of the Narrator/Mysterious Man in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's Into the Woods, a role he originated on Broadway and later repeated in the PBS American Playhouse production and the 1997 tenth anniversary concert. He also created the role of Doctor Tambourri in another Sondheim/Lapine collaboration, Passion.