Eddie Mayehoff; Supporting Actor in Movie Comedies

Eddie Mayehoff, who played scene-stealing supporting roles in comedy films with Bob Hope, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, has died in Ventura. He was 83.

Mayehoff, whose long career in show business began in the early 1930s, died Thursday. He began as leader of a dance band that performed in hotels and clubs on the New York City circuit. Radio executives noticed Mayehoff’s comic skills and by 1940 he had a weekly show on the Mutual Radio Network, “Eddie Mayehoff on the Town,” in which he caricatured New Yorkers.

That was followed by a television show, “The Adventures of Fenimore J. Mayehoff,” in 1946. Mayehoff also performed several Broadway roles, including the part of Anderson, the boor, in “Season in the Sun.”

His success in that role brought offers from Hollywood, and Mayehoff began a series of supporting roles in comedy films. He appeared with Martin and Lewis in “That’s My Boy” in 1951; the following year, he joined the Martin-Lewis team in “The Stooge.”

Mayehoff also nabbed a leading role in the Bob Hope-Mickey Rooney comedy “Military Policeman.” In 1965’s “How to Murder Your Wife,” Mayehoff was teamed with Jack Lemmon and Virna Lisi as Lemmon’s scene-stealing attorney.

He is survived by a niece in Sante Fe, N.M.