Herbert Edelman; TV Character Actor

Herbert Edelman, veteran character actor remembered for his guest appearances as Bea Arthur’s ex-husband in “The Golden Girls,” has died. He was 62.

Edelman died Sunday of emphysema at the Motion Picture and Television Fund Hospital in Woodland Hills, said his companion, Christina Pickles.

Prematurely bald, Edelman first gained national notice when he portrayed the bewildered telephone installer in Neil Simon’s hit Broadway comedy “Barefoot in the Park.” Edelman was driving a cab when director Mike Nichols tapped him for the role.

“I’d done a lot of acting before, mostly at Brooklyn College,” Edelman told The Times in 1970. “I went on hacking for a while. I’d put the cab in the garage while I was on stage and pull it out after the play, sometimes picking up people who were in my audience.”

The comedy about a young married couple ran from 1963 through 1968. Edelman also played the workman in the 1967 film version starring Robert Redford (re-creating his stage role) and Jane Fonda.

Edelman was also a major character in the 1968 film “The Odd Couple” starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau and based on another Simon stage hit.

On television, Edelman was nominated for an Emmy for his recurring role as Arthur’s quarrelsome ex-husband in “The Golden Girls.” He was also a popular guest in the series “Murder, She Wrote.”

But Edelman’s major role on television was as a leading man in the half-hour sitcom “The Good Guys,” which ran on CBS from 1968 to 1970. He played Bert Gramus to Bob Denver’s Rufus Butterworth, two childhood friends who owned a diner called “Bert’s Place.”

Edelman said later that he rued his decision to make the television series rather than accept an invitation from Nichols to work in the 1970 motion picture “Catch-22.”

Edelman is survived by his father, Mayer Edelman of New York; two daughters, Briana and Jacy Edelman of Middleburg, Va.; a sister, Betty T. Bennett, of Washington, D.C., and a brother, Marvin of New York.

Services are planned at 2:30 p.m. Friday at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, 254 S. Robertson, Beverly Hills, and at 11 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 11, at Union Temple, 18 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Pickles and the Edelman family have asked that any memorial donations be made to the Emphysema Foundation, in care of the American Lung Assn., 5858 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 300, Los Angeles, Calif. 90036.