David Dukes; Versatile Character Actor on Screen, Stage

David Dukes--a prolific character actor who moved easily and often among stage, film and television--died suddenly during his day off from filming ABC’s latest Stephen King miniseries, “Rose Red.” He was 55.

Dukes was pronounced dead Monday evening at St. Clare Hospital in Lakewood, Wash., a suburb of Tacoma, after collapsing at a nearby sports center, according to Ed Duke of the Pierce County medical examiner’s office. The cause of death apparently was a heart attack, he added.

Dukes had several days of shooting remaining on the miniseries, in which he portrayed a villainous professor, and production was halted Tuesday in his memory. Mark Carliner, executive producer of “Rose Red,” said in a statement that “the production is considering the creative options for the scenes he had yet to shoot.”

“Our hearts go out to [David’s] family and friends,” Carliner said. “. . . We will miss him.”

Tall and commanding, Dukes was best known for his roles in such TV miniseries and movies as “The Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance,” and “The Josephine Baker Story,” for which he received an Emmy nomination.

Equally comfortable portraying heavies--as he did when playing a murderer in the film “The First Deadly Sin” or Edith Bunker’s would-be rapist in a 1977 episode of “All in the Family”--or handling a comic turn, as he did on another series, “The Mommies,” Dukes was remembered emotionally by colleagues for his creative range, humor and devotion to his craft.

“He just filled the day with joy and laughs,” recalled Swoosie Kurtz, who worked with Dukes for two seasons on “Sisters,” in which they played husband and wife. It was one of several TV series on which he was a regular.

“He would always find the humor in any situation,” she said Tuesday. “I just admired him so as an actor. He had a wonderful, very handsome, sexy presence and that beautiful voice. . . . He just made the long days so much fun.”

Over the last three decades, Dukes made more than 20 feature films as well, including “Only When I Laugh” and “Gods and Monsters.”

As accomplished as he was in film and on TV, Dukes excelled on the stage. “Theater is where my career has come from,” he told The Times in 1995. “Every time I come back and touch it, it changes me. Emotionally, that’s where the work comes from for me.”

Locally, Dukes appeared in all the theaters at the Music Center--at the Ahmanson in “Another Part of the Forest,” “Light Comedies” and “Measure for Measure”; with the L.A. Philharmonic in “Every Good Boy Deserves Favor”; and at the Mark Taper Forum, most notably in “The Importance of Being Ernest” and “Travesties.”

Dukes was a founding member of the Matrix Theatre Company, which operates out of a 99-seat playhouse in Hollywood and specializes in double-cast productions, enabling the actors to appear on stage even as they accept more lucrative work in film and TV.

“He was a pure actor,” said Matrix producer Joe Stern. “He loved language and the traditions of the theater. He loved the whole process.”

Dukes delivered what Stern believes “might have been his finest performance” earlier this year at the theater in “Waiting for Godot.” The actor had initially resisted taking the role, Stern said, but after trying it out in a reading, he developed “a deep connection to that play. The greatest thing an actor can do is surprise you, and he did that,” Stern said.

The “Godot” troupe was organizing a theater party to see an upcoming production of the play by an Irish company at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse, but Dukes called Stern from Washington on Monday afternoon to say he wouldn’t be able to make it because of a job conflict, Stern said.

Dukes was also a veteran of 20 Broadway productions, including “Amadeus,” “M. Butterfly” and “Bent,” for which he received a Tony nomination, and Arthur Miller’s “Broken Glass.”

Born in San Francisco, Dukes joined the American Conservatory Theater in 1967, the year the company was founded. After spending three years at ACT, he moved to Los Angeles. When jobs weren’t forthcoming, Dukes worked around the country with such repertory companies as the Alley Theatre in Houston and Chicago’s Goodman Theatre. In 1971, he made his Broadway debut in a revival of Moliere’s “School for Wives.”

Since 1983 Dukes had been married to poet, writer and professor Carol Muske-Dukes, with whom he had a daughter, Annie. He also leaves a son, Shawn, from his first marriage.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete at press time.

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Times staff writer Paul Brownfield contributed to this story.