Under the Radar: Michael Constantine

 

1927-2021

From 1969 to 2002, actor Michael Constantine was best know for his four-year stint playing Seymour Kaufmann, the mildly sardonic but basically well-meaning principal of racially diverse Walt Whitman High School on the waning-days-of-the-counterculture TV series...

...Room 222. Characterized at the time as a situation comedy, if it was premiering today it instead would be referred to as a "dramady." For instance, Lloyd Haynes as compassionate history teacher Pete Dixon and Denise Nicholas as compassionate guidance counselor Liz McIntyre were almost NEVER funny. They were dramatic characters dealing with dramatic things like drug abuse and teenage pregnancy (keep in mind that in its original network run, the show was preceded by The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family, so all this serious subject matter may have seemed like a breath of fresh air to viewers at home.) As for the comedy aspects of Room 222, that was left to the show's breakout star Karen Valentine, who played the perky student teacher Alice Johnson, regular classroom characters such as Larry, played by a young Eric Laneuville, and Constantine himself. Of course, as principal he often and none-too-enthusiastically had to get involved with all the serious stuff as well, but was allowed enough one-liners anyway to win an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series: 

Constantine mentions a few names in his acceptance speech. The producer he couldn't remember at first, Gene Reynolds, went on to produce or coproduce MASH and Lou Grant. Jim Brooks, who created Room 222, is usually listed in credits as James L. Brooks, and went on to co-create The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, the aforementioned Lou Grant, and Taxi before turning his attention to feature films, writing and directing such critically-acclaimed, and commercially-successful-to-boot flicks as Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, and As Good as It Gets. If all that wasn't enough, his company also produces The Simpsons (I covet his life.)

Here's a scene from Room 222's first season (before it ditched the laugh track.) Note that Allan Burns--the other Mary Tyler Moore Show creator--is listed as that episode's writer:

So that kid's going to get transferred out of Walt Whitman High School? To where, exactly? Hart Crane Academy?

I said before that until 2002, Michael Constantine was best known for Room 222. All that changed when the above sleeper hit theaters. Though the movie's primary focus is on a young Chicago woman (Nia Vardolas, also the writer of the screenplay) who meets, falls in love, and marries the guy who played the deejay on Northern Exposure (John Corbett), the real fun in this film comes from the bride's wildly unassimilated Greek family, headed by patriarch Constantine:

How about the Greek root of toupee, Mr. Portokolas?

 From the same film, Constantine (his pate here in its more natural state of grace) shares a scene with SCTV alumni Andrea Martin:

Now we know where Donald Trump gets his medical advice.

For our final scene from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Gus Portokolas proposes a toast. Standing by his side is wife Maria, played by Lainie Kazan (who, like Martin, is deserving of her own "Under the Radar" post.) And for those of you who don't understand Greek-accented English, there's subtitles:

Nice to hear the term "fruit" applied to the whole of the human race rather than one put-upon segment of it. I think Walt Whitman would agree.

Like a lot of movie and TV actors, Michael Constantine did his share of memorabilia shows, such as this New Jersey one nine years ago. Also in attendance was Alice Cooper, Robert Loggia, Dean Cain, and Gomez Addams himself, John Astin. In this very noisy clip, Astin chats with Constantine:

I can't make out what they're saying either. I just think it's cool they knew each other.