Fans discuss instances where the show used different actors for the same character across episodes, including multiple Mr. Litmans, Newmans, Frank Costanzas, and Lloyd Brauns.
The other day the Seinfeld episode (Ch. 5 in New York) ran the episode where Elaine is afraid she'll get fired because her coworker didn't ask her what she wanted for lunch. She approaches Mr. Litman at the water cooler to ask if he's seen the book she left for him, about Christopher Columbus.
BUT -- this is not the same Mr. Litman whose son had a Bar Mitzvah, who wouldn't shake hands with his new Japanese partners (he had just sneezed on his hand) or who went into the muffin top business...
Right you are. Wasn't that only the voice though? Larry David did it, if memory serves me correctly. The jumping Newman sounds much like George Steinbrenner, doesn't he?
John Randolph played George's father in the original showing of Ep. #60 "The Handicap Spot", but was replaced by Jerry Stiller later for the syndicated showings. Does anyone know why they did that? I mean, I haven't seen anything but the original ep. Did they actually shoot again the scenes where Frank Costanza appears with different actor?
According to one, probably both, of the two Entertainment Weekly issues that devoted themselves almost entirely to Seinfeld a few years back, the answer is yes, the scenes were reshot, characterized by EW, I seem to recall, as a "rarity" in TV episode-producing.
I didn't know about the two Newmans. "News Guy Mike," what are you talking about?
Oh. The voice. Well, I don't count that as a "second Newman." Still, thanks for the post. I didn't realize that they dubbed Wayne Knight's voice in later (a la Jerry Stiller). BTW, didn't Wayne Knight shoot the horse in "Animal House"?
Yep, he's unforgettable. :-) I just mistook your joke for a serious question.
But speaking of The Maestro, I didn't realize he coincidentally also played the character "The Master" in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I started watching the early episodes recently in syndication on the FX channel, and was surprised to see in the credits that it was Mark Metcalf under all that makeup.
I had to cheat to find this one--the "common performers" search at IMDb didn't work for some reason, so I did a quickie search at Alta Vista. It turned up over 2,000 links and I almost gave up, but one of the very first links was for a "Where are the Animal House actors now?" site. It revealed that Peter Riegert (Donald 'Boon' Schoenstein in Animal House) was in the Seinfeld Finale as "James Kimbrough", the new president of NBC.
That was actually the second link I followed; I thought I'd have better luck with a site which included examples of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon", since I knew he was in Animal House. Unfortunately, they didn't use Riegert! It must've been written before the Finale, since they instead used this path:
"Julia Louis-Dreyfus of TV's Seinfeld, however, takes all six steps to make a chain, according to the book: She was in Christmas Vacation with Randy Quaid, who was in Major League II with Tom Berenger, who was in Shattered with Greta Scacchi, who was in Presumed Innocent with Harrison Ford, who was in Raiders of the Lost Ark with Karen Allen, who was in Animal House with Kevin Bacon."
Kevin Bacon was in Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (1983) with Giancarlo Esposito Giancarlo Esposito was in Speak Truth to Power (2000) with Julia Louis- Dreyfus
You know, a couple of years ago I appeared in a community theatre production of "Evita." A young kid with whom I had done a show previous was also in it and she had appeared in "A Christmas Carol" with the late great Roddy McDowall (at Madison Square Garden). The upshot? While young Christina and I of course are not movie stars, if we go through performances (stage or screen), we can be linked not just to Mr. Bacon but to the real "Evita," Eva Per�n, who indeed acted in a few films. And I'm within the famous "six degrees." (Christina, of course, is within five.) Hint: Fernando Llamas in "The Lost World" is key.
Now, now. I have more class than that. And besides, as our break-up was relatively recent (I last saw her Sep. 12th), she still has in her house my piano and other items of personal property.
Suffice to say, she dated "Boone" briefly in the early 70s in NYC (before he became famous), when I was hardly dating age, didn't know her, and was not even then living in the New York area. (She's six years older than I.)
So Peter Riegert and I have a common ex-girlfriend--but some 30 years separates the two romances.