Randolph Mantooth, best known for playing a Los Angeles paramedic on the NBC series Emergency! and for appearing in popular soap operas, has passed away.
Videos by Suggest
His family confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that Mantooth died on July 9 in a Ventura, CA, hospice following a lengthy illness. He was 80.
Born in Sacramento on September 19, 1945, Mantooth launched his career in the early 1970s, guest-starring on popular series like The Virginian, Adam-12, and Rod Serling’s Night Gallery.
Mantooth’s big break came when he was cast as LAFD paramedic John Gage in Emergency!, executive produced by Dragnet‘s Jack Webb. The show debuted in January 1972, filmed in a near-documentary style that followed the day-to-day life of Squad 51’s firehouse. Each week, Mantooth’s Gage, his partner Roy De Soto (Kevin Tighe), and their fellow firefighters responded to everything from routine calls to life-threatening emergencies.
The popular series ran until 1977. Mantooth also lent his voice to the Gage character in Emergency+4, a Saturday morning cartoon that aired for two seasons on NBC from 1973 to 1974.
Randolph Mantooth’s Prolific TV Career Beyond ‘Emergency!’
Per IMDb, Mantooth went on to build a prolific television career, guest-starring in numerous series including Charlie’s Angels, Murder, She Wrote, The Fall Guy, L.A. Law, MacGyver, Walker, Texas Ranger, and Criminal Minds.
Mantooth also had a strong presence in daytime television. He appeared in more than 380 episodes of the ABC soap opera Loving from 1987 to 1995, followed by nearly 200 episodes of the network’s The City from 1995 to 1997. He later appeared in around 36 episodes of CBS’ As the World Turns in the mid-2000s and a dozen episodes of ABC’s One Life to Live.
His final television credit came in 2011, when he rode off into the sunset with a two-episode guest appearance on Sons of Anarchy as Wahewa chief Charlie Horse, a character who had the honor of presiding over the wedding of Opie (Ryan Hurst) and Lyla (Winter Ave Zoli).
His brother, Donald, and his sister, Tonya, survive him.