Actor who also co-wrote the screenplay for
QUINN REDEKER, who has died aged 86, was a film and television actor, producer and screenwriter known to US television audiences as the debonair yet dastardly Alex Marshall on the soap opera
Days of Our Lives; he was also nominated for an Oscar for co-writing the screenplay for The Deer Hunter.
A blackmailer, womaniser and suspected murderer, Alex Marshall was one of the most despicable yet highly watchable characters on the soap, and Redeker clocked up 848 appearances between 1979 and 1987, earning two Emmy nominations.
He went on to play another unscrupulous character on a daytime soap, the conman and serial seducer Rex Sterling in The Young and the Restless, from 1987 to 1994, returning for a one-off appearance in 2004. He had previously played an abuser, Nick Reed, for a short time in 1979.
Redeker’s big-screen credits included The Three Stooges Meet Hercules (1962), one of the best of the later films starring the comedy threesome. “Despite the trio being a bit long in the tooth, those fellas were real tough nuts,” he recalled. “The physical humour, piefighting and eye-poking required high energy, and they gave it all they had.”
The final screenplay for
The Deer Hunter (1978) was based on a reworking of Redeker’s original unproduced script, written with Louis A Garfinkle, The Man Who Came to Play,
about a group of soldiers in Las Vegas playing Russian roulette.
The producer Michael Deeley hired the writer and director Michael Cimino, who had made his name helming Clint Eastwood in
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot
and co-writing the actor’s Dirty Harry sequel Magnum Force. Working with Deric Washburn, Cimino rewrote the script, giving it a Vietnam War setting. He was planning to ditch the Russian-roulette element until Redeker gave a passionate speech in its defence.
Starring Robert Deniro, Christopher Walken, John Cazale, John Savage and Meryl Streep, it went on to win the Best Picture Oscar and eventually grossed $49 million.
It proved the high point of Redeker’s writing career – though MGM bought five of his scripts, none made it to the screen – so he continued
acting. He had appeared alongside Robert Redford in the 1972 political drama The Candidate, and had a role in
Ordinary People (1980), for which Redford won the Best Director Oscar.
Quinn Redeker was born on May 2 1936 in Woodstock, Illinois, and embarked on an acting career after working as a stand-up in Las Vegas, which led to stints on Steve Allen’s and Joey Bishop’s TV shows.
“I flopped, but somehow had the guts to keep going back for more and was liked,” he recalled. His routine featured a partner who, according to Redeker, got all the laughs. “I kinda became the Margaret Dumont to his Marx Brothers,” he said, comparing himself to Groucho’s favourite foil.
Redeker got his break as a photographer in the short-lived NBC crime drama Dan Raven (1960), before landing guest spots on hit shows such as
Laramie, Bonanza, Ironside, Kojak, The Six Million Dollar Man, and as the suave Captain Madison in the TV movie The Love Boat II (1977).
Redeker also featured in films including the creepy black comedy Spider Baby (1967), directed by Roger Corman’s protégé Jack Hill, and the all-star disaster movie Airport (1970).
During the 1990s he combined work on The Young and the Restless with teaching screenwriting at the University of Southern California. He went on to make a few appearances in the present century, mostly in family films like For Heaven’s Sake (2008). His last big-screen role was as President Ronald Reagan in
Big Miracle (2012).
Quinn Redeker was briefly married to the actress Suzanne Long, and then from 1963 to 1980 to another actress, Patricia Ann Graves. He is survived by four children.