Ben and Jerry Stiller

Seinfeld Star, Jerry Stiller, Dies at 92

May 11, 2020

By: Staff Report

Comedy veteran Jerry Stiller, who launched his career opposite wife Anne Meara in the 1950s and reemerged four decades later as the hysterically high-strung Frank Costanza on the smash television show “Seinfeld,” has died. He was 92.

His son, Ben Stiller, announced the death on Twitter on Monday:

Most recently, Jerry Stiller played Arthur on the hit sitcom “King of Queens.” The Arthur character was also high-strung.

Jerry Stiller was a multi-talented performer who appeared in an assortment of movies, playing Walter Matthau’s police sidekick in the thriller “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” and Divine’s husband, Wilbur Turnblad in John Waters’ twisted comedy “Hairspray.”

He also wrote an autobiography, “Married to Laughter,” about his 50-plus year marriage to soul mate and comedic cohort Meara, who died in 2015. And his myriad television spots included everything from “Murder She Wrote” to “Law and Order” – along with 36 appearances alongside Meara on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

Ben and Jerry Stiller
NEW YORK, NY – FEBRUARY 11: Actors Ben Stiller and Jerry Stiller arrive at the HELP HAITI – Urban Zen HHRH & The Stiller Foundation Honoring Sean Penn at the Urban Zen Center At Stephan Weiss Studio on February 11, 2011 in New York City. (Photo by Charles Eshelman/FilmMagic)

Stiller, although a supporting player on “Seinfeld,” created some of the Emmy-winning show’s most enduring moments: co-creator and model for the “bro,” a brassiere for men; a Korean War cook who inflicted food poisoning on his entire unit; and an ever-simmering salesman controlling his explosive temper with the shouted mantra, “Serenity now!”

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