Randolph Mantooth Dead: ‘Emergency!’ Star Who Also Appeared On Soap Operas was

Randolph Mantooth, who starred as a Los Angeles paramedic on the NBC series Emergency! along with turns on soap operas including As the World Turns, One Life to Live and The City, has died. He was 80.

His family told our sister site The Hollywood Reporter that Mantooth died July 9 in hospice in Ventura, CA, after a long illness.

Born on September 19, 1945, in Sacramento, Mantooth began his screen career in the early 1970s, guesting on episodes of such popular series as The Virginian, McCloud, Adam-12, Marcus Welby, M.D. and Rod Serling’s Night Gallery. His big break came when he was cast as LAFD paramedic John Gage in Emergency, which was executive produced by Jack Webb and played like a fire department take on Dragnet.

Debuting as a midseason replacement show in January 1972, Emergency! was shot in a near-documentary style and followed the adventures — and mundane downtime firehouse banter — of Squad 51. Each week, Mantooth’s Gage, partner Roy De Soto (Kevin Tighe) and their firefighter colleagues would answer calls both routine and calamitous. Viewers knew it was one of the latter when an extended alarm would sound at the station. The cast also featured Robert Fuller, Julie London and Bobby Troup.

Running for five seasons into September 1977, the hourlong drama with comic elements never was a ratings hit, only denting the year-end primetime Top 30 once in the three-network universe. But it was solid counterprogramming against its 8 p.m. Saturday competition of CBS’ All in the Family and later that Norman Lear classic’s spinoff The Jeffersons.

During its run, rock band The Tubes named-checked Mantooth in the song “What Do You Want From Life?” from its 1975 debut LP. In it, singer Fee Waybill was rattling off a list of things the listening is “entitled to” as an American citizen. Among them was “a personally autographed picture of
Randy Mantooth.”

MORE TO COME…