Neil J. Schwartz

Active - 1972 - 1972  |   Genres - Drama

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Biography by AllMovie

Neil J. Schwartz was a dark-haired, heavy-set actor skilled in both dramatic and comedic roles, although he was more visible and successful in the latter. His first credited screen role was as a cook in Fireball Forward (I971), a 20th Century Fox made-for-TV movie that was really a busted series pilot, notable for using lots of footage from Patton. Schwartz gave a very funny portrayal as Levy, an Orthodox Jewish television repairman arguing with Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker in "Man in the Street," a first-season episode of All in the Family (1971), in which he had a beautifully timed comeback to one of Bunker's tirades. He played the role of one of the two young men in the groundbreaking 1973 PBS production of Bruce Jay Friedman's play Steambath (1973), starring Bill Bixby, and reprised it in the 1983 six-part series adaptation (of the same title) starring Robert Picardo. But Schwartz's longest continuing television role was during the first season of Happy Days (1974). In nine episodes, he played Bag Zombroski, the jowly, slightly corpulent, sometime friend and sometime antagonist to Ron Howard's Richie Cunningham. He was the drummer in Richie's band during the first season, and a hanger-on who could be funny and imposing at the same time; but he didn't quite make the cut to the series as it came to be defined around Howard and Henry Winkler's characters. He also turned up in episodes of the Saturday morning adventure series Isis (1975) and the prime-time sitcoms Barney Miller (1976) and What's Happening!! (1977). Schwartz's last major screen appearance was in the Mel Brooks-produced 1983 remake of To Be or Not to Be, as one of Klotskis Klowns.