Actor played the husband on 1970s TV series ‘Rhoda’
David Groh, an actor best known for his role on the 1970s TV sitcom “Rhoda” as the title character’s husband, died of kidney cancer Tuesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, his family announced. He was 68.
Groh became an instant celebrity in 1974 when he starred as the easygoing Joe Gerard opposite Valerie Harper’s neurotic Rhoda Morgenstern on the “Mary Tyler Moore” spinoff. But by the third season the couple divorced and he was off the show.
Groh later had recurring roles on such prime-time series as “Police Story” and on daytime TV as D.L. Brock on “General Hospital.”
Born May 21, 1939, in New York, Groh was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown University. He attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art on a Fulbright scholarship.
After a stint in the Army, he studied at the Actors Studio and appeared in theater productions “so far off Broadway, my parents would take subways and buses and taxis to try to find me,” he later said.
After he left “Rhoda” in 1977, Groh appeared on Broadway in Neil Simon’s “Chapter Two” and in “Twilight of the Golds” in 1993. He also had film roles in “Two-Minute Warning” (1976) and “A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich” (1978), among others.
Survivors include his wife, actress Kristin Andersen; a son, Spencer, from a previous marriage; his mother, Mildred; and a sister, Marilyn Mamann. Services are pending. His family suggests donations to the Actors Studio, 8341 De Longpre Ave., West Hollywood, CA 90069.