Michael Higgins, an Obie-winning actor who was for decades a familiar
presence on New York stages, died on Nov. 5 in Manhattan. He was 88 and lived in
Manhattan.
His death, at Beth Israel Hospital, was from heart failure, his daughter,
Deirdre, said.
Mr. Higgins was best known for the role of Frank Strang, the father of the
disturbed youth who blinds horses, in the original Broadway production of
“Equus.” The play, by Peter Shaffer, opened at the Plymouth Theater in 1974.
Writing in The New York Times that year, Walter Kerr called Mr. Higgins
“excellent as a father turned ashen.” The production also starred Peter Firth as
the youth, Alan Strang; Frances
Sternhagen as Alan’s mother; and Anthony
Hopkins as his psychiatrist.
Among Mr. Higgins’s other Broadway credits are “Romeo and Juliet” (1951),
with Olivia
de Havilland; “The Lark,” by Jean
Anouilh (1955), with Julie
Harris and Christopher
Plummer; and “The Iceman Cometh,” by Eugene
O’Neill (1973), with James
Earl Jones. His many Off Broadway roles include Antony opposite Colleen
Dewhurst’s Cleopatra at the New
York Shakespeare Festival in 1963.
Mr. Higgins received two Obies, the Off Broadway theater award presented
annually by The Village Voice. The first, in 1958, was for his performance as
John Proctor in “The Crucible,” by Arthur
Miller; the second, in 1980, was for the role of the father in David
Mamet’s “Reunion.”
Michael Patrick Higgins was born in Brooklyn on Jan. 20, 1920. His father, an
insurance salesman and poet, instilled in him early a love of Shakespeare.
As a teenager, Michael worked to lose his Brooklyn accent to prepare for a
career in the theater. In World War II, he served with the Army in Italy,
earning a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. After the war, Mr. Higgins made his
Broadway debut in “Antigone” (1946), starring Katharine Cornell.
Besides his daughter, Deirdre Higgins, Mr. Higgins is survived by his wife,
the former Elizabeth Lee Goodwin; two sons, Sean and Christopher; two brothers,
Hugh and Thomas; two sisters, Marie Higgins and Anna Karlya; and four
grandchildren.
His film credits include “The Stepford Wives” (1975), “The Seduction of Joe
Tynan”(1979) and “Fort Apache, the Bronx”
(1981).