Distinguished director, producer, and actor John Houseman dies at the age of 86.
Houseman was born in Bucharest. As a young man, he worked for his father's grain business, traveling extensively. By the 1920s, he was based in New York, writing articles and translating plays from French and German on the side. When the Depression ruined his father's business, Houseman turned to theater, directing Gertrude Stein's opera Four Saints in Three Acts in 1934 and working with Orson Welles on WPA-sponsored theater projects.
In 1937, Welles and Houseman started the Mercury Theater and produced a popular radio program called Mercury Theater on the Air. The two parted ways when Houseman claimed he contributed to the story of Welles' movie Citizen Kane, a claim Welles denied. Houseman went on to become a distinguished stage director and movie producer. In the 1970s, he also emerged as a popular movie actor. He played a dour law professor in The Paper Chase (1973) and later appeared in the TV series of the same name. Other film credits included Three Days of the Condor (1975) and My Bodyguard (1980).
