Comedy veteran Jerry Stiller, who launched his career opposite wife Anne Meara in the 1950s and reemerged four decades later as the hysterically high-strung Frank Costanza on the smash television show ``Seinfeld,'' died at 92, his son Ben Stiller announced Monday.
He died of natural causes, his son _ a comedy star himself _ said in a tweet.
Jerry Stiller was a multi-talented performer who appeared in an assortment of movies, playing Walter Matthau's police sidekick in the thriller ``The Taking of Pelham One Two Three'' and Divine's husband Wilbur Turnblad in John Waters' twisted comedy ``Hairspray.''
He also wrote an autobiography, ``Married to Laughter,'' about his 50-plus year marriage to soul mate and comedic cohort Meara, who died in 2015. And his myriad television spots included everything from ``Murder She Wrote'' to ``Law and Order'' _ along with 36 appearances alongside Meara on ``The Ed Sullivan Show.''
Stiller, although a supporting player on ``Seinfeld,'' created some of the Emmy-winning show's most enduring moments: co-creator and model for the ``bro,'' a brassiere for men; a Korean War cook who inflicted food poisoning on his entire unit; an ever-simmering salesman controlling his explosive temper with the shouted mantra, ``Serenity now!''
Stiller earned an 1997 Emmy nomination for his indelible ``Seinfeld'' performance. In a 2005 Esquire interview, Stiller recalled that he was out of work and not the first choice for the role of Frank Costanza, father to Jason Alexander's neurotic George.
``My manager had retired,'' he said. ``I was close to 70 years old, and had nowhere to go.''
He was initially told to play the role as a milquetoast husband with an overbearing wife, Estelle, played by Estelle Harris. But the character wasn't working _ until Stiller suggested his reincarnation as an over-the-top crank who matched his wife scream for scream.
It jump-started the septuagenarian's career, landing him a spot playing Vince Lombardi in a Nike commercial and the role of another over-the-top dad on the long-running sitcom ``King of Queens.''
While he was known as a nut-job father on the small screen, Stiller and wife Meara raised two children in their longtime home on Manhattan's Upper West Side: daughter Amy, who became an actress, and son Ben, who became a writer, director and actor in such films as ``Dodgeball,'' ``There's Something About Mary'' and ``Meet the Parents.''
He and Ben performed together in ``Shoeshine,'' which was nominated for a 1988 Academy Award in the short subject category.
Stiller was considerably quieter and reflective in person than in character _ although just as funny. The son of a bus driver and a housewife, Stiller grew up in Depression-era Brooklyn. His inspiration to enter show business came at age 8, when his father took him to see the Marx Brothers in the comedy classic ``A Night at the Opera.''
Years later, Stiller met Groucho Marx and thanked him.
Stiller earned a drama degree at Syracuse University after serving in World War II, and then headed to New York City to launch his career. There was a brief involvement in Shakespearean theatre, including a $55 a week job with Jack Klugman in ``Coriolanus.''
But his life and career took off after he met Meara in spring 1953. They were married that fall.
The seemingly mismatched pair _ he a short, stocky Jewish guy from Brooklyn, she a tall, Irish Catholic from the Long Island suburbs _ shared an immediate onstage chemistry, too. They were soon appearing on ``The Ed Sullivan Show'' and working nightclubs nationwide.
The pair also wrote and performed radio commercials, most memorably a series of bits for a little-known wine called Blue Nun. The duo's ads boosted sales by 500%. Ben Stiller recalled trips with his sister to California when his parents would head west to do television appearances.
The couple went on to appear as a team in dozens of film, stage and television productions. One of them was ``After-Play,'' a 1995 off-Broadway show written by Meara. Stiller joined ``Seinfeld'' in 1993, and moved on to ``King of Queens'' when the other Jerry & co. went off the air in 1998. The following year, he appeared in Ben Stiller's spoof on modeling, ``Zoolander.''