Scoey Mitchell Dies: TV’s ‘Barefoot In The Park’ Actor, Comedian Was 92

deadline.com:

Scoey Mitchell, the comedian and actor whose busy television career in the 1970s including a co-starring role in a groundbreaking comedy series adaptation of Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park, died March 19 at a health care facility in Torrance, California.

He was 92.His death was announced by his brother, the jazz pianist Billy Mitchell, who posted the news on Facebook. “He had a very successful and colorful career during 70s and 80s as an actor, writer and film director,” Billy Mitchell wrote. “He sacrificed much in the struggle to get blacks behind the camera, into production and into positions that are taken for granted today.

Its important to remember those few that opened up the doors for so many!”Mitchell, who sometimes used the family spelling “Mitchlll,” was already familiar to TV viewers from his late-1960s stand-up, talk show and variety show appearances on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, The Tonight Show, The Mike Douglas Show, The Ed Sullivan Show and numerous others before he landed the co-starring role (opposite Tracy Reed) in the 1970 sitcom Barefoot in the Park.With Black actors in the newlywed roles made famous on Broadway and in the 1967 feature film by white actors (Robert Redford and Jane Fonda in the movie), the series was a pioneering, if at just one season short-lived, effort.

Reports at the time suggest Mitchell was fired from the show after clashing over creative differences with producers, and ABC canceled the low-rate sitcom rather than find a new actor.Mitchell returned to series television in 1974 with a two-year recurring role on Rhoda, in which he played a co-worker of Rhoda’s husband Joe.A frequent and witty guest on game shows of the era, Mitchell appeared often on The Hollywood