Actor Charles Durning dies
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NEW YORK CITY -- A two-time Oscar nominee and Tony Award winner with ties to Western New York has died. Charles Durning's agent and friend says Durning died Monday at his New York City home.
Known as the 'king of the character actors,' Durning's roles ranged from Big Daddy in a Broadway revival of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" to playing the aging patriarch in TV's "Rescue Me."
Durning was a World War II veteran and Orange County, New York native. He got his start in Buffalo, where he served as an usher at a burlesque show and took the stage after a comedian showed up too drunk to perform.
He was 89 years old.