{"id":926811,"date":"2026-07-11T02:08:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T02:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/926811\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T02:08:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T02:08:15","slug":"randolph-mantooth-dead-emergency-star-who-appeared-on-soap-operas-was-80","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/926811\/","title":{"rendered":"Randolph Mantooth Dead: ‘Emergency!’ Star Who Appeared On Soap Operas Was 80"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tRandolph Mantooth<\/a>, who starred as a Los Angeles paramedic on the NBC series Emergency! along with turns on soap operas including As the World Turns, One Life to Live and The City, has died. He was 80.<\/p>\n

\n\tHis family told our sister site The Hollywood Reporter that Mantooth died July 9 in hospice in Ventura, CA, after a long illness.<\/p>\n

\n\tBorn on September 19, 1945, in Sacramento, Mantooth began his screen career in the early 1970s, guesting on episodes of such popular series as The Virginian, McCloud, Adam-12, Marcus Welby, M.D. and Rod Serling\u2019s Night Gallery. His big break came when he was cast as LAFD paramedic John Gage in Emergency, which was executive produced by Jack Webb and played like a fire department take on Dragnet.<\/p>\n

\n\tDebuting as a midseason replacement show in January 1972, Emergency! was shot in a near-documentary style and followed the adventures \u2014 and mundane downtime firehouse banter \u2014 of Squad 51. Each week, Mantooth\u2019s Gage, partner Roy De Soto (Kevin Tighe) and their firefighter colleagues would answer calls both routine and calamitous. Viewers knew it was one of the latter when an extended alarm would sound at the station. The cast also featured Robert Fuller, Julie London and Bobby Troup.<\/p>\n

\n\tRunning for five seasons into September 1977, the hourlong drama with comic elements never was a ratings hit, only denting the year-end primetime Top 30 once in the three-network universe. But it was solid counterprogramming against its 8 p.m. Saturday competition of CBS\u2019 All in the Family and in its final two seasons, Norman Lear classic spinoff The Jeffersons.<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring its run, rock band The Tubes named-checked Mantooth in the song \u201cWhat Do You Want From Life?\u201d from its 1975 debut LP. In it, singer Fee Waybill was rattling off a list of things the listening is \u201centitled to\u201d as an American citizen. Among them was \u201ca personally autographed picture of
Randy Mantooth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe also voiced the Gage character in Emergency+4, a Saturday morning cartoon series that aired for two seasons on NBC in 1973-74.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter his run in Emergency!, Mantooth went on to guest star in numerous series including Charlie\u2019s Angels, Dallas, Murder She Wrote, The Fall Guy, L.A. Law, MacGyver, Walker, Texas Ranger and Criminal Minds, among many others. His last television credit was a two-episode guest spot as Wahewa chief Charlie Horse in Sons of Anarchy in 2011. His character presided over the wedding of Opie (Ryan Hurst) and Lyla (Winter Ave Zoli).<\/p>\n

\n\tMantooth also appeared in more than 380 episodes of the ABC daytime soap Loving from 1987-95 and nearly 200 episodes of the network\u2019s daytime drama The City from 1995-97. His other work in the genre included about three dozen episodes of CBS\u2019 As the World Turns in the mid-2000s and a dozen of ABC\u2019s One Life to Live.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Randolph Mantooth, who starred as a Los Angeles paramedic on the NBC series Emergency! along with turns on…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":926812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[9],"tags":[171,31443,9455,373866,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-926811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-novid","tag-obituary","tag-randolph-mantooth","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116898910263431506","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=926811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/926812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=926811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=926811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=926811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}