Was There A TV Show He Didn't Do?

Do you remember watching Local 306 (1976) on TV? Or People Like Us (same year)? Or The Crime Club (1975)? Or The Corner Bar (1972, 73)?

They all have something in common. They all either starred, or featured in the cast, one of television’s most recognisable character actors of the decade—Eugene Roche.

I wouldn’t want to start to list even a tenth of his appearances on television or movies. He was everywhere. He did so many things, that the May 7, 1986 TV listings for where I live have him on the movie Pigs Vs. Freaks (1980) on one channel and Corey: For the People (1977) on another at the same time. I’m sure someone’s reading this post and shouting “Don’t forget about....”

Yeah, I know. You could be shouting “Don’t forget” for a long time, though likely not about his appearance on “The Theatre and the Devil” on The Catholic Hour in 1961.

He was so much in demand that, in 1963, he played three roles in the comedy The Time of the Barracudas opposite Elaine Stritch and Laurence Harvey at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco.

Given his ubiquity someone, somewhere, must have interviewed him.

First, we found a short bio after he returned to the West Coast in 1955. Wrote Anita Garrett in the Vallejo News-Chronicle on Aug. 29 that year:

NEXT TO STAR in our series of “Local Boy Makes Good” is Eugene Roche, son of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Roche of 229 Hermosa street. He has the leading role in the play, "Girl on the Via Flaminia,” which opened recently at the Marine Memorial Theater in San Francisco. No doubt many Vallejoans will recall Eugene, for he spent his vacations here with his parents and worked during the Summer at Kaiser Foundation where his father is business manager.
The rest of the year he attended Emerson College in Boston, where he majored in drama. He has played leading roles in the Red Barn Playhouse, Westboro, Mass., and the Casino Theater in Newport R.I. However, the current play is his first professional lead and his first performance for the Actor’s Workshop.
The play is Alfred Hayes’ touching drama of an American love affair with an Italian girl during World War II. Eugene is cast as Robert, an American non-commissioned officer, described by R. H. Hagan, San Francisco drama critic, as "a kind of nondescript Kilroy.” Playing the opposite lead is Priscilla Pointer, a former Conover model, who takes the part of Lisa, an Italian girl. She is also son to be featured in the forthcoming "China Jones” series on television.
CRITICS RATED the acting in the production as “first rate,” and again we quote Hagan, “The acting is a magnificent example of how domestic talent can disprove the myth of Broadway superiority.” However, Hagan was not quite so enthusiastic about the play itself, which was adapted from a book, never, he says, a completely happy vehicle for the stage.
Recently Mr. and Mrs. Roche had the thrill of hearing their son interviewed over the radio. He was asked how he, a relative newcomer, was awarded the leading role. Modestly Robert told them that he was one of a number of candidates who tried out, and he had the good fortune to be chosen by the director as the type required. He was also interviewed over television, but his parents did not learn of it until later, so missed seeing him.

It turns out an entertainment columnist DID interview him. We found this feature story by Don Lechman in the April 15, 1979 edition of The Daily Breeze of Torrence, Cal. He was asked about being an ever-present but relatively unknown actor.

Roche: Acting means a lot
Eugene Roche and Ted Bessell recently made a television pilot, "Good Time Harry," for showing later this year on NBC.
Everyone remembers Bessell from "'That Girl" (Marlo Thomas), but does anyone recognize the name Eugene Roche? I bet you would know him if you saw his craggily handsome Irish face on the beefy frame. You should.
He played the Wright brothers' father in TV's recent "The Winds of Kitty Hawk" and also starred in "The Child Stealer" about a father who abducts his hown [sic] kids. Soon he will be in another television film, "Hart to Hart," with Robert Wagner.
His first motion picture was "Splendor in the Grass," and his most recent are "Foul Play," and “The Late Show."
Roche is one of a group of actors—like Jack Elam, Pat Hingle, Henry Jones, Strother Martin and Denver Pyle—who have been playing character parts for so long that they're supporting stars now. And all of them are instantly recognizable by face if not by name.
Does Roche object to such shadowy fame?
Hardly, he says. "I’ve really enjoyed it (being a character actor.) I've had a good time."
And, he indicated, he's very proud of being an ‘actor.’
"The word 'actor' is misunderstood," Roche said. "Anyone is called an actor who's said one or two lines. The immediate reponse [sic] is 'How do you like being an actor?’ It really gripes me," he laughed. "I've done about 130 plays (in addition to decades of TV and movies.) And, actually, the work is just as hard here (on TV) as it was there (on stage). I have to prepare a lot at night, and we don't have the luxury of rehearsal."
In "Good Time Harry," he plays a sports editor to Bessell's sports reporter, a guy who is terrific when he can be bailed out of trouble long enough to write a story.
It may not sound too original, but "it's organic type of comedy," Gene says, "not just one joke after another.”
Roche, who was born in New England, moved to California when he was 16 and returned to the East to attend college where he met his future wife, Marjory.
And now they have nine kids. Nine kids?
"I wouldn't have missed that" (having, those children), Roche sighed. “I would've missed everything else except those kids."
Ranging in age from 24 to 7 and having names infused with a little bit of Ireland are Jamie, a medical student in Rome; Sean and Chad, actors in Hollywood; Tara, a student at Loyola Marymount in Los and Megan, Brogan, Liam, Eamon and Caitlin, still living at home—Los Angeles or the Catskills in New York, depending on their dad's assignment.
And Gene Roche still has time to act?

Nine kids? No wonder he didn’t star in Eight is Enough (Insert laugh track here. That one needs help).

Roche’s steady and lengthy body of work made him an appropriate person for an obituary in the popular press. Here is part of the Los Angeles Times’ memorial, published Aug. 2, 2004.

Eugene Roche, 75, Character Actor in Films, Television
By Myrna Oliver
Times Staff Writer
Eugene Roche, a character actor remembered for roles such as the offbeat detective Luther Gillis in “Magnum, P.I.,” Squeaky Clean of Ajax commercials and an ill-fated prisoner of war in the classic 1972 film “Slaughterhouse Five” has died. He was 75.
Roche died Wednesday in an Encino hospital after suffering two heart attacks. He lived in Sherman Oaks.
With a face more familiar than his name, Roche worked steadily for more than four decades. He began his career as a teenager, voicing characters on radio in his native Boston, served in the Army, then studied drama at Emerson College. Devoting himself to acting, he honed his talents in small theaters in San Francisco.
Roche made his Broadway debut in “Blood, Sweat and Stanley Poole” in 1961. He continued to play stage roles until late in his life, appearing at the Geffen Playhouse in “Merton at the Movies: in 1999 and at San Francisco’s Theater on the Square in Carroll O’Connor’s “A Certain Labor Day” in 1997.
Adept at both comedy and drama, Roche made his film debut in 1961, playing a private detective in “Slendor in the Grass.” In the film “Slaughterhouse Five,” based on the wartime fantasy novel of Kurt Vonnegut, Roche portrayed the likable POW Edgar Derby, who reverently plucked an intact porcelain figurine from the ruins of Dresden only to be executed by his German captors for looting.
But the puckish Roche gained his widest fame on television. He became a household face in the 1970s when as Squeaky Clean, he made kitchens sparkle in commercials for Ajax household cleaner.
Through the 1970s he became Archie Bunker’s neighborhood nemesis on “All in the Family,” and the sly attorney Ronald Mallu on the sitcom “Soap.” In the 1980s he portrayed curmudgeonly Luther Gillis, trying to teach upstart Tom Selleck the old- school sleuthing ropes in `Magnum, P.I.,” the lovable landlord Bill Parker on “Webster,” and newspaper editor Harry Burns in “Perfect Strangers.”
Roche often earned critical claim for running parts in sitcoms fated for quick demise. He played Julie Andrews’ on-screen television producer in the short-lived “Julie” in 1992, and in 1990 portrayed Lenny Clarke’s father in “Lenny.” In 1987 he took on the role of the retired founder of a public relations firm considering hiring George Segal in “Take Five.”
“Roche is marvelous as the tough-minded businessman who makes no bones about wanting to hire someone to run the firm without letting his son know he isn’t in charge,” The Times’ Lee Margulies wrote, while predicting the series would fail. “Unfortunately, Roche isn’t a regular.”

When he showed up on Soap, I was quite happy. He was the only actor on the show I recognised and thought “He’s finally getting a regular role.”

As you can see, it’s a wonder he had the time for it.