Larry Storch, who played a memorable television oddball on the 1960s sitcom “F Troop” and for years carried a secret in his personal life that was odd in an entirely different way, died on Friday at his home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He was 99 years old.
“F unit” was not long. But, like many sitcoms in that era of limited television choices, it burned itself into the minds of those who watched it, perhaps in part because it trafficked in the kinds of stereotypes — especially those hard-drinking, firewater-brewing Indians — that would soon disappears from television.
Later, when the Storches were married and living in Hollywood, June would come to visit, and they would explain to friends that she was an abused child of former neighbors and that they had adopted her, but that she lived most of the year with Black friend.
“In those days, people were encrusted in prejudice,” Mr. Storch explained to People magazine in a 1996 interview. “There was no reason to shake the boat.”
of “Some Like It Hot,” the 1959 Billy Wilder movie that had starred Mr. Curtis, Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe. (The show drew upon the 1972 Broadway musical “Sugar” and added new material.) Mr. Curtis played not his original role, a musician on the run from gangsters who joins a band disguised as a woman, but the millionaire Osgood Fielding; Storch played the band manager for Bienstock.
Mr. Storch’s wife died in 2003. His brother, Jay, an actor who used the name Jay Lawrence, died in 1987. In addition to Ms. Cross and Ms. Herman, he is survived by a stepson, Lary May, the author of several books on film and popular culture; 5 grandchildren. And four great grandchildren.