Died in nursing,Character actor Roberts Blossom dies at 87

Died in nursing,Character actor Roberts Blossom dies at 87-Roberts Blossom, 87,a veteran character actor who played the old, white-bearded next-door neighbor who befriends young Macaulay Culkin in the movie “Home Alone,” died July 8 at a nursing home in Santa Monica,Calif.No cause of death was reported.
Mr. Blossom,who grew up in Cleveland,worked in the New York theater scene as a young man. He formed a multimedia avant-garde theater troupe called Filmstage.

Roberts Blossom and Macaulay Culkin

He won three Obie Awards for his performances in off-Broadway productions during the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. He also appeared on Broadway,including in Edward Albee’s adaptation of Carson McCullers’s “The Ballad of the Sad Cafe” and Sam Shepard’s “Operation Sidewinder.”
Mr. Blossom starred in the 1974 cult horror movie “Deranged,” in which he played a demented farmer who digs up his domineering mother’s corpse and takes it home — then digs up other bodies to keep her company before he begins hunting live victims.

He’s best known in films as a character actor whose credits include “The Hospital,” “Slaughterhouse-Five,” The Great Gatsby,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Escape From Alcatraz, “Resurrection” and “Doc Hollywood.”

He played “old man Marley” in “Home Alone” (1990).
Mr. Blossom was also a poet, and his works were published in several books. He was the subject of the 2000 documentary “Full Blossom: The Life of Poet/Actor Roberts Blossom,” directed by James Brih Abee.