Danny Goldman, voice of Brainy Smurf, dies at 80

Veteran actor and voice artist Danny Goldman has died at the age of 80. The actor was best known for voicing Brainy Smurf in the Hanna-Barbera animated series “The Smurfs” and for playing the medical student whose questions drove Gene Wilder’s irate doctor to stab his own leg with a scalpel in the first scene of “Young Frankenstein”.

Goldman’s agent Doug Ely confirmed the news on Facebook. “It’s with great sadness that I must tell you that Danny Goldman has passed away. He passed peacefully at home today amongst family and friends, after having suffered a couple of strokes around New Years,” Ely’s statement read.

He also paid tribute to Goldman calling his client and friend of 40 years “one of a kind”. “I’ve known Danny since 1980 when I first became an agent and he first started casting on his own. We became fast friends and have been for the last 40 years… He was quite the actor as well.” Goldman was born in New York City in 1939 and grew up in the area. He graduated from Columbia University in 1961 and began his screen-acting career in 1963 with a role in popular soap opera “General Hospital”.

In his six-decade-long career, Goldman made cameo appearances in various shows including “Hawaii Five-0,” “Columbo,” “The King of Queens” and “Criminal Minds.” In the international circuit he broke out with his stint on “The Smurfs”. He voiced the bespectacled intellectual Smurf known as Brainy for the 1980s series and reprised the role in a recurring parody on the 2005-11 “Robot Chicken”. His last TV role was as Detective Bob Zablonsky on “Criminal Minds”.

Goldman’s film credits include “M*A*S*H” (1970), “Linda Lovelace for President” (1975), “The Missouri Breaks” (1976) and “Where the Buffalo Roam” (1980), among others. The actor is survived by his wife Mary Gillis, niece Liz York, and family on the East Coast.

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