NYT news obit: Film actor Roberts Blossom, Asheville School graduate known for playing cantankerous old coots

News obit from the New York Times: 

Roberts Blossom, a durable character actor who was known for playing cantankerous old coots, both comic and sinister, but who may be best remembered as the kindly next-door neighbor in the comedy “Home Alone,” died on Friday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 87.

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He played against type in the hugely popular Christmas film “Home Alone.” As Old Man Marley, he was a threatening-looking geezer rumored to have killed his entire family, but the scary Marley turns out to be a sweet old fellow who befriends the character played by Macaulay Culkin.

Vincent Canby, in an article in The New York Times on outstanding small roles, praised Mr. Blossom in “Escape From Alcatraz” for “one of his quietest, creepiest performances to date” as Doc Dalton, an elderly inmate who incurs the wrath of the sadistic warden when he paints his portrait. 

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Roberts Scott Blossom was born on March 25, 1924, in New Haven and grew up in Cleveland. After graduating from the Asheville School in North Carolina in 1941, he enrolled at Harvard but entered the Army after a year. On returning from duty in Europe during World War II he trained as a therapist, but he soon began acting in productions at Karamu House in Cleveland and then moved to New York.