George Gerdes
George was a brilliant Songwriter, Performer, and Actor. He was a staple of the West Village folk-songwriter scene and was a primary influence on his college acting school friend Loudon Wainwright III. Both incorporated a good deal of theatre in the presentation of their songs, in George's case sometimes spinning off wildly into spontaneous multi-character, mid-song playlets like, "Elvis in Oz". He made two well-received records for United Artists Records, "Obituary" and "Son of Obituary" and toured widely on the rough venue-depleted waning days of the ‘60s - early 70s Folk - Singer-songwriter circuit.
George was a superb actor and his stage work in New York and environs was often as good as acting can be or ever was. He appeared in "A Fool for Love", "A Few Good Men", playing Chaim Soutine in "Modigliani", and most memorably for me the lead in a play called "Ghostman" at the Longwharf theatre in New Haven. As work got scarce in the ‘90s he moved to LA where he landed mostly small character actor parts on well-known Television series, X-Files, Dexter, NYPD Blue, and others. He also starred in the Disney, Jack London-ish tale "Iron Will", as a singularly dastardly Nordic villain, and as President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 2020 Si-Fi, soon-to-be classic, "The Eleventh Green" his last major film role.
George had a huge network of friends including several uncommonly loyal Ex Girlfriends, like Terre Roche of "The Roches" who thankfully introduced George to his last and most devoted partner of twenty years, Judy Johns. Judy helped George navigate the serious health problems that plagued him in his last decade in part from a life of liberal social drinking and heavy smoking.
He never married and described himself as a serial monogamist. He had no children but leaves behind dozens of people for whom he was a central figure, an embodiment of mirth a Shamanistic epic spinner, through whom even the detritus of pop culture was elevated to the status of high art and worthy of intellectual analysis.
You can visit George’s Wikipedia page for an almost full listing of credits.
