Lew Palter, the veteran character actor and admired CalArts School of Theater faculty member who portrayed the department store magnate Isidor Straus in James Cameron’s Titanic, has died. He was 94.
Palter died May 21 of lung cancer at his home in Los Angeles, his daughter, Catherine Palter, told The Hollywood Reporter. Lew Palter, the veteran character actor and admired CalArts School of Theater faculty member who portrayed the department store magnate Isidor Straus in James Cameron’s Titanic, has died. He was 94.
Palter died May 21 of lung cancer at his home in Los Angeles, his daughter, Catherine Palter, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Palter acted in and directed plays off-Broadway before joining the Millbrook Playhouse in Mill Hall, Pennsylvania, in the mid-1960s. He then made his onscreen debut on a 1967 episode of NBC’s Run for Your Life and appeared on It Takes a Thief, The Virginian, Gunsmoke and Mission: Impossible before the decade was done.
In Titanic (1997), Palter as Isidor and Elsa Raven as his wife, Ida, memorably appear in a montage embracing on a bed in their stateroom as the water rushes in and the ship’s string quartet plays the hymn “Nearer My God to Thee.”
Isidor, who co-owned Macy’s with his brother, and Ida were two of the wealthiest passengers to perish on the RMS Titanic on April 15, 1912. He refused to board a lifeboat when the ship was sinking because there were women and children who had yet to get on one, and his wife would not leave without him.
(Wendy Rush, the wife of Stockton Rush, the OceanGate CEO who died last week while piloting the submersible that imploded during a dive to the Titanic wreckage, is a great-great-granddaughter of the Strauses.)
Palter was the third actor in a film about the tragedy to play Isidor, following Roy Gordon in the Jean Negulesco-directed Titanic (1953) and Meier Tzelniker in Roy Ward Baker’s A Night to Remember (1958).
His acting résumé also included the 1971 film The Steagle and installments of The Doris Day Show, Columbo, The Brady Bunch, Baretta, The Waltons, Cagney & Lacey and The A-Team.
Palter also directed the comedy Nuts for the Los Angeles Stage Company for years before it was adapted for the 1987 film that starred and was produced by Barbra Streisand.
In addition to his daughter, survivors include his grandchildren, Sam, Tessa and Miranda.
His wife of 64 years, actress Nancy Vawter, died in November 2020. Catherine Palter said her mom’s agent had put her up for the part of Ida in Titanic but was told producers were “looking for a different type of actress.”
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