Jerry Orbach, 1935-2004

What a drag. Even though I never watched Law and Order I remember Jerry Orbach from other stuff like F/X. I really liked him a lot. You can forgive him for Dirty Dancing and A Gnome Named Gnorm.

Jerry Orbach, who won fame on the New York stage as one of the last bona fide leading men of the Broadway musical and global celebrity on television as a New York detective on NBC's "Law & Order," died on Tuesday night. He was 69.

Mr. Orbach died at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, a hospital spokeswoman said.

The cause was prostate cancer, his manager, Robert Malcolm, said.

In performances that spanned a half century, the Bronx-born Mr. Orbach came to embody two beloved New York archetypes: the musical matinee idol, to which he gave a refreshingly modern spin with his rugged and idiosyncratic persona, and the shrewd, irascible cop, a role he honed to a razor's edge as Detective Lennie Briscoe on "Law & Order."