5:11 PM PST 12/24/2020
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Mike Barnes
The Brooklyn native portrayed mayors in both films during a long career on stage.
Lee Wallace, the Ed Koch look-alike who may or may not coincidentally play mayors Taking Pelham One Two Three and Tim Burton’s Batman, died in New York on Sunday after a long illness, his family announced. He was 90.
Wallace also appeared in other notable films, including Klute (1971), The hot rock (1972), The happy whore (1975), Thieves (1977), Soldier Benjamin (1980) and People used (1992).
He performed regularly at the Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts from the mid-1960s and performed alongside Glenn Close in a Yale Repertory production of Uncle Vanya in 1981.
Wallace also worked in eight Broadway productions, from One teaspoon every four hours in 1969 via Leonard Nimoy directed The apple does not fall in 1996.
Born on July 15, 1930 in Brooklyn, Leo Melis grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He graduated from Seward Park High School and attended NYU, then studied with acting teacher Michael Howard for seven years after serving in the United States military.
Many thought that Wallace bore a striking resemblance to the charismatic Koch, who was mayor of New York City from 1978 to 1989, and Burton cast him as mayor of Gotham City in Batman (1989).
Four years before Koch was to be elected, Wallace played a beleaguered and beleaguered mayor of NYC in the major crime film directed by Joseph Sargent Taking Pelham One Two Three (1974), starring Walter Matthau.
Wallace also appeared on television in Kojak, Lou Grant, Ryan’s Hope, Kate and Allie, Law & Authority and other shows.
Survivors include his 45-year-old wife, A life to live actress Marilyn Chris, and their son, Paul.