Randolph Mantooth, who starred as the goofy but gallant firefighter-paramedic Johnny Gage on Emergency!, the 1970s NBC action show that changed life-saving services as we know it, has died. He was 80.
Mantooth died Thursday at a hospice facility in Ventura, California, his brother, Donald Mantooth, told The Hollywood Reporter. He had been “ill for a number of years and kept getting thinner and thinner,” he said.
Mantooth also had two stints (1987-90 and 1993-95) as Clay Alden/Alex Masters on the ABC soap opera Loving, and he appeared on other daytime serials including ABC’s General Hospital, CBS’ As the World Turns and ABC’s One Life to Live.
Mantooth was just getting started as a contract player at Universal when he was hired in 1971 to play Gage opposite Kevin Tighe as his partner, Roy DeSoto, on Emergency!, created by Dragnet legend Jack Webb and Robert A. Cinader.
When he was told he was going to play a paramedic, the first thing Mantooth said was, “What the hell is a paramedic? At that time, there were only [a handful] in all of California,” he told Amy Harrington in a 2013 interview for the TV Academy Foundation website The Interviews.
