A longtime TV talent, in roles big and small

George R. DiCenzo, 70, of Washington Crossing, an actor on several network TV series in the 1980s and 1990s and later an acting coach in Philadelphia and Manhattan, died of heart failure Monday, Aug. 9, at St. Mary Medical Center in Middletown Township.

Before he turned to teaching and directing, Mr. DiCenzo was in the cast of On Borrowed Time, which starred Nathan Lane and George C. Scott at Circle in the Square in Manhattan in the 1991-92 theater season.

Born in New Haven, Conn., he graduated there in 1958 from Hopkins School, which gave him its Distinguished Alumni Award in 1996.

Mr. DiCenzo earned a bachelor's degree at Union College in 1962 and graduated from the Yale School of Drama in 1965.

Newspaper reviews of his career begin in 1976, when he starred in the two-part, four-hour, made-for-TV movie Helter Skelter on CBS.

In this story about the 1969 Los Angeles murders by the Charles Manson cult, Mr. DiCenzo portrayed prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi.

"That was probably his first major piece of acting," and the role of which he was especially proud, said his son, George Riedel.

His character roles on TV during the 1970s included parts on The Rockford Files, Kojak, The Streets of San Francisco, Hawaii Five-O, Baretta, and The Waltons.

In early 1981, Mr. DiCenzo was Arnold Rothstein, the gambler reputedly behind the 1919 Chicago Black Sox scandal, in the NBC series Gangster Chronicles.

Later in 1981, he starred with James Arness - retired from Gunsmoke - in McClain's Law, a police procedural on NBC.

In 1987, he was a newspaper editor in the two-hour CBS movie Warm Hearts, Cold Feet.

In 1990, he was the district attorney in ABC's Equal Justice, which some critics compared to the series L.A. Law and which his son said was his second-favorite role after the one in Helter Skelter.

And in 1993, he was the brother of the lead in the ABC series Joe's Life.

In 1997 he appeared in an episode of Law and Order, and in 2003 he had a role in an episode of Judging Amy.

By the early 1990s, Mr. DiCenzo was already an acting coach in Bucks County.

In 1992, The Inquirer reported, he helped establish the Center for the Performing Arts, which had a board and volunteers but no home. By 1993, the center announced its intention to conduct classes at Delaware Valley College in Doylestown Township and at the nearby Aldie Mansion, home of the nonprofit Heritage Conservancy.

And he had turned to directing.

In 1991, he directed his first operatic performance, Gian Carlo Menotti's The Medium at the New Hope Performing Arts Festival.

In 1995, the first presentation by the Philadelphia Public Theatre was his staging of Jason Miller's That Championship Season at the Philadelphia Ethical Society.

By 1996, Mr. DiCenzo was teaching an acting class of about 20 people in a second-floor theater space at Poco's, a Mexican restaurant in New Hope, said Jane Stojak, managing director of the Leah Stein Dance Company in Mount Airy.

"It was mainly for people who had had some experience on stage or the screen," she said.

In 1998, when she met him, Mr. DiCenzo was teaching in a studio at Seventh and Callowhill Streets in Philadelphia.

"It was all word of mouth. He didn't advertise," Stojak said.

"I used to own the Triangle Theater at Fourth and Girard," she said. "And he moved his class to my theater, from 2001 until 2007, when I closed the theater."

Besides those weekly classes, where 75 percent of the students were professional actors, Mr. DiCenzo was in the late 1990s teaching actors in Manhattan, where 90 percent of the students were professionals, Stojak said.

"He would teach one evening a week" in Greenwich Village performance spaces such as the Cherry Lane Theatre and the Actors' Playhouse, she said.

Mr. DiCenzo, Stojak said, was "incredibly good at creating a safe environment for them to take risks."

Most recently, she said, he had begun "to teach people in the corporate world how to feel comfortable on stage" when making product presentations.

Besides his son, Mr. DiCenzo is survived by his fourth wife, Donna; three grandchildren; and a sister.

His son said that Mr. DiCenzo was also survived by two former wives - Patricia Riedel and Donna Shindell - but that he did not know the name of the third former wife.

Services took place Thursday, Aug. 12.