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In memoriam: Jonathan Crombie, 1966-2015

News broke earlier today that Jonathan Crombie, the actor best known for playing Gilbert Blythe opposite Megan Followss Anne Shirley in the famous CBC TV Anne Of Green Gables movies and sequels, was gone.

And suddenly a big chunk of everyones childhood and youth has gone, too.

The actor passed away from complications from a brain hemorrhage in New York City on April 15.

Like Blythe, a character he charmingly made his own, Crombie was excellent at playing clean-cut, handsome characters who had more depth and warmth than first expected.

In the theatre, he found roles that fully demonstrated his range. At the Tarragon, he impressed as the haunted war poet Robert Graves in Stephen Massicottes The Oxford Roof Climbers Rebellion, and he was believable as the golden boy again, utilizing that aristocratic profile fallen on hard times in Morris Panychs The Dishwashers. He was nominated for a Dora Award for Canadian Stage’s production of Tom Stoppard’s smart and funny play, Arcadia.

Speaking of smart and funny, Crombie was a member of the legendary Canadian comedy troupe Skippys Rangers, which comprised of Lisa Lambert, Bob Martin and the late Paul OSullivan. They specialized in character-based, old-fashioned sketch, filled with sharp, clever but never mean-spirited satire.

All four had connections with the hit Broadway musical The Drowsy Chaperone, with Lambert co-writing the music and lyrics, and Martin co-writing the book and playing the cardigan-wearing, sweetly enthusiastic Man In Chair, a role that Crombie played on Broadway for several months in 2007 and in the tour.

I also remember Crombie fearlessly donning an afro in a number from the hilarious send-up of earnest religious-themed musicals, People Park, which, like Chaperone, played at Toronto’s Fringe.

In his stage roles, appearing eternally boyish and good-natured, he always seemed to be genuinely surprised when he got a laugh. He radiated sincerity. There was nothing self-conscious or calculated about his work.

Crombie, son of former Toronto mayor and federal cabinet minister David Crombie, acted in four seasons at the Stratford Festival, where his roles included a passionate and believably impulsive star-crossed lover in Diana Leblancs staging of Romeo And Juliet.

And he was amusing and full of neurotic tics as intense playwright Lionel Train in a season of the TV series Slings & Arrows.

Recently he starred in an episode of The Good Wife and in regional theatre productions of Clybourne Park and a new adaptation of Kent Harufs novel Benediction.

But of course hell always be known as Gilbert, the archetypal figure of the sensitive, caring man who eventually gets to appreciate Annes intelligence and spirit. As his Gilbert and Anne braved illness, separation and death, Crosbie made us believe, if only for a brief time, in happy endings.

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