Randolph Mantooth

Overview

Born
September 19, 1945 · Sacramento, California, USA
Died
July 9, 2026 · Ventura, California, USA (complications from pneumonia)
Birth name
Randy DeRoy Mantooth
Nickname
- Randy
Height
6′ 1″ (1.85 m)

Mini bio

Randolph Mantooth definitely fit the bill when he made a bankable name for himself in the TV medical series Emergency! (1972) as strong but sensitive paramedic/firefighter "John Gage".

Tall, dark and good-looking, Randy is of Seminole Indian heritage, born in Sacramento, California on September 19, 1945. He was one of four children born to a construction engineer whose career meant that he frequently moved his family from state to state. Randy attended San Marcos High School in Santa Barbara, California, where he took part in school plays. He received a scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York following his studies at Santa Barbara City College.

Randy was discovered in New York by a Universal talent agent after performing the lead in the play "Philadelphia, Here I Come". He returned to California and slowly built up his resumé with work on dramatic series like Adam-12 (1968), McCloud (1970), Alias Smith and Jones (1971), and Marcus Welby, M.D. (1969). This led to TV stardom on the popular "Emergency!" series in 1972 which ran over five seasons. As a change of pace, he tried comedy and earned series roles on the short-lived Operation Petticoat (1977) and Detective School (1979), and pursued the guest-star route on episodics. He was also prominently seen in the high-profile mini-series Testimony of Two Men (1977) and The Seekers (1979).

After a career lull in the early 1980s, Randy found a new direction in his career with daytime soaps. He played "Clay Alden" in the soap opera Loving (1983) from 1987 through 1990, then left for personal reasons before returning to the show in 1993, this time in the role of "Alex Masters". The soap was later revamped and entitled The City (1995), but it lasted only two more years.

From there he has regularly appeared on General Hospital (1963), One Life to Live (1968), and As the World Turns (1956), where he has played both good guys and villains. Millennium credits film include featured roles in the romantic comedy It Started with a Kiss (1959), the action thriller Agent Red (2000), the social drama Price to Pay (2006), the romantic thriller He Was a Quiet Man (2007), the action adventure Bold Native (2010). and the horror yarn Killer Holiday (2013). On TV, he has had regular roles on the daytime soap dramas As the World Turns (1956) in 2003-2005 and One Life to Live (1968) in 2007.

Randy has frequently returned to his theater roots in such productions as "Footprints in Blood", "Back to the Blankets", "Wink Dah", "The Independence of Eddie Rose", "The Paper Crown", "The Inuit", and, most recently, "Rain Dance" off-Broadway in 2003.

Divorced from actress Rose Parra, he married actress Kristen Connors in 2002. They were featured together as the ambassador and his wife in the film comedy Scream of the Bikini (2009). Two siblings also got into the business--actor Don Mantooth and producer Tonya Mantooth.
- IMDb mini biography by: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

Family

Spouses
Parents
Relatives

Trademarks

Frequently stars in soap operas
Deep smooth voice

Trivia

In 2000 he participated in Project 51, a non-profit organization organized to not only celebrate the impact that Emergency! (1972) had on rescue and emergency services, but also to honor members of the EMS profession as well. As one of seven committee members guiding this organization, he finished a cross-country tour, traveling with the refurbished Squad from the TV show to such cities as: Orlando, Chicago, Las Vegas, Long Island, Baltimore and the final stop, Washington, D.C. On May 16, nearly 30 years after "Emergency!" debuted, the Smithsonian Institute accepted the show's memorabilia into its Natural History Museum.
He has played the character of Los Angeles Paramedic John Gage on four different series: Emergency! (1972), Emergency +4 (1973), Adam-12 (1968), and Sierra (1974).
Did live-action safety tips along with Kevin Tighe at the end of each episode of the Saturday-morning cartoon series "Emergency +4" (where they reprised both their roles from the live-action TV show "Emergency!"), but these scenes were cut out when the show went into syndication.
In 1997 he made a guest appearance on Diagnosis Murder (1993) starring Dick Van Dyke, which reunited him with former Emergency! (1972) co-star Robert Fuller.
He is half Seminole Indian.

Quotes

People tell me this all the time...they come up to me and say, 'You're my hero,' I say no. I'm just the face. You're the body. You do the work. You're on the front line. Believe me, when I tell you from the bottom of my heart -- if you're a firefighter...an EMT...a paramedic -- you're my hero.
[When he arrived from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles to become an actor]: This town let me be an actor. They've always said, 'Randy? Yeah, let's see what he can do.' Hollywood never said, 'Let's see what he can do,' they said, 'I know what he can do. I don't need to see him.'
[on playing someone else besides "Johnny Gage"]: I got recognized when I was on Emergency! (1972), but nothing like I do now as "Clay". People seem to have a tendency to take the soaps much more seriously and reality identify on a personal basis much more than they do on prime-time. I'll be riding home on the subway and these ladies will come up to me and lecture me about how I should deal with "Ava".
My son's up to no good, and really no good, and I'm sorta [I guess] in a state of denial. I can't believe that my son's doing something like this, and I've been pretty much hiding him out and financing him, behind my wife's back, and turns out that was a big mistake on my part.
[on his Loving (1983) character]: I don't want to make him a villain. First of all, I don't think anyone is all bad or all good; there are shades of human behavior and I think a character is more interesting and more credible if you show those shadings.