George Furth (born December 14, 1932) is a Tony Award-winning American librettist, playwright, and actor.
Born George Schweinfurth in Chicago, Illinois, Furth majored in Drama & Theatre at Northwestern University and received his Master's degree from Columbia. He made his Broadway debut as an actor in the 1961 play A Cook for Mr. General, followed by the musical Hot Spot two years later, but in New York City theatre circles he is known more as a playwright than a performer, especially for his collaborations with Stephen Sondheim, the highly successful Company and the ill-fated Merrily We Roll Along, a bomb that eventually drew a cult following. He also penned the plays Twigs, The Supporting Cast, and Precious Sons, and wrote the book for the Kander and Ebb musical The Act.
Frequently cast as a bespectacled, nerdish, ineffectual type, Furth appeared in such films as Blazing Saddles, The Best Man, Myra Breckinridge, Oh God!, Hooper, The Cannonball Run, Young Doctors in Love, Doctor Detroit, Bulworth, and in perhaps his best remembered role, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, in which he portrayed Woodcock, the railroad guard robbed twice by the titular pair. His many television credits include Tammy, McHale's Navy, F Troop, Ironside, I Dream of Jeannie, That Girl, Green Acres, The Odd Couple, Bonanza, Happy Days, All in the Family, Murphy Brown, L.A. Law, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, Murder, She Wrote, and the made-for-TV movie The Scarlett O'Hara War, in which he portrayed famed film director George Cukor. He adapted Twigs for a 1975 television production starring Carol Burnett.
Furth won both the Tony and Drama Desk Award for Best Book of a Musical for Company, and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play for Precious Sons.
Won Broadway's 1971 Tony Award as Best Book (Musical) for "Company."
In the early 1970s, plans to film his hit 1971 Broadway play 'Twigs' with Elizabeth Taylor (I) playing four roles never materialized.
2000: Worked with Stephen Sondheim on 1981 Broadway musical "Merrily We Roll Along". It was awarded Best New Musical at the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award in 2001.
