LOS ANGELES — Richard Dysart, a veteran stage and screen actor who played senior partner Leland McKenzie in the long-running TV courtroom drama “L.A. Law,” has died after a long illness. He was 86.

Dysart died Sunday at his home in Santa Monica, Calif., according to daughter-in-law Jeannine Jacobi.

Actor Richard Dysart, right, poses for a photo with Augusta businessman Roger Pomerleau at the Senator Inn in 2003. Dysart, who died Sunday at 86, lived in Augusta and graduated from Cony High School. Andy Molloy/Kennebec Journal

Richard Dysart, a veteran stage and screen actor, plays Leland McKenzie in the NBC television show “L.A. Law” in Los Angeles, Calif., in 1988. 1988 Associated Press file

From seventh grade through high school, Dysart lived in Augusta across from the former Lincoln Elementary School. His father was a podiatrist.

Dysart was a 1947 graduate of Cony High School, and acted in the school’s long-running “Chizzle Wizzle” variety show each year he attended. He reprised some of those acts when he returned to Augusta in 2003 to help Team Cony raise $1.5 million to pay for a larger auditorium, gym and classrooms in the new high school.

In an interview with the Kennebec Journal at the time, Dysart said the values he learned while growing up in the state and at Cony helped him in life and as an actor.

He offered the commencement address to the Class of ’92 graduates of the University of Maine at Augusta, and he and his wife, Kathryn Jacobi, attended his 60th high school reunion in Augusta in 2007.

Dysart created the Broadway role of the Coach in “That Championship Season,” for which he won a Drama Desk Award in 1972, and his many film appearances included Hal Ashby’s “Being There,” Clint Eastwood’s “Pale Rider” and John Carpenter’s “The Thing.”

But his most memorable role was likely that of head man in the firm of McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney and Kuzak in NBC’s 1986-1994 series “L.A. Law.”

It was produced by Steven Bochco, who, having scored a hit with the police series “Hill Street Blues,” was casting another multi-character series that would portray the life in a toney Los Angeles law office.

“I was trying to make it by doing films and TV movies,” Dysart said in an Associated Press interview in 1988. Then he heard about the prospective “L.A. Law” project and called his agent.

“After I read the script,” he recalled, “I called him and said I wanted to talk to Steven Bochco. My agent said, ‘That’s funny, he wants to talk to you.’ ”

The role of Leland McKenzie was largely an official one, patiently advising his lawyers about their cases and their romances. But he had one experience during the 1988 season that was out of character: a romance with a beautiful law student 30 years McKenzie’s junior. Dysart was delighted to depict this May-December fling.

“L.A. Law,” for which Dysart won an Emmy, was the culmination of his long career.

While growing up in Augusta, he worked at a local radio station, but he didn’t consider becoming a professional actor until he enrolled at Emerson College in Boston. After earning his master’s degree, he headed to Broadway.

In the 1960s, he became interested in repertory and became one of the founding members of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. George C. Scott appeared with the company, and he and Dysart became good friends. Dysart later joined Scott in a New York revival of “The Little Foxes.”

In 1968, Dysart made his film debut with Scott and Julie Christie in Richard Lester’s “Petulia.” He also appeared with Scott in “Hospital,” “Hindenberg,” “The Last Days of Gen. Patton” and on Scott’s TV series “East Side/West Side.”

Dysart portrayed a variety of prominent figures. He was Dwight D. Eisenhower in “The Last Days of Gen. Patton” and in a BBC film “Churchill and the Generals.” He played Harry Truman in the CBS movie “Day One” and in the ABC miniseries “War and Remembrance.” He was J. Edgar Hoover in “Panther” and Henry L. Stimson, secretary of war in 1940-45, in “Truman.”

In 1987, Dysart married artist Kathryn Jacobi, who survives him.

Material from the Associated Press and Kennebec Journal archives was used in this story.

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