Larry Sherman, ex-Trump publicist, actor dies was 94

Larry Sherman, an actor and former journalist who also served as Donald Trump’s first publicist, died Saturday of natural causes, according to his son, entertainment publicist Charles Sherman. The elder Sherman was 94.

Sherman was an out-of-work sports journalist with no experience in publicity in 1982 when he applied for the job of public relations head for the New Jersey Generals of the U.S. Football League. Trump, then a real estate magnate and the owner of the franchise, “didn’t care that he had never worked in public relations, and hired him on the spot,” his son said.

Before that, Sherman had made his living as a journalist at the Long Island Press, Newsday and the New York Herald Tribune.

His earliest vocation was that of an actor, and during a career that spanned throughout his lifetime, he logged numerous credits in films ranging from “North by Northwest” in 1959 (in which he played Cary Grant’s cabdriver) and “Midnight Cowboy” in 1969 (as a homeless man who drops dead on the street in front of Jon Voight’s Joe Buck Character) to his final film appearance, “The Comedian” with Robert De Niro, in 2016. He also made repeated appearances as a judge on TV’s “Law & Order.”

“He was a jack-of-all-trades,” Charles Sherman said. “My dad did it all.”