Harve Presnell | Singer and actor, 75

Harve Presnell, 75, whose booming baritone graced such Broadway musicals as

The Unsinkable Molly Brown

and

Annie

, died Tuesday of pancreatic cancer at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif., said Gregg Klein, Mr. Presnell's agent.

Although he was best known for his roles in musical theater, Mr. Presnell also is remembered as William H. Macy's father-in-law in the Coen brothers' 1996 film Fargo.

Among his other movies were When the Boys Meet the Girls (1965), The Glory Guys (1965), and Paint Your Wagon (1969), as well as the TV series The Pretender (1997-2000).

It was in The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1960) that the 6-foot-4 actor was first noticed by Broadway audiences. In the Meredith Willson musical, he played lucky mining prospector "Leadville" Johnny Brown opposite Tammy Grimes' feisty Molly. He repeated his role in the 1964 film version, which starred Debbie Reynolds as the buoyant title character.

Mr. Presnell even played the dashing Rhett Butler in a musical version of Gone With the Wind (adapted by Horton Foote with a score by Harold Rome) in London in 1972.

For a good part of his career, Mr. Presnell portrayed the wealthy Daddy Warbucks in various incarnations of Annie. The actor was first offered the role in a tour of Annie and thought the title was a show-business abbreviation for Annie Get Your Gun, the musical in which he had once played sharpshooter Frank Butler.

He was born George Harvey Presnell in Modesto, Calif. He went to the University of Southern California on a sports scholarship. After three weeks, the head of the music school heard him sing and offered him the same scholarship for music. He soon quit school and spent three seasons singing in Europe. In Berlin, Willson, the composer of Molly Brown, first heard him sing. - AP