Robert Winthrop Ginty (November 14, 1948 – September 21, 2009) was an American actor, producer, screenwriter, and director perhaps best known for playing Thomas Craig Anderson on the television series The Paper Chase. Early life Ginty was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Elsie M. (née O'Hara), a government worker, and Michael Joseph Ginty, a construction worker. Ginty was involved with music from an early age, playing drums with Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Carlos Santana and John Lee Hooker. He studied at Yale and trained at the Neighborhood Playhouse and the Actors Studio. Ginty worked in the regional theater circuit, and New York theatre on Broadway. Harold Prince hired him as his assistant after seeing him perform in The New Hampshire Shakespeare Festival Summerstock Company under the direction of Jon Ogden in 1973. Career Television Ginty moved to California in the 1970s, where he found frequent work in various series in the mid-1970s. In 1975, he appeared in the NBC television movie John O'Hara's Gibbsville (also known as The Turning Point of Jim Malloy). In 1976, he attained some popularity after finding a steady role starring with Robert Conrad in Baa Baa Black Sheep, a successful television series about the experiences of United States Marine Corps aviator Pappy Boyington and his squadron of misfits during World War II. Ginty played pilot T.J. Wiley. He also appeared in one episode of The Father Dowling Mysteries (Season 3 Episode 8) as shady bookstore owner Lenny Rothstein. He had guest appearances in the first couple of seasons on Simon & Simon, as A.J. and Rick's medical examiner friend on the police force. He then went on to co-star in four television series: The Paper Chase (1978) (where he met future wife Francine Tacker), Falcon Crest, CHiPs and Hawaiian Heat. He also appeared in John Llewellyn Moxey's The Courage and the Passion. He was also on an episode of Matlock (The Narc). Film Ginty had a small role as a popcorn vendor in Two-Minute Warning (1976), and then appeared in two Hal Ashby movies—the 1976 Bound for Glory, a biography of folk singer Woody Guthrie, starring David Carradine, and Coming Home (1978) starring Jane Fonda, Jon Voight, and Bruce Dern (a film which was nominated for eight Oscars). Around the time he appeared in the series The Paper Chase (1978), he won his first film action lead in The Exterminator (1980), which