New Delhi, July 13 -- LOS ANGELES - The character Randolph Mantooth played for seven seasons on NBC ran into burning buildings, revived cardiac patients on kitchen floors, and treated highway accident victims on California freeways. What Mantooth could not have anticipated in 1972, when Emergency! first aired, was that by the time the series ended seven years later, the job those scenes depicted had become legal in 46 American states where it had not previously existed.

Mantooth died Thursday at a hospice facility in Ventura, California. He was 80. His brother Donald Mantooth confirmed the death, saying he had been ill for a number of years. A specific cause was not disclosed.

From 1972 through 1979, Mantooth played firefighter-paramedi...