When Irving was 13 or 14, he sang in synagogues and churches as a boy soprano. By his final high school year in 1940, he heard about a dramatic school in Boston for those who were not quite draft age and who were tall and had deep voices, so he immediately received a scholarship. In 1942, he worked in the chorus of the St. Louis Muny Opera.

He appeared as a memorable Baron Mirko Zeta in the New York City Opera production of Franz Lehar’s The Merry Widow, broadcast live in 1996 from the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts; during the intermission he talked about the operetta’s history and historical inspiration.

Irving was married to Maria Karnilova from 1948 until her death in 2001. They had a son Alexander of Oceanside, California, a daughter Katherine Irving of South Salem, New York, and three grandchildren.

In 2008, Irving recreated the three roles he originally played in the ill-fated 1976 Joseph Stein musical So Long, 174th Street, now reworked, revised, and with its original title Enter Laughing at Off-Broadway’s York Theatre Company, and received rave reviews for his rendition of “The Butler’s Song”. Irving performed his one-man cabaret show to great acclaim at Feinstein’s in New York City in November 2008. On December 8, 2008, aged 86, Irving received the 17th Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre.

Irving returned to television in 2008 after an absence of more than a decade to reprise his role as Heat Miser in A Miser Brothers’ Christmas, a sequel to The Year Without a Santa Claus, which premiered on December 13, 2008, on cable’s ABC Family. The show served as the network’s first original animated special. The production was nominated for an Annie Award for Best Animated Television Production Produced for Children by the Los Angeles Chapter of the International Animated Film Society.

Irving died in Manhattan of heart failure on December 26, 2016 at the age of 94.