Character Assassinations

Nipped in the Bud

Or
Knotts Buried Farm

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Knotts’ Landing

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Evidently, Four's a Crowd
(Props to Monty)

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First Norman Fell, now Knotts Done
(Also from the mind of Monty)

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The Incredible Mr. Limp
(Continued kudos for Monty)

Not to be confused with
An Incredibly Limpet Mister
(Laudatories for Craig)

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Fife and Death
(Honorifics for Greg)

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May-buried
(From our favorite outsider, Jon)

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The Ghost of Mr. Chicken
(An epitaphany shared with Craig)
Don Knotts, the original TV buffoon, has died of lung cancer at the age of 81. Bug-eyed, fidgety, rail-thin and with a mug expressive enough to be called the man of a thousand faces, Don Knotts would not be the prototype for television super stardom. But in creating the indelible portrait of Barney Fife, the deputy of Mayberry who combined the gun awareness of Dick Cheney with the police skills of Mark Fuhrman, Knotts cemented himself among the legends of the small screen, winning the Emmy as best supporting actor in each of the 5 seasons he was on The Andy Griffith Show. Barney was originally supposed to be just another of the odd characters Sheriff Andy Taylor dealt with as the star of the show, but show creator Griffith quickly recognized Knotts was getting all the laughs and stepped into the background. Barney was actually a variation of “the nervous guy” character Knotts had created as part of Steve Allen’s cadre of gifted character comedians with Louis Nye, Tom Poston, Bill Dana and Pat Harrington. Were that not enough, Knotts was there to help America weather the loss of Norman Fell and Audra Lindley when they left Three’s Company for spin-off futility. Knotts became the living embodiment of the leisure suit as wannabe swinger Ralph Furley, replacement landlord for Jack, Janet and the Not Chrissies, all wide lapels and neckerchiefs. Knotts also took his innocuous imbecility to the big screen in a long list of light comedies, including the Incredible Mr. Limpet, The Reluctant Astronaut, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, The Apple Dumpling Gang, Gus and Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo. Other roles included constantly pestering old co-star Andy Griffith in an Andy Griffith reunion movie, an Andy Griffith reunion special, on Mayberry RFD, on The New Andy Griffith Show and on Matlock as tedious neighbor Les Calhoun. He also livened up the latter few episodes of the Yakov Smirnoff vehicle What a Country as night school principal Bud McPherson.

Five of us expected the Grim Reaper to come and knock on his door and take 4 points apiece: My Our Hearse is a Very, Very, Very Fine Hearse moves into 3rd, Warren’s List One takes 4th, Jennifer and Greg’s Team Quincy tie for 5th and Michelle’ Dead and Deaderer takes 15th. Tom’s efforts to crack the leaderboard were nipped in the bud when he dropped Knotts after the 2004 GHI.

The Leaderboard
1st Paul - Pushing Daisies 2 hits - 30 points
2nd Monty - Comedy of Terrors 2 hits - 22.85714286 points
3rd Me - Our Hearse Is a Very, Very, Very Fine Hearse 2 hits - 14 points
4th Warren - List 1 2 hits, 9 points
5th Jennifer 2 hits, 6.85714286 points
(tie) Greg’s - Team Quincy 2 hits, 6.85714286 points

Koldchak: The Eternal Night Stalker

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The Cold Man

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A Christmas Obituary

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Off to get his final major award
(Combining the efforts of Craig and Greg)
Darren McGavin, the consummate character actor best remembered as the tire-changing, bloodhound-battling, furnace-fixing father in the second greatest Christmas movie of all time (shut up, Greg), has died at the age of 83, leaving the ethereal plane and joining the tapestry of obscenities still hanging in space over Lake Michigan. McGavin also starred in the cult classic Kolchak: The Night Stalker as Carl Kolchak, investigative reporter on the mummy, vampire, alien, werewolf and zombie beat who apparently never actually published an article as his frustrated editor Vincenzo thought every story was a figment of Kolchak’s imagination. McGavin made an uncredited cameo as a reporter in the pilot of last year’s ill-advised reprise of the classic series. Other roles included the sympathetic policeman in the rare Jerry Lewis straight film The Delicate Delinquent, a NASA administrator in early MST3K target Hangar 18, a pennant-fixing gambler in The Natural, a heroin pusher in The Man with the Golden Arm, Billy Madison’s dad, Agent Dales, the original Fox Mulder on The X-Files, and, in his only Emmy-winning role, Bill Brown, Murphy Brown’s father.

No one in this year’s contest realized how fra-gee-lay McGavin’s health was, but Mark had him in 2004 and committed the minor breach of etiquette in dropping him, his second premature deletion of the year.

Notable connections with Don Knotts – they appeared together in Hot Lead and Cold Feet and No Deposit, No Return, and Don Knotts once had a cameo as Deputy Fife on Step by Step in an episode called “A Christmas Story.”

G’Day
Andreas Katsulas, best known to anyone who has moved out of their parent’s basement as the one-armed pharmaceutical henchman who killed Richard Kimble’s wife and framed him for the murder in the movie remake of The Fugitive, has died at the age of 59. For the “Live Long and Prosper" set, Katsulas also played red-eyed militant ambassador turned spiritual leader G'Kar on Babylon 5, a newcomer on one of the Alien Nation movies, Romulan commander Tomalak on Star Trek: The Next Generation and a Vissian captain on Enterprise. However as someone beholden to the pharmaceutical industry, merck my words, Katsulas’ role in The Fugitive was the most science fictitious role, as no drug company would ever put a human life at risk for the sake of a few billion dollars in profits.

Cowboy Down

(Kudos to long-time observer Jon)

Or
The Cowboy rides off into the sunset
(Props to Craig)
Curt Gowdy, the only Boston Red Sox announcer to be immortalized as a punchline on Mystery Science Theater 3000, has died of leukemia at the age of 86. Gowdy also provided the only 30 seconds worth watching in Summer Catch as he broadcast that schmuck Freddie Prinze Jr. giving up a home run to Ken Griffey Jr., not that I’m still bitter that tool did so in a Phillies uniform. Starting out broadcasting football games in Wyoming from atop an orange crate in subzero temperatures, within 5 years Gowdy was a part of the world champion New York Yankees’ broadcast team. Two years later he brought his mountain twang to the home of incomprehensible accents as he started his 15-year run as the voice of the Boston Red Sox. Gowdy played off his background, dubbing himself the “Cowboy” and his outdoorsiness made him one of the few men in the media to befriend Ted Williams, who disclosed to Gowdy that he was retiring with 3 games left in the 1961 season. Gowdy said that being able to tell his listeners that Williams had homered in his last major league at-bat was the highlight of his career. He later spent 10 years as the voice of the NBC game of the week, and all told called 13 World Series and 16 All-Star Games. Although best remembered for his time in the catbird seat, for decades “big game” meant Gowdy – he broadcast 12 Rose Bowls, 7 Olympics, 8 Super Bowls, 24 NCAA Final Fours, the NIT when it still mattered and 10 years worth of AFL games, including the Heidi Game. He also put his wilderness skills to use, managing to keep such luminaries as Shelley Hack and Richard Crenna from getting eaten by bears or falling into ravines as the host of ABC’s American Sportsman Season. In 1971, Curt Gowdy State Park was established near Gowdy’s hometown of Cheyenne. Gowdy was one of the most honored broadcasters ever, receiving the Ford C. Frick Award as a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame broadcasters wing, the Pete Rozelle Award from the Pro Football Hall of Fame, 13 Emmys and a Lifetime Achievement Emmy. He was inducted into the Boston Red Sox, Rose Bowl, American Sportscasters, Sports Writers and Broadcasters and International Fishing Halls of Fame and was the first sportscaster to receive the George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting. He also served as president of the Basketball Hall of Fame, and that institution named its annual award for basketball writers and broadcasters in his honor.

Two Pooligans had a Fricking clue that Gowdy was headed for the ultimate press box. Paul's Pushing Daisies takes over the lead with his second hit of the year, good for 30 points, while rookie Jeannie notches her first hit to pull into the three-way tie at 6th.

The leaderboard
1st Paul - Pushing Daisies 2 hits, 30 points
2nd Monty - Comedy of Terrors 2 hits, 22.85714286 points
3rd Matt 1 hit, 20 points
(tie) Dawn - Ashes to Ashes 1 hit, 20 points
(tie) Shawn – Team One – Oldest 1 hit, 20 points

Pedro and Pedaled

You Bet, His Death
Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez, the Stepin Fetchit of Mexican actors, has died at the age of 80. Dropping out of school at age 7, he remained functionally illiterate throughout his life, learning lines by having his wife read him scripts or improvising at the behest of his directors. “I never learned to speak English too good, but the audience liked it like that,” he boasted. He was art of a performing family, and got his big break on a 1953 episode of You Bet Your Life, joining Tom Selleck and Brian Billick among those whose success started on game shows. Gonzalez Gonzalez, named by Mexican tradition with his mother’s maiden name and his father’s surname, sang and danced for host Groucho Marx, who suggested they go on tour as the Two Tamales. Pedro corrected him and said the act should be Gonzalez Gonzalez and Marx, prompting Groucho to quip, “How do you like that? A two-man act and I get third billing.” Apparently coming off a three-day bender with Ward Bond, John Wayne caught the act and signed Gonzalez Gonzalez to a contract, making him part of the Wayne stock of actors, and he appeared in Rio Bravo, Chisum, McLintock!, Hellfighters and The High and the Mighty. He was derided by some for perpetuating a stereotypical Mexican caricature, but other Latin actors said he was a trailblazer; his grandson, Clifton Collins, Jr., has drawn strong reviews for his recent role as murderer Perry Smith in Capote.

He sleeps with the fishes...
(Props to Craig)

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Turn Around Bright Eyes (Or You’ll Get Hit By a Bus)

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Bus-ted

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Curb Your Enthusiasm
Richard Bright, best known as one of only six actors to appear in all three Godfather movies, was killed after being whacked by a tour bus in Manhattan at the age of 68. With most of his career spent in minor roles as cops and crooks, Bright made the most of his time as Michael Corleone’s right-hand man Al Neri, who killed Don Barzini on the courthouse steps during the baptism scene in The Godfather, then later closed the door in Kay’s face as the minions come to pay their respect to the new godfather. He killed Fredo at the end of The Godfather, Part II and ordered the death of Joey Zasa in The Godfather, Part III.

From Jawas to Jaws

Lars, But Not Least

Or
No New Hope
Phil Brown, best known as Darth Vader’s stepbrother, Tatooine moisture farmer, Stormtrooper target practice and Luke Skywalker’s joykill uncle Owen Lars, has died at the age of 89. Brown's 8 minutes on screen in Star Wars as a simple farmer trying to make a better life, killed because of his ingrate nephew’s stupid droids, overshadows a career dating to the 1930s, when he graduated Stanford and joined the famed Group Theater in New York. He worked regularly on Broadway, and like many others made the jump to Hollywood in the 1940s, where he was a founder of the Actor’s Laboratory, a renowned stage theater that was later determined to be an incubator for Communists. Brown was frequently second lead male who didn’t get Jean Arthur, Jean Craine, Hedy Lamarr, Ruth Hussey, Donna Reed or Claudette Colbert. He also directed the movie The Harlem Globetrotters, but fell pray to the Communist blacklist and spent the next 40 years on stage and screen in Europe, based out of England, where he was found during the filming of Star Wars: A New Hope. And you thought he was just the guy who pumped George Lucas’ gas one morning. Other films included Superman, as a state senator, Cold War classic The Bedford Incident and The Camp on Blood Island.

Shawn’s Team One – Oldest knew Brown was no longer strong enough to pull the ears off a gundark, and joins the four-way tie in second with the solo hit. This hit is our 8th of the year. In the record-breaking 2004-05 campaign, the 8th hit came on March 26.

The leaderboard
1st Monty - Comedy of Terrors
2 hits, 22.85714286 points
2nd Matt
1 hit, 20 points
(tie) Paul - Pushing Daisies
1 hit, 20 points
(tie) Dawn - Ashes to Ashes
1 hit, 20 points
(tie) Shawn – Team One – Oldest
1 hit, 20 points

Benched
(Monty strikes again)

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Under the Surface
(Craig: the Revenge)

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The Six Feet Deep

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We’re Going to Need a Bigger Casket
Peter Benchley, washed-up novelist who needed aquatic themes to get it up like an S&M fetishist needs a ball gag and a studded collar, has died of pulmonary fibrosis at the age of 65. His curriculum aquae reveals his range: The Deep, The Island, The Girl of the Sea of Cortez, Beast (Small seacoast town experiences mysterious disappearances and a wrecked boat; giant squid, rare for this area, is to blame, but the local politicians resist calls to close the beach; finally, the police hire a crusty sea captain to help track down the beast. Sound familiar?), White Shark (about a Nazi experiment mixing man, fish and machine gone awry, revealing why President Bush is so concerned about animal-human hybrids) and Amazon. But of course he’s best known for Jaws, and no author has ever owed more to a director. Steven Spielberg saw a kernel of an idea in Benchley’s overwritten, overwrought mess about infidelity, organized crime, class struggles in small New England towns, and, oh yeah, a killer shark. Spielberg’s movie had as much to do with Benchley’s novel as James Frey’s memoir had to do with James Frey’s life. In later years, Benchley tried to make amends by devoting time to clearing up the misconceptions about sharks that Jaws helped perpetuate. A more appropriate conciliatory effort would have been chucking that typewriter into the deep blue he couldn’t stop writing about.

Honky goes Conky
(Props to Craig)

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Uncovered
(Kudos to Monty)

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Zebra Earns His Stripes

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Cover of Darkness
Another rough week for television icons, as a week after Al “Grandpa” Lewis died, we lose that fat, white guy from The Jeffersons. Franklin Cover, best known as Tom Willis, George and Louise’s neighbor in another deluxe apartment in the sky, died at 77 of pneumonia about two months after a heart attack. At first much of the humor on the show was racial, with George referring to Tom as a honky and a zebra for his interracial marriage to Helen, played by Lenny Kravitz’ mother Roxie Roker. Sherman Helmsley eventually asked the writers to stop having George call Tom a honky, arguing that he would not refer to a friend with a racial slur. When the writers refused, Helmsley simply mumbled the term when it was in the script, ruining enough takes for the writers to get the hint. In addition to his years as the comic foil to opinionated and blustery George, Cover had a number of guest stints on other programs, including the first episode of ER, Will & Grace, Coach and Mad About You.

Curiosity Killed the Writer
(An epitaphany shared with Monty)
And the two robbers didn’t help any. Alan Shalleck, who collaborated with H.A. Rey’s widow to continue the Curious George franchise with new books and television programs, was killed during a robbery at his mobile home. Within two days, two men had been arrested, charged with the murder and confessed to the murder, because, let’s face it, anyone deciding to make it rich by robbing mobile homes probably wasn’t trying to raise the scratch for his Mensa application. After approaching Margret Rey in 1977, following the death of H.A., Shalleck was the writer and director of more than 100 5-minute episodes of Curious George for The Disney Channel. Shalleck and Ray also wrote more than two dozen books, compared to the original seven written by Ray and her husband.

Score Settled
In the history of cinema, there are a few seminal sounds – Al Jolson uttering the first words heard on film, Fred Astaire tapping his way through Top Hat, and Godzilla shattering the post-war Toyko calm with his distinctive roar. The man who gave voice to the embodiment of the Atomic Age by rubbing a contrabass with a resin-coated leather glove and reverberating the sound in a recording studio has died at the age of 91. Akira Ifukube was an award-winning composer, then found work with some of Japan’s leading directors, including Akira Kurosawa, and was Toho Studio’s pre-eminent musical mind, scoring more than 250 movies in a 50-year career. However he escapes the dustbin of history for his work in scoring 11 Godzilla movies, developing the march that would become Godzilla’s theme music and the distinctive stomp by beating a kettle drum with a thick rope knotted at the end. So important to the Godzilla films was the music and the sound effects, that Ifukube became regarded as one of Godzilla’s four fathers along with director Ishiro Honda, producer Tomiyuki Tanaka and special effects director Eiji Tsubaraya.

The Adventures of Lewis in the Dark

Schnauzer Rolls Over, Plays Dead.
(Props to Craig)

That's Al, Folks
(Kudos to Monty)
Al Lewis, Grandpa to the world, even his own TV daughter, has died at the age of 95. Or 82. It’s so hard getting an accurate read on the undead. As Grandpa, Lewis proved that fathers-in-law are a problem that transcends the ethereal plane. Forever meddling and abusive to Herman, he also proved an inept collaborator, whether trading Billy Mumy for a chimpanzee or turning himself into Herman’s hot blonde girlfriend. Lewis and Gwynne had early co-starred on Car 54, Where Are You?, with Lewis as Toody and Muldoon’s fellow officer Leo Schnauzer, a role he reprised in the disastrous David Johansson remake (and I apologize for the treble redundancy) in 1994. Unlike many actors who felt constrained by typecasting in a well-known role, Lewis realized his limitations as an actor and cashed in at every opportunity, regularly appearing in the cheesy Dracula cape on talk shows and local mall openings. “Why fight it, it pays the mortgage,” became the sell-out rallying cry. Lewis even tried unsuccessfully to be listed as “Grandpa” Al Lewis when he ran as the Green Party candidate for governor in 1998. Despite the constraints of New York electoral law, Lewis still pulled in more than 52,000 votes, revealing once again the primary flaw of democracy: the voter. Other fruitless causes he championed were the Sacco and Venzetti defense team, the Black Panthers and Mumia Abu Jamal, and he hosted a weekly whack-job political program in New York up to his death. Other appearances included a lonely, ventriloquist security guard on Taxi as well as roles in Married to the Mob and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

Seven of us expected a vacancy at 1313 Mockingbird Lane, led by Monty’s Comedy of Terrors, which is now in first place as the first to draw second blood. Rounding out the 6-way tie for 11th are Michelle's The Naked and the Dead Pool, Jennifer, Greg's Team Quincy, Paul’s The Stiffs of ’06, Tom’s Knock, Knock, Knocking and my Killing Time. Coulda, shoulda, woulda been in second with his second premature extrication is Mark, who had listed Grandpa in 2004.

The leaderboard
1st Monty - Comedy of Terrors 2 hits - 22.85714286 points
2nd Matt 1 hit - 20 points
(tie) Paul - Pushing Daisies 1 hit - 20 points
(tie) Dawn - Ashes to Ashes 1 hit, 20 points
5th Me - Our Hearse Is a Very, Very, Very Fine Hearse 1 hit - 10 points
(tie) Mark - Beltway Boneyard III: Filibustering the Grim Reaper 1 hit - 10 points

The Dead Woman Mystique
(More honorifics for Craig)

Or
Fried
(Dipping back into the pool of Monty)

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LATER

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Madame Ovary

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The Egg and Die
Betty Friedan, the world’s best known manifestress, has died at the age of 85. Friedan, almost single-handedly responsible for robbing America of its barefoot, pregnant, kitchen-bound better half, shook off the ovarian shackles with her 1963 book “The Feminine Mystique.” Instantly, women began thinking for themselves and demanding better aprons and a professional quilting circuit. Once they got the kinks worked out, women also expected career paths other than milkmaid and housewife. With more women finding satisfaction outside the home, the TV dinner and other ready-made meals took off and fast food restaurants started popping up everywhere, dramatically increasing sodium and fat levels in food and starting the snowball effect that has led to today’s obesity epidemic. Mothers no longer had time to mend clothes, so into the trash went those jeans with the hole in the knee, filling America’s landfills and kick-starting the consumer culture that has the nation’s debt burden spiraling out of control. With the crucial time for bonding between mother and child spent instead in pursuit of the corner office, mothers felt less attached to their children and barely noticed them being sent off to foreign wars. With wives no longer willing to give it up, husbands turned to the streets for their carnal needs and sexually transmitted diseases flourished. With both parents working, children were left unsupervised and defenseless, and America’s streets were never more violent. To sum up: Uncle Jim’s fatal heart attack at 45, the daily pummelings in the backyard by Lefty and the Gooch, Uncle Stumpy, who covers the house from under the front porch looking for “Charlie,” your brother’s herpes, your 450-pound cousin who can’t make it from the front door to the couch without an oxygen tank and the fact that your sister doesn’t have enough credit to buy you more than a napkin ring for Christmas are the indelible legacy of Betty Friedan. Stalin had fewer flaws.

The Dead Shoes
(Plaudits for Michelle)

Or
The Man Who Loved Deadheads
(More from the Haus party)

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Muerte Shearer
Moira Shearer, who specialized in making films that sounded interesting but were actually about ballet, has died at the age of 80. Among her best known works was Red Shoes, which as Greg noted, was sorely lacking in Diaries. The Story of Three Loves had all the plot and the heat of a Love Boat episode with Louis Nye and Brenda Vaccaro. The Man Who Loved Redheads - and you know what they say: red on the head, watch this movie and go to bed. And Peeping Tom, which is less titillation, more psychological thriller about a guy who takes pictures of women as he kills them. Just 9 days after Greg watched Red Shoes for the first time, Moira died. As a test case, Greg will be screening The Incredible Mr. Limpet to assess its impact on Don Knott’s mortality and determine if his DVD player is, in fact, a portal to hell.