Buzz Kill

Buzz Podewell, who showed there are more embarrassing early career appearances for aspiring actors than porn and McDonald’s commercials, has died of lung cancer at the age of 69. The child actor was establishing his cred with appearances on Mr. Wizard, when he landed the plum role of Buzz Turner, a shy boy persecuted for his lack of musical knowledge by the magical and androgynous Mr. B Natural, played by Betty Luster.  He would go on to Emerson College, where he was a classmate of Henry Winkler and probably thought that his early video made for the scratch would never see the light of day again. Then in 1991, Joel and the ‘bots made him a star when they dug up the short for Mystery Science Theater 3000. 

Griffiths Parked

Looks like the producers of the remake of Lyman's Boys were right to go with Matt LeBlanc after all, as Richard Griffiths has died of complications of heart surgery at the age of 65. Griffiths career as a pudgy Brit character actor spanned 4 decades, but he should best be remembered for reading an erotic novel about a quivering mound of love pudding, then having his pants pulled down and a birthmark forcibly removed from his ass by Lt. Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun 2 ½. As an indication of his range, he also won a Tony as an idealistic but lonely teacher at a prep school in The History Boys, a role he reprised in the film based on the play and parodied in the first episode of Episodes. Lesser minds will remember him as Harry Potter’s mean Uncle Vernon, while other roles have included King George II in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, the former First Lady’s chef in Guarding Tess, a terrorist in Superman II, and part of King Ralph’s staff.

Can’t Get a Rise Out of Her

The fat lady has sung for the remarkably svelte Risë Stevens, an international singing star when the world cared more about opera than glorified karaoke competitions, at the age of 99. The mezzo-soprano owned the role of Carmen during the 1940s and ‘50s during her 23-year career at the Metropolitan Opera. A rare opera star who was something other than a soprano or tenor, Stevens expanded her audience beyond the long glove, tiny binocular set with appearances on radio, TV and in movies. Other roles included Octavian in “Der Rosenkavalier,” Dalila in “Samson et Dalila,” Cherubino in “Marriage of Figaro”; Prince Orlofsky in “Die Fledermaus,” and the title role in “Mignon.” Though if any of that means anything to you, it’s unlikely you’d be friends with a cheesesteak and baseball guy like me. She appeared with Bing Crosby in Going My Way, on Broadway as Anna in The King and I and matched her big voice with The Big Mouth as a guest on The Martha Raye Show.

Six Feet Deep Throat

Harry Reems, who in 1972 had the most famous penis in the United States, has died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 65. The prolific and prodigious porn star appeared in more than 100 films, none more famous than Deep Throat, the first porn movie to escape dark sticky theaters and become part of the national conversation. Reems played Dr. Young, who found an anatomical quirk in Linda Lovelace’s character that placed her G-spot in her throat, making oral sex much more pleasurable. No woman since has fallen for that one. Reems’ thick black mustache and shirts open to the navel to reveal a Jamie Farr-like coating of hair became the archetype for what porn stars are supposed to look like. The film grossed more than $600 million for the Colombo crime family. Reems, originally hired as the lighting director and pressed into service when the original leading man didn’t show, got $250 and was hit with a federal lawsuit. After leaving the biz, Reems got his real estate license, but he didn’t consider the career change to be that significant: “I’m still selling dirt,” he said.

 

 

No Longer Being Served

Frank Thornton, the sane center about which the lunacy of Grace Brothers revolved, has died at the age of 92. Best remembered as Captain Peacock in Are You Being Served?, Thornton was the stiff upper lip type, straight out of Central Casting, the ideal foil for British comedians like Benny Hill and Spike Milligan. With Thornton’s death, only Nicholas Smith, the unfortunate looking Mr. Rumbold, is left from the principal cast of Are You Being Served?.

Abdicated

Malachi Throne, one of the last surviving special guest villains from Batman, has died at the age of 84. As False Face, Throne was almost unrecognizable behind a semitransparent mask when he wasn’t wearing other disguises to pull off his criminal engagements. Throne also had a unique tie to another iconic 1960s series, as he played the voice of The Keeper in the unaired Star Trek pilot, The Cage, then also playing a commodore when some of the pilot’s footage was used in a later episode The Menagerie. His appearance in Star Trek at all was ironic, as he had originally turned down Gene Roddenberry’s offer of the role of Bones McCoy. Other roles included Robert Wagner’s Boss on It Takes a Thief, the voice of the Star Wars trailer, the Israeli Foreign Minister on The West Wing, who gets blown up as retribution for the Bartlett Administration assassinating Qumari Foreign Minister Abdul Shareef.

Moody’s Blue

(Props to Monty, our connoisseur of the squared circle)

William Moody, aka Percival Pringle III, aka Paul Bearer, the owner of the Funeral Parlor, is in need of his own services, after his death at the age of 59 of gall bladder complications related to gastric bypass surgery. After originally appearing as Percival Pringle III, a fat dandy in a bow tie, with limited interest or success, Moody returned to the WWE in 1991 as the manager of The Undertaker, paralleling his real world experiences of obtaining a degree in mortuary science and earning certification as a funeral director and embalmer. Made up to look like a Saturday night horror host’s idea of a funeral director and with a cremation urn perpetually under his arm, hosted the talk segments, which came to be known as The Funeral Parlor.

Caracasket

Or

Victim Hugo

Or

No Oil for Joe!

(Props to interested observer Shawn)
In a nod to the Monroe Doctrine, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has died of cancer or its complications at the age of 58. The fiery populist blamed capitalism for destroying life on Mars as part of his Latin American socialist revolution. After leading a failed coup as an army paratroop commander in 1992 he was jailed, and after he was pardoned in 1994, his countrymen decided to reward his creative approach to patriotism by electing him president in 1998. Through strong-arm tactics he held power for the next 14 years, winning 2 more elections as fairly run as your typical Internet vote with opponents and opposing viewpoints being suppressed or disappeared, and surviving a coup attempt in 2002. Chavez built a broad power base among the nation’s poor by using his nation’s oil revenues to launch social programs, including subsidized stores, public housing and free health and education programs. While doling out fish, he neglected to provide poles, and the country’s economy stagnated while the homicide rate skyrocketed. He proclaimed himself a successor of the revolutionary Simon Bolivar, whose sword he would wield at public events before launching into performances of folk songs and tributes to Mao Zedong and Friedrich Nietzsche. He made friends among the world’s rogue states in 2006 when he called President George W. Bush the devil and claimed the podium still reeked of sulfur after Bush's address at the United Nations. His efforts to support the underprivileged, including a low-income oil program for the suffering indigents of Massachusetts, won him praise among rogue Americans like Sean Penn, who said that “America had lost a friend it didn’t know it had.”

End of Days at a Time

Or

One Death in a Lifetime

Or

No More Days at a Time

(Props to Monty)

Or

That Was It

(Stolen from stiffs.com)
Bonnie Franklin, who showed that single fictional women can have it all, except drug-free children, has died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 69. One Day at a Time starred Franklin as Ann Romano, newly divorced mother of 2, struggling to deal with parenting, her career, her feminist ideals, sexual harassment, rape and menopause in the sitcom mecca of Indianapolis as series creator Norman Lear continued his frontal assault on traditional American values. Other sitcom tropes explored on the series included Ann battling with her deadbeat ex for child support, her daughter Julie dating a man more than 20 years older than her, both her daughters giving it up like a good girl should in high school, birth control, infidelity and Ann’s fiancé getting killed by a drunk driver. Off screen, they also had Ann’s TV daughter MacKenzie Phillips spending all her time getting high and sleeping with her dad. Those kind of feel-good storylines, plus Pat Harrington as comic relief superintendent Schneider, kept One Day at a Time in the top 20 for 8 (and in the top 10 for 4) of its 10 seasons. A Tony, Emmy and Golden Globe nominee, Franklin also starred as birth control advocate Margaret Sanger in a TV movie, played Merrill Stubing’s ex-wife on The Love Boat, and reunited with Valerie Bertinelli, this time as her mother-in-law, on Hot in Cleveland in 2011.