Stay Down

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Naked Gun 4/5: The Smell of Ed Hocken

Former Breath Assure spokesman George Kennedy has found a more permanent cure for his halitosis, succumbing to heart disease at the age of 91. The sturdy character actor spent ample time as both heavy and hero: He was the hired gun in town to off The Sons of Katie Elder and the major at HQ who figures out a way for The Dirty Dozen to prove their merits, even if he did get knocked off an ambulance for is trouble. He hunted down The Boston Strangler and beat the crap out of Cool Hand Luke, a role for which he won the 1967 Best Supporting Actor Oscar. He was Joe Patroni, Mr. Everything when it comes to airplanes, graduating from mechanic in Airport to the VP of Operations who saved the Karen Black-piloted plane in Airport 1975 and the submerged plane in Airport ’77 and then pilot in The Concorde: Airport ’79, where he made the word “again” more disturbing than it’s ever been when he was nailing Bibi Andersson by a roaring fire. The Airport series begat the parody Airplane, and Kennedy was tapped to play McCroskey, but that was the wrong week to turn his back on a steady paycheck and the role went to Lloyd Bridges instead. He was more accommodating the next time the Zucker Brothers came calling and took the role of Ed Hocken, Frank Drebin’s cuckolded partner in the Naked Gun series. He also spent a few seasons in Dallas as Carter McKay, Southfork’s neighboring rancher who stirs up a range war 100 years late as a ruse to force the Ewings to sell an oil-rich parcel in a plot devised by long-time rival Jeremy Wendell, who is caught in the ensuing sting operation, costing him his spot as head of WestStar Oil, a position that is then assumed by McKay. In the final season, JR sets his sights on WestStar, a larger company than his Ewing Oil, and so great a prize he is willing to jeopardize the family company to get it. In the end, McKay outfoxes JR, taking WestStar for himself and turning Ewing Oil over to arch-nemesis Cliff Barnes, which leaves JR considering suicide in some sort of nod to Hays Code-era morals that the bad guy always has to pay. Other roles included walking stereotype – down to the black and white striped shirt – Big Frenchy in a few episodes of McHale’s Navy, Clint Eastwood’s traitorous former partner in The Eiger Sanction (it’s a 40-year-old spoiler, bite me), good guy cop in Earthquake, an avenged shopkeep in Creepshow 2, the bank robber who corrupts John Wayne’s sons in Cahill, US Marshall and for reasons surpassing understanding, host of Saturday Night Live in 1981 episode. 

Doomed Day Machine

Denny Miller, a classic “hey it’s that guy” of the Bolt VanderHuge variety with a resume combining lead roles in Z-grade dreck like Doomsday Machine, a film annotated by the stars of Cinematic Titanic, and guest starring roles on scores of TV shows, including a stint on Dallas as Max Flowers, Cliff’s foreman on an oil platform who JR bribes to slow down production so that Cliff will default on the loans that he took to secure the offshore oil drilling leases that JR had conned him into buying in the first place, and, in a staggering coincidence, a meathead security guard in an episode of Magnum, PI that I was watching when I learned that Miller was dead, has died at the age of 80. He also played the Visitor Trooper in V who figures out Mike Donovan has infiltrated a Visitor ship, an MP in an episode of MASH, Carol Brady’s high school boyfriend on The Brady Bunch, Tongo the Ape Man on an episode of Gilligan’s Island and for 14 years, he was the Gorton’s Fisherman.

And the Rest in Peace

(Whoop whoop for Joe Wright)

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Professor Emeritus 

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Three Hour Tour to Hades

(Props to Nathan)

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His Coffin Will Be Made of Coconut Shells Tied Together with Dried Seaweed

(Accolades for Terry)
Russell Johnson, who as Professor Roy Hinkley made a lie detector, a battery recharger, a telescope, a Geiger counter, jet-pack fuel, a bamboo xylophone, nitroglycerine, soap, shark repellent, a sewing machine, lead radiation suits and make-up, a helium balloon, a washing machine, water pump, telegraph, roulette wheel and pool table, but couldn’t fix a 4-foot hole in a damn boat, has died of kidney failure at the age of 89. The extended 3-hour tour wasn’t Johnson’s first crash in the Pacific, having been shot down over the Philippines during World War II, and having appeared in Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki. Johnson adopted his professorial persona early in 1950s sci-fi in such classics as It Came from Outer Space, This Island Earth, Attack of the Crab Monsters, and The Space Children, plus in two episodes of The Twilight Zone, having gone “Back There” in time to try to prevent the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and inadvertently temporarily staying an "Execution." In the infamous dream season, Johnson also played Sheriff Wyatt Mansfield on Dallas. 

Now This Is the Story About How His Life Got Flipped-Turned Upside Down

James Avery, butt of fat jokes before such things were offensive, has died of complications from heart surgery at the age of 65. Avery is best remembered as the surrogate father to Will Smith on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air because Mr. Huge Movie Star With the July 4 Openings never bothered to toss beloved Uncle Phil a bone with a cameo in one of his big-time movies. Probably revenge for one of those life lessons Uncle Phil was always dispensing. Avery also voiced Shredder on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, was Kelso’s commanding office at the police academy on That ‘70s Show, was the coffee-obsessed DMV examiner who passes Corey Haim on License to Drive. And of course was the presiding judge in the trial where Lisa Alden, the sister of Jeff Faraday, who fathered a child with Kristen Shepherd that he claimed was JR Ewing’s, leading Bobby to pay him off, challenged Bobby for custody of said child, Christopher, on Dallas.

Can’t See the Forrest for the Flies

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If a Stiff Falls in the Forrest, and No One Hears Him, Does He Make a Sound?

 

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Rot, Forrest, Rot

Steve Forrest, best remembered for spending two years trying to convince the Ewings he was the long-lost Jock, has died at the age of 87. When Jim Davis died in 1981, Dallas producers spent more than a year dithering over how to deal with his passing, eventually deciding to send him off-screen on a South American wild-catting operation, where he was thought to have died in a helicopter crash. In 1986, a stranger named Ben Stivers showed up, eventually claiming to be Jock, having survived the crash and been rescued by natives. Rather than let this preposterousness die out when Bobby emerged from the shower and wiped out the previous season as Pam’s vision quest, Season 10 was the year of the idiot storylines. Forrest returned, playing the same con, but the pretender to Jock’s empire this time was named Ben Parmalee, because Pam was apparently was psychic and foretold the coming of the fraud in her dream. While the characters had to go through the motions of reliving the same plotline viewers hated the first time, we found that Parmalee had been on Jock’s helicopter, and that Jock had survived the crash, hanging on in a feverish state telling family stories, so that Parmalee could create enough doubt to hang around for half a season. Lesser minds may think of Forrest as Dan “Hondo” Harrelson on S.W.A.T. or General Sline, who tried his best to send Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd to their deaths in Spies Like Us. Forrest also accomplished the rate double feat of having fought in the Battle of the Bulge in real life and in D-Day in The Longest Day.  And if you’re thinking that I included a fairly non-descript character actor because I could have fun with his name and riff on Dallas, you’re right. It’s not all about you, people.

Hill Over Dale

Dale Robertson, the poor man’s Ben Johnson, has died of lung cancer at the age of 89. Well known on the Western series and movies that filled screens large and small in the 1950s and 1960s, Robertson starred in Tales of Wells Fargo, focusing on protecting stagecoaches and trains from criminals and not cards getting stuck in ATMs, and in Iron Horse as a card player who won a railroad, as often happens with public trusts. On Dallas, he played an old friend of Jock’s who put the moves on Miss Ellie after she had Jock declared legally dead, which led to the reading of his will, which pitted brother against brother for control of Ewing Oil for the umpteenth time, until J.R. chased him off. As JJ Starbuck, he was a vital part of criminal justice in 1980s TV, where beleaguered/corrupt/inept police were unable to solve crimes without the help of a cagey old billionaire cowboy, or a mystery writer, or a dwarf toymaker, or a mystery man and a talking car, or military prisoners on the lam, or master ninjas, or handsome PIs, or robot-aided helicopter tour operators, or wizened southern lawyers, or a shape-shifting NYU professor, or a former government operative, or a hologram come to life.

Absence of Dallas

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I Dream of Breathing

Larry Hagman, best remembered as the translator in the 1964 political thriller Fail Safe, has died of complications from throat cancer at the age of 81. Other highlighted roles include a rapey, crazed ambulance driver in Mother, Jugs and Speed; New Orleans Judge Luther Charbonnet on the short-lived series Orleans; Jack Jones, symbolic stand-in for big business in Nixon; and astronaut/Master/white slave trader Tony Nelson on I Dream of Jeannie. Astute observers may recognize him from all 357 episodes of the original Dallas series, 5 cross-over episodes of Knots Landing, 3 TV movies and then all 10 episodes of the revisitation series Dallas as John Ross “JR” Ewing, Jr., one of the greatest villains in the history of the small screen, and one of its most iconic characters. Referred to as a human oil slick by TV Guide, JR screwed Vaughn Leland, Sue Ellen Ewing, Bobby Ewing, Gary Ewing, Pamela Barnes Ewing, April Stevens Ewing, Cliff Barnes, Digger Barnes, Merilee Stone, Clayton Farlow, Peter Richards, Alan Beam, Cally Harper, Carter McKay, Afton Cooper, Jordan Lee, Wade Luce, Andy Bradley, Jeremy Wendell and many others (figuratively) and Sue Ellen, April, Merilee, Cally, Afton, Serena Wald, Julie Grey, Leslie Stewart, Holly Harwood, Kristin Shepherd, Mandy Winger, Angelica Nero, Kimberly Cryder and LeeAnn De La Vega and many others (literally). The unrepentant schemer and womanizer emerged as the man America loved to hate and Dallas became one of the longest running evening drama series of all time. So iconic was Hagman’s portrayal that after several abortive attempts to reboot the series, producers finally determined that only one man could wear the 10-gallon Stetson, and built the new Dallas series around him, with Patrick Duffy returning as long-suffering nice guy brother Bobby. As with the original series, Hagman was still the best thing about the show, and before his death, he had already filmed 6 episodes of the second season. The son of Broadway legend and Peter Pan originator Mary Martin, Hagman also dabbled as a director, mostly episodes of Dallas, with one feature film to his credit: Beware! The Blob, which was re-released in 1982 as “The Film That J.R. Shot.”

Decked

Now Lance LeGault will really never catch the A-Team, having died at the age of 77. Best remembered as Colonel Roderick Decker, the Wile E. Coyote to the A-Team’s Road Runner, LeGault employed his voice “4 octaves lower than God’s” to find steady work as a serial heavy on action shows of the late 1970s and 1980s. He started as a stunt double for Elvis in Girls! Girls! Girls!, and the King must have taken a shine, as LeGault scored an uncredited role in that movie, then returned for Kissin’ Cousins and Viva Las Vegas, played a tambourine in Elvis’ 1968 comeback special, and led thousands of fans around Graceland as the voice of the self-guided tour. As Al Halliday on Dallas, LeGault also sold J.R. a tanker that he needed to fulfill a contract, but that crashed into a Westar tanker, causing a massive spill, which Cliff Barnes claimed was solely the responsibility of Ewing Oil for its unseaworthy tanker despite having evidence that the collision was simply an accident.

Windom of Heaven

William Windom, best remembered as the guy who was very happy getting Cabot Cove, Maine to say “Ah,” has died of congestive heart failure at the age of 88. After leaving Zork State/The College of Middle Earth/Williams College, Windom put his Midwestern local news anchor looks to use after the war on radio, TV and the stage. He was the prosecutor slapping around Gregory Peck’s inept Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, starred as the major in Five Characters in Search of an Exit, possibly the worst-ever episode of The Twilight Zone, he was Commodore Matt Decker who died trying to defeat the planet killer in The Doomsday Machine on Star Trek, but mostly he was Dr. Seth Hazlitt, friend of Jessica Fletcher and archnemesis of Amos Tupper, on Murder She, Wrote. And of course he pretended to be Ray Krebb’s father Amos on Dallas, before revealing Jock was really Ray’s father, elevating Ray from ranchhand to bastard scion and potential heir to the Ewing Oil fortune and meaning that all those times Ray was rolling around in the hayloft with Lucy, Gary’s little girl, he was really nailing his own niece.

Norman Abated

Norman Alden, who with 237 roles in a 50-year career may have elicited the phrase, “Hey, it’s that guy,” more than any actor in history, has died of natural causes at the age of 87. He asked about Marty McFly’s life jacket as the diner owner in Back to the Future, voiced Aquaman, gave Electra Woman and Dyna Girl their marching/awkward flying orders, was a color-blind cameraman in Ed Wood, and he was Lou the Mechanic in 7 years of AC Delco commercials. And of course he played Senator William Orloff, who had received a no-pay mortgage from the Ewings, but had to resign his seat when Cliff Barnes got J.R.’s secretary/mistress Julie Grey to spill company secrets after J.R. loved her and left her (with  a $100 bill on the pillow to buy herself something pretty).

You Catch More Flies with Honey West

Or
More Dead Than Alive
Anne Francis, best remembered as Mama Jo, cranky spinster head of an all-girl charter boat service moored next to Cody and Nick on the first season of Riptide, has died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 80. She also played Honey West, one of the first female TV detectives who matched her male counterparts with inexplicably well financed high-tech toys, unmatched martial arts skills, and needlessly exotic pets, in this case an ocelot named Bruce. Other gigs included two episodes of The Twilight Zone, as a witch infatuated with James Best, and the other as a mannequin come to live – not sure which is less believable, and was one of Lucy’s mothers-in-law-to-be on Dallas. She also starred in Forbidden Planet, the play William Shakespeare would have written if he had have conceived of a robot and an invisible monster that was the manifestation of the human Id. Francis died less than a month after her Forbidden Planet co-star Leslie Nielsen, who co-starred in Airplane!, which was based in part on The Crowded Sky, which co-starred Francis.

Nixed

Nixed

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End of the Lane

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The Final Days
(Props to Monty)

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Great Lane Smith’s Ghost
(Further accolades for Monty)
Lane Smith, a character actor who made a career out of portraying charismatic creeps, including Richard Nixon, has died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at age 69. Smith won an Emmy nomination for playing Nixon in the 1989 TV-movie “The Final Days,” pissing off both Nixon critics and supporters, suggesting he got it right. Other roles including DA Jim Trotter, III in “My Cousin Vinny,” Daily Planet editor Perry White in “Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman,” Gordon Bombay’s coach turned arch-nemesis Jack Reilly in “The Mighty Ducks,” corrupt industrialist and alien collaborator Nathan Bates on “V,” the banker trying to repossess Sally Field’s farm in Places in the Heart, the mayor of Calumet, Colorado in Red Dawn and Pauly Shore’s father in law in “Son-in-Law.” He also played the prosecutor who tried to convict Cliff Barnes for the murder of Kirstin Shephard, who, of course, was the answer to everyone’s favorite cliffhanger, “Who Shot J.R.?” and had returned to Southfork to try to blackmail J.R. by revealing she had given birth to his son, but as was revealed after her death, she had miscarried J.R.’s child and was pregnant by her subsequent boyfriend, Jeff Farraday, who then sells the child to Bobby who announces the successful adoption of a son, Christopher, following Pam’s several miscarriages. Prior to TV and movies, he had achieved notoriety for portraying Randle Patrick McMurphy in 650 off-Broadway performances of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.”

Elliott Mess

Stephen Elliott, bullying millionaire would-be father-in-law Burt Johnson in Arthur, has died at the age of 86. Other roles included the police commissioner on “Death Wish,” recurring cranky judge Harold Aldrich, on "Chicago Hope,” Jane Wyman’s ex-husband on “Falcon Crest,” Police Chief Hubbard on “Beverly Hills Cop” and Scotty Demarest, the recurring lawyer on “Dallas” who, among other things, unsuccessfully defended Bobby’s on-again, off-again love Jenna Wade in her trial for the murder of her ex-husband Naldo Marchetta after he had kidnapped her. He was also nominated for a Tony Award for his portrayal of Monsieur Coulmier in the 1967 Broadway revival of "Marat/Sade."

Keeled Over

Howard Keel, one-time musical star of stage and screen and later step-patriarch of the Ewing clan on Dallas, has died of colon cancer at the age of 85. The baritone romanced his way through such musicals as “Kiss Me Kate” and “Annie Get Your Gun.” He also was the groom for one of the Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, played the sneaky Indian in The War Wagon, and wrestled with the killer beanstalks in the sci-fi classic The Day of the Triffids. He revived his career in the 1980s as Clayton Farlow, a refinery owner whose ranch, the Southern Cross, provided safe haven to Sue Ellen Ewing against J.R. after her romance with Clayton’s son Dusty foundered when Dusty was paralyzed in a riding accident. (Course, Dusty was only partially paralyzed and later tried to romance Sue Ellen again.) After the creepy May-December romance between Clayton and Sue Ellen fizzled, Clayton befriended and eventually married Sue Ellen’s mother-in-law Eleanor Southworth Ewing, aka Miss Ellie, setting up the expected familial power struggles. Keel provided a strong, decent presence to counter the conniving of J.R. Sadly, Keel died hours before getting to watch the greatest reunion of all time: Dallas Reunion: The Return to Southfork.

The only absolutes in life are death and Texas

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Ex-Tex
(Props to Michelle Haus)
Tex Schramm, former Dallas Cowboys general manager and the man who decided football was more important than family and that men liked looking at scantily-clad cheerleaders, has died at the age of 83. In 1966, Schramm convinced NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle to add a second game on Thanksgiving Day, ensuring generations that they would be inflicted with Cowboy football every year while trying to digest tryptophan-laden turkey. In 1972, he replaced the high school cheerleaders on the sideline with professional dancers. Most notably, he's the man who popularized the notion that the Cowboys were "America's Team." In April, it was announced that this fall Schramm would join the Cowboys Ring of Honor, honoring the Hall-of-Famers who have played for Dallas. Schramm's relationship with new owner Jerry Jones delayed the accolade for 12 years following Schramm's retirement. And now he won't. The followers of the Philadelphia Eagles, myself included, a group long noted for being willing to boo anything from the home team to Santa Claus, have something to cheer about.