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. 

Coe Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Good Bye

George Coe, who I had no idea voiced Wodehouse on Archer, has died at the age of 86. Coe holds the distinction of being the first person fired from Saturday Night Live, getting a call out in the first episode and making a few more appearances before joining Chuck Cunningham, Cousin Oliver and Judy Winslow in the TV Penalty Box. Coe earned an Oscar nomination for his 1968 short film, a Bergman parody called The Dove. He played General Watson in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, who didn’t care, but surprisingly could tell, that Kate Mulgrew was a woman. He ran Network 23 on Max Headroom and played the patriarch of the Huntzberger clan on Gilmore Girls. He made two appearances on The West Wing as Senator Howard Stackhouse, whose titular filibuster held up healthcare legislation for the benefit of his autistic grandson, and who later considered a left-wing challenge to President Bartlet’s second-term nomination. Most recently, he voiced the heroin-addicted, much put upon valet of Sterling Archer.

Hooks, Flatline and Sinker.

Jan Hooks, who’d be happy to take you on a tour of the Alamo’s basement, has died at the age of 57. Passed over for a spot on Saturday Night Live for Joan Cusack, Hooks dodged the bullet of the disastrous 1985-86 season, and instead joined the cast along with Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Victoria Jackson, and Kevin Nealon in 1986, forming, with holdovers Nora Dunn, Jon Lovitz and Dennis Miller, the strongest cast since the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players. She left SNL to replace Jean Smart on Designing Women, she played an amorous driving school student with a thing for foreheads in The Coneheads, voiced Manjula for a few episodes of The Simpsons, and played Jenna’s mother in two episodes of 30 Rock, making her the second parental unit from that show to die in the last 4 months (Elaine Stritch). We’ll miss you Buck Henry. 

Saturday Night Dead

(A bit of obviousness shared with Monty)

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Pardo, the Interruption

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Pardo is Such Sweet Sorrow...

Don Pardo, who showed that if you do anything for long enough, even if it’s just reading names enthusiastically, you become a legend, has died at the age of 96. Among the shows graced by his intonations in his 70-year career at NBC were The Price Is Right (where he served as the original announcer), Jackpot, Jeopardy!, Three on a Match, Winning Streak, NBC Nightly News and for 39 years, Saturday Night Live. He attempted to retire in 2004, but Lorne Michaels begged him to stay. He wanted to pre-record the introduction from a studio near his home in Phoenix, but producers were unable to handle the complexity of planning around a pre-recorded bit of tape and insisted the feeble old man fly cross-country every week to do his part. As the on-duty booth announcer on WNBC-TV and the NBC network, he was the first to announce to NBC viewers that President Kennedy had been shot, though somehow Walter Cronkite’s broadcast is the one preserved in history, and after years of hearing fake news broadcasts voiced by Pardo, the broadcast today sounds like the start of a sick skit. 

Saturday Night Dead

Tom Davis, Al Franken’s shadow, has died of throat and neck cancer at the age of 59. Improv ace Davis and comedic structuralist Franken were high school friends who joined the newly formed Saturday Night Live as two of the first writers hired in 1975, the two sharing a weekly salary of $350 a week. Davis proved to be a bargain – helping to create the Coneheads, working with Dan Aykroyd on his Julia Child sketch where she cuts herself and bleeds to death, helping to create Irwin Mainway and the Bag o’Glass, developing Steve Martin’s bloodletting medieval barber-surgeon, writing the skit about Nixon’s drunken anti-Semitic rant to past president’s paintings, giving Bill Murray the structure for Nick the Lounge Singer, and writing The Continental for Christopher Walken. Davis and Franken headlined the writing team that won 4 Emmys for the show and related specials. The two were close – Al Franken’s daughter is named Thomasin Davis Franken – but by 1990, Davis’ drug abuse had gone from charming quirk (he went to the University of the Pacific because its foreign affairs program would let him go to India where he could smoke opium) to bottomless pit. Davis pulled no punches about his addictions in his autobiography Thirty-nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss, which he withheld until after Franken’s election to the Senate.