Petrie-fied

(Props to Mark)

Or

You're not going to make it after all

(Kudos to Phil)

Or

You’re gonna wake it after all

(Fraternal variation from Peter)

Or

Who can turn the ventilator off, with a smile?

Or

Mary Tyler Less

(Additional accolades for Mark)

Or

A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants

(Historical huzzahs for Steve)

Or

Chuckles Got the Last Laugh

(A technically correct, as the last actor to play Chuckles is still alive, though the character and the first actor to play him are in that great TV studio in the sky, observation from Peter)

Or

#meow

(Update on a theme, from Phil)
Mary Tyler Moore, best remembered for showing off her working breasts in Flirting with Disaster, has died of complications from pneumonia at the age of 80. In her honor, her family is preparing a dreadful dinner party. After several years of bit parts in sitcoms, Moore scored the role of Laura Petrie, wife of comedy writer Rob, mother of incredibly dumb and annoying son Richie, in The Dick Van Dyke Show, where she was one of the first TV wives allowed to be smart and funny. And wear capri pants. Well known for her addictions, one classic sitcom wasn’t enough, so she created The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and her intelligent, ambitious, independent, and regretfully spunky Mary Richards became a feminist icon, in addition to being hilarious. The show also showed Moore’s business acumen, as she and husband Grant Tinker’s production company, MTM, also developed Newhart, St. Elsewhere, Hill Street Blues, WKRP in Cincinnati, and, of course, The Texas Wheelers, starring Gary Busey, Mark Hamill and Jack Elam. All under the watchful eye of Mimsie. MTM also produced Mary, an ill-conceived and ill-fated variety show starring Moore, which also featured Michael Keaton and David Letterman, whose disbelieving smirk and thinly veiled contempt for the goings-on are the show’s lone redeeming qualities. Later projects sought to counter her image by putting her in roles that were more dramatic; like her Oscar-nominated turn as an icy housewife in Ordinary People and as Mary Todd Lincoln, opening the door for fellow sitcom star Sally Field to not get to see the end of Our American Cousin; caustic, like in Flirting with Disaster and in cameos as Jackie’s bitchy boss on That ‘70s Show; or not funny, like in Mary and Annie McGuire. 

Hopefully, Carcinoma is Also Painless

Or

2017 Enters with a Distinct Lack of Jocularity

(Morose observation courtesy of Mark)

William Christopher, best remembered for picking up George Morgan’s sloppy seconds, has died of small-cell carcinoma at the age of 84. After some time on Broadway in a revue alongside Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Christopher found steady work appearing in sitcoms of the 1960s, including a recurring role on Gomer Pyle, USMC as Private Lester Hummel. In 1972, Larry Gelbart developed a series based on the movie M*A*S*H. Not uncommonly, the pilot showed room for improvement, and he wanted a quirkier actor to play the role of Father Francis Mulcahy to make the secondary character more interesting without extensive exposition. Enter Christopher, who put the improv skills he needed to contend with Cook and Moore to use during his audition, ignoring the script and ad libbing his way through the scene in character. Father Mulcahy boxed; performed a bris and a tracheotomy; destroyed a 4-star general’s gourmet dinner; told jokes, played the piano and wrote war ditties, all badly; provided counter balance for a helicopter transporting a wounded soldier; and occasionally attended to the spiritual needs of the 4077th. Ironically, with crusading liberals Alan Alda and Mike Farrell on set, the priest was one of the least preachy characters in Korea.

William Christopher's Foot Inspection by DrawnTG

Paging Dr. Bombay

Or

Dr. Bombay’s Last Call

(Kudos to Monty)
Bernard Fox, who went down with the Titanic twice, has died at the age of 89. Best remembered as Dr. Bombay, Warlock, MD, attending to the mystical medical needs of Samantha, Endora, Aunt Clara and Uncle Arthur on Bewitched and Col. Crittenden, the inept regular visitor who keeps having to break out of Stalag 17 on Hogan’s Heroes, Fox was the perfect, “Hey, it’s that limey,” on sitcoms throughout the 1960s and ‘70s. Somehow he ended up in Mayberry on The Andy Griffith Show, he showed Hawkeye the merits of tough love (and learned the risk of peritonitis from drinking tea in post op) on M*A*S*H, and visited Hazzard County to meet the Duke boys. The best thing about The Mummy series was that it gave Fox a fitting final tally ho as Captain Winston Havlock, World War I vet who manned an abandoned base in Egypt and gave his life to defeat Imhotep. He was in Titanic in 1997 and A Night to Remember in 1958, where he got to announce "Iceberg dead ahead, sir!" With his death, Bernie Kopell, the Apothecary, is the only surviving adult from Bewitched and Robert Clary and Nita Talbot are the only survivors from Hogan’s Heroes. 

Kaplan Eternal Rest Prep

Marvin Kaplan, a real-life Droopy Dog, has died at the age of 89. Best remembered for his thick glasses, thick eyebrows and thick Brooklyn accent as Arizona phone lineman Henry Beesmeyer, who stomached a lot of food at Mel’s Diner on Alice, Kaplan’s career spanned 7 decades. His nasal whine made him a go-to voice actor in radio comedies, and helped attract enough attention for him to steal his scenes as the court stenographer in Adam’s Rib. He also did a number of cartoon voiceovers, most notably Choo Choo on Top Cat, and he had minor but memorable roles as the gas station attendant in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and as a carpet cleaner in Freaky Friday. Other roles included various voices on Garfield and Friends, Aah Real Monsters, Francis, Angels in the Outfield, The Nutty Professor and more time at an unappetizing lunch counter on Becker. 

Wilburied

(Props to Don)
Or
You never heard of a smelly corpse?
Well listen to this.
He is Mr. Dead.
Or
Wilbur Post-humous
Or
Scrooge McDead
(Kudos to observer Craig)
Or
Wilbrrrrr
(Hit tip to Joe)

Alan Young, who channeled his rage at the subjugation by the animal kingdom into becoming the most powerful duck in the world, has died at the age of 96. He parlayed his Emmy-winning turn in The Alan Young Show (because eponymous shows were apparently easy to come by in the 1940s and ‘50s) into a turn as the second fiddle on a sitcom derivative of the low-budget Francis, The Talking Mule movies of the 1950s. Young spent 5 years as klutzy architect Wilbur Post, the much put-upon manservant to Mr. Ed who looks increasingly eccentric due to the fact that Ed only talks to him. His next major role was as Scrooge McDuck in Disney films and DuckTales. He also voiced Farmer Smurf and Hiram Flaversham on The Great Mouse Detective. He played Rod Taylor’s friend in The Time Machine, which led to a role in the 1993 sequel no one remembers and a cameo in the 2002 remake no one watched. 

I Have Very, Very, Very, Very Bad News

Or

No Pain, No Gaynes

Or

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gaynes

(Merit for Monty)

Or

Police Academy 86: Lassard Under Ground!

(Kudos to Phil)

George Gaynes, best remembered as the Mission Director in Marooned, or as MSTies know it, Space Travelers, has died at the age of 98. Gaynes was so old that when he was born in Finland, that country was still a Duchy within the Russian Empire. A regular in Broadway musical comedies of the 1940s and ‘50s, Gaynes worked mostly in obscurity before becoming an overnight sensation in the early 1980s, first as the affable but incompetent Eric Lassard, goldfish-loving Commandant of the Police Academy series, where the most subversive gag of the franchise was stripping this distinguished gentleman of his dignity for a blow job joke. Gaynes contrasted this lovable dope with his role as lovably cranky photographer Henry Warnimont who takes in a mix-matched sock-wearing homeless urchin named Punky Brewster. Other roles include being the only person to ever find Dustin Hoffman attractive in Tootsie, and the inexplicable role of a mob boss on General Hospital, while behind the camera, he directed the final episode of WKRP in Cincinnati.

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

(An epitaphany shared with Mike L)

Or

It Was Just Business. Nothing Personal. Tell Abe I Always Liked Him

Or 

It Messes Up My Arrangements

(Props to former participant Peter)

Abe Vigoda, best remembered as the Chief of natives of Waponi Woo on Joe vs. the Volcano, has died at the age of 94. No, seriously this time. Really. Check the website. Despite being born at the age of 72, Vigoda’s career spanned 6 decades, with his big break coming in The Godfather. As trusted capo Salvatore Tessio, he helped Michael Corleone assassinate Virgil Sollozzo and Captain McCluskey, and despite seeing Michael’s viciousness and being labeled as being smarter than Clemenza, he crossed the new Don anyway. 40-year-old spoiler alert: It did not go well. Vigoda parlayed this into his role as the perpetually exhausted and hemorrhoid-saddled Detective Sgt. Phil Fish in Greenwich Village on Barney Miller. After two years at the old 1-2, he became an early victim of McLean Stevenson Syndrome, and tried his hand in his own spin-off Fish. There he played the perpetually exhausted and hemorrhoid-saddled head of a foster home full of racially mixed preternaturally cute and tough children, or “Persons in Need of Supervision" aka PINS. It went only slightly better than crossing a Corleone. In 1982 when Vigoda was a sprightly 60, People magazine mistakenly mentioned that he had died when he didn’t participate in a Barney Miller reunion. They weren’t far off as he was appearing in a play in Calgary. Vigoda took the mistake in stride, appearing in an issue of Variety sitting up smiling in a coffin with the surprisingly poorly edited issue of People in hand. He would make regular appearances on The Late Show with David Letterman as “the late Abe Vigoda” and interrupted a séance with the ghost of Abe Vigoda by announcing, “I’m not dead yet, you pinhead.” In one of the many Letterman ideas he ripped off, Conan O’Brien continued the bit when he inherited Late Night. The Undead Abe Vigoda became a bit of a cottage industry, with a website dedicated solely to answering the question, “Is Abe Vigoda Still Alive?” and a Firefox extension with the sole purpose of telling the browser Vigoda’s status. At a New York Friars Club roast, Billy Crystal saw Vigoda in the audience and said, "I have nothing to say about Abe. I was always taught to speak well of the dead." At another roast, Jeff Ross said, “My one regret is that Abe Vigoda isn't alive to see this.” Vigoda’s post-Fish roles suggested his agent was the one who had died, with such notables as Vasectomy: A Delicate Matter, Prancer, Good Burger, and the aforementioned Joe vs. the Volcano. 

Off the Schneid

Or

No Days at a Time

Pat Harrington, Jr., the most desirable building superintendent in Indianapolis, has died of complications from a fall at the age of 86. The last surviving member of Steve Allen’s “Men on the Street” with Don Knotts, Tom Poston and Louis Nye, Harrington was a fixture in the early days of TV. In those days, broad ethnic stereotypes were acceptable, so Harrington introduced Steve Allen and Jack Paar to-a Signor Guido Panzini, not-a to mention episodes of-a The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and-a da McHale’s Navy. Bouncing around through a number of comedic cameos, Harrington voiced both The Inspector and his Spanish assistant Sergeant Deux-Deux in a companion cartoon as part of The Pink Panther, as well as The Atom, one of the Justice League members kept around to make Aquaman feel better about himself. His enduring fame came in 1975 when he helped the Romano ladies cope with life in Circle City as Dwayne F. Schneider on One Day at a Time, scoring 4 Golden Globe nominations, winning once, and an Emmy, as well as a series of Trak Auto Parts commercials. Harrington rounded out his career with more cameos, including biannual appearances on Murder, She Wrote in 4 different roles. 

Beth Doesn’t Live Here Any More

Or

Vera....Vera...What Has Become of You?

Beth Howland, best remembered as Bea in the last episode of The Tick, has died of lung cancer at the age of 74. The stage actress found a long-time home as Vera Louise Gorman, the "dinghy" neurotic waitress at Mel’s Diner for the entire run of Alice, winning 4 Golden Globe nominations. And then pretty much retired, save the occasional cameo appearance. Also of interest is the disparity of her marriages, first to professional weirdo Michael J. Pollard, then to the buttoned up Charles Kimbrough, best remembered as Jim Dyal on Murphy Brown, who honored Howland’s request and didn’t mentioned her death for 5 months. 

Not So Happy Days

(Props to Pat)

Or

Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope

Or, more optimistically

Yep, Yep, Yep, Yep

(Kudos to Monty)

Al Molinaro, best remembered as Chachi’s stepfather, has died at the age of 96. Born in Kenosha, Wisconsin and possessing the eyes of a basset hound and the nose of an elephant seal, Molinaro had everything necessary to become a Hollywood leading man. Only the cruel vicissitudes of fate kept him from his destiny. Molinaro’s big break came as the Long Nose of the Law, Murray Greshler, on The Odd Couple, catching the attention of producer Garry Marshall. Molinaro took over the diner on Happy Days when producers noticed that there weren’t that many Japanese men running eateries in Milwaukee in the 1950s. After taking over the diner, Molinaro enacted his master plan, recommending a little known comic named Robin Williams from his improv class when Marshall was desperate to find someone to play Mork and recreate the magic that The Great Gazoo had once brought to The Flintstones. Sadly, Molinaro did not follow Pat Morita in all his roles, as seeing Al Delvecchio in the crane position might have made The Karate Kid III worth watching. In later years, Molinaro was the ultimate mooch, inviting his family to the home of every sad single who made the mistake of buying an On-Cor frozen dinner, which dovetailed nicely with his other spokesman gig with Mr. Big toilet paper.

Rocco’s Modern Death

Alex Rocco, best remembered as Jo Polniaczek’s neer-do-well father, has died of cancer at the age of 79. His gravelly voice and roughhewn features ensured a career of roles as the heavy, most notably Moe Greene, who made the mistake of slapping around Fredo and telling Michael Corleone to get the hell out of Las Vegas, earning himself a spot in the Montage of Murder in The Godfather. Rocco came by his mobster roles honestly, having been a wannabe member of Whitey Bulger’s Winter Hill Gang in Boston as a kid. He used his connections to set up a meeting between Robert Mitchum and Boston’s Irish underworld to help him research his role in The Friends of Eddie Coyle. After an arrest, he moved to LA and started taking acting lessons from Leonard Nimoy. Other roles included Roger Meyers, Jr., head of Itchy and Scratchy Studios, on The Simpsons, Sol Siler, founder of Playtone Records, in That Thing You Do!, Al Floss, The Famous Teddy Z’s agent, for which he won an Emmy, after the show had been cancelled. 

House of One Corpse

Irwin Keyes, Richard Kiel’s mini-me, has died of complications of acromegaly at the age of 63. Keyes put his acromegalic appearance to good use as a character actor playing the heavy in a range of low-budget horror and sci-fi movies, such as The House of 1,000 Corpses, Evil Bong 3-D and The Exterminator, as well as played the archetype for laughs in films and TV shows like The Naked Gun and The Flintstones. He had a recurring role as George’s bodyguard Hugo Mojelewski on The Jeffersons, and his repeated line "Hi! Remember Me?" became a bit of a national catchphrase, back before catchphrases were more tightly regulated.

Meara Mortal

Anne Meara, who spent more than 50 years in show business, yet no one can actually remember anything she did, has died at the age of 85. Given the frenzied rage her husband, Jerry Stiller, and son Ben, were able to summon so easily in their performances, one can only imagine what a deranged bitch she must have been at home. Meara and Stiller were well known for their skits on variety shows of the 1960s, becoming regulars on The Ed Sullivan Show, then she went on to get her own series on CBS in 1975, Kate McShane, for which she was nominated for an Emmy despite the series lasting just 10 episodes. Other vaguely memorable roles were the cook on Archie Bunker’s Place, the grandmother on ALF and Jerry’s occasional dalliance on The King of Queens.

Dead, Deader, Best

Or

Best in Peace 

Or

Just a Dead Old Boy

(Props to Patrick)

Or

Welcome Home Roscoe Coltrane

(Huzzah for Phil)

Or

He's Leaving - Rosco Coltrane from Georgia

(Additional accolades for Phil)

James Best, who used overturned metal tanks to escape The Killer Shrews, has died of complications from pneumonia at the age of 88. Best is best remembered as the inept, vaguely corrupt sheriff of Hazard County, forever chasing Bo and Luke (and briefly Coy and Vance) Duke for no apparent reason and toward no discernible end, with his barely sentient bloodhound Flash at his side and a kewkewkew in his heart. Best had hundreds of roles to his credit, including virtually every TV Western of the 1950s and ’60s, plus plenty of big screen oaters. He also has the rare distinction of having major roles in three episodes of The Twilight Zone, The Grave, The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank, and Jess-Belle. With such a long string of success to his credit, Best clearly was intended to teach acting, where he counted among his students Quentin Tarantino, and you can see Best’s fingerprints in Jimmie Dimmick, the dorky dressing, gourmet coffee drinking friend of Jules Winnfield, who refuses to take ownership of Marvin’s corpse in Pulp Fiction.

Clamped

Donna Douglas, the two best things about The Beverly Hillbillies, not counting the Ballad of Jed Clampett, has died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 82. In the vein of Jeannie and Samantha Stevens, Mary Ann and Ginger, Betty and Veronica, Douglas and Nancy Culp (Miss Hathaway) formed one of the all-time great “Who’s Hotter?” pop culture debates. The tomboyish, critter lovin’ Elly May never cottoned to the ways of Southern California, and regularly battered the many suitors eager to visit her hills. Though she did enjoy the cement pond. Douglas’ other contribution to the 1960s was in the reveal in the Twilight Zone classic Eye of the Beholder as the patient whose reconstructive surgery-defying beauty makes her an outcast in the land of the duckfaced.

Im-Mobley

Mary Ann Mobley, who stepped into the shoes of the not even remotely similar-looking Dixie Carter as Mrs. Drummond in the final season of Diff’rent Strokes after the latter had had enough of listening to Danny Cooksey, has died at the age of 77. The first Mississippian to represent the United States at the UN as Miss America in 1959, Mobley went on to a thoroughly nondescript acting career highlighted by stints as one of the lesser lights on Match Game ’76, bit parts in two Elvis movies – Harum Scarum and Girl Happy – and a plethora of cameo appearances. She also married the equally bland Gary Collins, forming the couple mostly likely to happily occupy a Sears catalog.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhkZ0ZjatY0

Wax Off

(Hat tip to Monty)

Ken Weatherwax, bug-eating son on The Addams Family, has died of a heart attack at the age of 59. Other than later Addams Family-related appearances, he never acted again. Weatherwax claimed that he was typecast, ignoring the fact that his role consisted mostly of giggling and wooden deliveries. Making it to age 59, he was somewhat of an elder statesman among child actors, and outlived fellow Addamses Carolyn Jones (Morticia) (53) and Ted Cassidy (Lurch) 46. 

Black Hole

(Merit for Monty)

Carol Ann Susi, who achieved the highlight of her career by shrieking off screen, has died of cancer at the age of 62. Prior to finding her faceless fame as Howard Wolowitz’s immense, clingy, over-protective Wheel of Fortune savant stereotype of a Jewish mother, Susi had appeared in bit parts in more than 70 TV shows and movies, only one of which I even vaguely remember, 1987’s Secret of My Success, one of the first forays in the futile attempt to make Michael J. Fox a movie star.

Death to Smoochy II: The Quickening

Or

Dead Poets Society

(Admittedly, a little spot on, but how can you not?)

Or

Shazbot

Robin Williams, who turned a short attention span into an empire that funded his ex-wives’ spending, has joined the dead poet’s society at the age of 63. Long suspected of being a manic depressive, Williams finally reached the end of his rope. For a man so wildly inventive in his stage performances, his star-making role as Mork, his bravura performance as the Genie in Aladdin, being revealed as a “crying on the inside” type of clown was a disappointingly trite cliché. If he could survive Popeye, you’d have thought nothing would do him in. For his undeniable comedic skill, and his surprising dramatic chops in The World According to Garp, Awakenings and Good Will Hunting, he proved staggeringly inept at selecting quality projects – as evidenced by Man of the Year, Bicentennial Man, Jumanji, RV, Patch Adams and Old Dogs.

Rockford Filed

(Kudos to Monty)

James Garner, who lived through the hell of having to read a sappy Nicholas Sparks story over and over again in The Notebook, has died of a massive heart attack at the age of 86. Garner brought a series of knights in slightly dinged armor to life on TV as Bret Maverick and Jim Rockford, and in movies like Murphy’s Romance (winning an Academy Award nomination) and as the Scrounger in The Great Escape. Continuing his string of roguish characters, he played a con man turned city councilor in Man of the People, and the ultimate con man in the animated short-lived series God, the Devil and Bob, while on the big screen, he played a crooked lawman / con man / Bret Maverick’s father in Maverick and a disgraced former president in My Fellow Americans. Other roles included a Supreme Court justice in First Monday and one of Clint Eastwood’s Space Cowboys. In 2003, he was cast as Gibbs’ father on NCIS but suffered a stroke and was unable to take the role, which meant he was later available to help prop up 8 Simple Rules (for Dating My Teenage Daughter) after the sudden death of John Ritter.