Archive for the ‘TV’ Category

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Obit watch: May 22, 2026.

Friday, May 22nd, 2026

The archiving service I use has been having problems for the past few days, and I’m running low on NYT share links.

Kyle Busch. ESPN. Oddly, I don’t see any coverage of this in the NYT: it looks like they’ve shuffled off the coverage to their sports vertical, “The Athletic”, which they make you pay extra to read.

41 seems awfully young these days.

Edited to add: Shortly after this went up, the NYT posted an actual obit in the obituary section. I apologize that this is paywalled, but, as I said earlier, archive.is is having problems and I only have three share links left until June 1. (No, they don’t roll over from month to month. I wish.)

Kirk Foyle. He was a local man: Tuesday night, he was eating on the patio at Green Mesquite (one of our local barbecue restaurants), when a tree fell on him. He died from his injuries the next day.

Tomorrow is promised to nobody, whether you’re a NASCAR driver or a barbecue eater. Be prepared.

Sam Sianis. He owned and ran the Billy Goat Tavern in Chicago, also known as the “Cheezborger cheezborger cheezborger cheeps cheeps Pepsi!” place from SNL. (Though my understanding is that sketch was also heavily influenced by the Belushi family, who were in the restaurant business as well.)

The Billy Goat Tavern is also famous for triggering Cubs fans.

Mr. Sianis’s uncle Billy bought the bar — which was originally across from Chicago Stadium (now United Center) and called the Lincoln Tavern — in 1934. After a goat wandered in the door, he renamed the bar the Billy Goat and adopted the animal as a pet.
The goat, called Murphy, became something of a celebrity himself. In 1945, the elder Mr. Sianis brought him to Game 4 of the World Series, between the Cubs and the Detroit Tigers, at Wrigley Field.
It began to rain. Murphy began to stink. The Cubs’ owner, Philip K. Wrigley, kicked them out.
As he was leaving, Billy Sianis put a curse on the team, vowing that it would never win a championship. When the Cubs lost the Series that year, he sent a note to Mr. Wrigley: “Now who stinks!”

…

In 1984, when the Cubs were contesting the National League championship, the team relented and allowed Mr. Sianis bring a goat onto the field.
But the Cubs did not win a World Series until 2016.
Watching the tiebreaking seventh game that year from the tavern, Mr. Sianis banished the curse by ringing the bell that had been worn by Murphy in 1945. The current goat stood beside him, looking as nervous as the rest of the crowd. Then it urinated on the floor. Mr. Sianis led it away.
“Don’t touch the goat,” one fan said, according to The Financial Times. “It’s bad luck.”

“Then it urinated on the floor.” I cannot tell a lie: one of the reasons I enjoy NYT obits so much is the telling details.

Posted in 1970s, Food, Goats, Mammals, Obits, Sports, TV, Urine | No Comments »

Obit watch: May 15, 2026.

Friday, May 15th, 2026

Joe Sedelmaier, commercial director.

Among his works:

And this one:

And this one:

I can’t embed it, but here’s a link to his Southern Airways “Steerage” commercial. For some reason, that commercial reminds me of…every Southwest flight I’ve been on.

Claudine Longet, actress and singer.

The enchanting, doe-eyed Longet recorded albums of breathy pop for A&M Records before she sang the Henry Mancini-Don Black song “Nothing to Lose” in Blake Edwards’ The Party (1968), in which she portrayed an aspiring actress alongside Peter Sellers.

I’ve heard this is actually a pretty good movie, but have never seen it.

A onetime Las Vegas showgirl, Longet had married “Moon River” crooner [Andy] Williams in December 1961 and appeared on his long-running NBC variety show and Christmas specials, often with their three children.

After she and Williams divorced (amicably), she took up with a skier named Vladimir “Spider” Sabich.

… Longet and the kids were living with the California-born Sabich at his chalet in Starwood, Colorado, when she shot him on March 21, 1976, in his bathroom with a .22-caliber German‐made gun that had been purchased by his father. She claimed the gun accidentally discharged as he was showing her how it worked.

He died on the way to the hospital. She was criminally charged, but local law enforcement completely botched the case. She ended up being convicted of “criminally negligent homicide”.

She was given two years’ probation, fined $250 and sentenced to 30 days in jail (she was able to serve most of her sentence on weekends).
The Sabich family later filed a civil suit against Longet for $1.3 million, but the case was settled out of court. Longet agreed not to speak publicly about Sabich or the murder and to never publish a book about her life and the trial, and her career as a singer and actress was done.

@jack.hutton

The Claudine Longet Ski Invitational 1976 SNL A classic. #SNL #classic #1976 —

♬ original sound – Jack Hutton

Edited to add: I know the NYT is watching this space. Because as soon as I put up my own obit for someone, the NYT puts up theirs. Guys, let’s not fight. I’d be willing to entertain a job offer, though I would insist on working remotely.

Posted in Movies, Music, Obits, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: May 6, 2026.

Wednesday, May 6th, 2026

Screenshot

NYT.

Mr. Turner put together a top-notch crew that helped him win the 1977 America’s Cup races off Newport, R.I. But he did so only after coming close to being thrown out of the races once he had been accepted. “During the Cup eliminations,” Time magazine reported, “he flirted with every girl in sight, crawled pubs with his crew, got tossed out of chic clubs and restaurants for boozy behavior and turned Newport’s blue bloods positively purple.”
The Cup organizers forced Mr. Turner to apologize publicly to one elite club, the Spouting Rock Beach Association, for accosting female members. “I wish to apologize profusely because I certainly did have a couple drinks too many that Saturday night,” Mr. Turner wrote to the club president.
But on winning the Cup, he surrounded himself with young, attractive women and was too drunk to finish a victory speech at a nationally televised news conference.

…

Still crushed by debt, Mr. Turner sought to squeeze profits from his MGM library by colorizing classic black-and-white movies in what turned out to be a misguided attempt to increase their appeal among younger viewers. He was attacked by the press, filmmakers, movie buffs and politicians as a cultural philistine. Stung, he ended up colorizing only a few films, among them the 1941 Humphrey Bogart detective movie “The Maltese Falcon,” before abandoning the plan amid condemnation by many actors and directors, including the filmmakers Billy Wilder and Woody Allen.

…

He wooed [Jane Fonda – DB] — just after her divorce from the liberal activist and California state legislator Tom Hayden — by emphasizing their similarities, including as the children of a suicidal parent (in Ms. Fonda’s case, her mother) and their friendships with icons of the far left, like Mr. Castro. She later wrote in a memoir that she had been dazzled by his charisma, which she likened to “a 3-D stereophonic, Shakespearean-level, sound-and-light show.”
The couple married in 1991 — the third marriage for each — and in subsequent years, Mr. Turner devoted more of his time to environmentalism and global peace, while Ms. Fonda virtually retired from Hollywood to devote herself to Mr. Turner and his new causes.
Their marriage lasted 10 years, with Ms. Fonda saying his insatiable need for other women and her own deepening spirituality, including an embrace of Christianity, were underlying causes.

Posted in Boats, History, Media, Movies, Obits, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: April 14, 2026.

Tuesday, April 14th, 2026

Sid Krofft. THR.

The shows could feel hallucinogenic, and many older viewers read drug references into them that the Kroffts maintained were not intentional. (Titles like “Pufnstuf” did not make that argument more believable.)
“If we did the drugs that we’ve been accused of doing all these years, we wouldn’t be here answering your questions,” Mr. Krofft said in an interview with The Washington Post in 2009.

Lawrence sent over an obit for noted SF writer Ian Watson. I don’t have much to add to this, as I have not seen this reported elsewhere.

Valerie Lee. She was one of the children who played Munchkins in “The Wizard of Oz”. It gets a little confusing, at least for me, but as best as I understand it: they recruited some child actors to play adult Munchkins alongside the actual little people in “Oz”.

About a dozen children of average height were hired so they could be used for background fill. Sources differ on the number of children used for these roles ranging anywhere from 10 to 12. The names used for the women are maiden names with known aliases present in italics and quotation marks.

According to Cox, Priscilla Montgomery Clark, 96, another child Munchkin, is the last surviving person to have appeared in The Wizard of Oz.

John Nolan, actor. Other credits include “The Sweeney”, “The Prisoner”, and “Return of the Saint”.

Posted in 1970s, Books, Movies, Obits, Theatre, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: March 30, 2026.

Monday, March 30th, 2026

Dr. Henry C. Lee, forensic scientist. He may have been most famous for testifying at the OJ trial.

Dr. Lee testified for the defense, saying that there was “something wrong” with the way the Los Angeles Police Department had handled the blood that was collected as evidence.
His testimony supported the defense team’s suggestion that the evidence could have been tampered with and that officers might have planted Mr. Simpson’s blood at the crime scene.

…

In the mid-1980s, in the so-called preppy murder case, Dr. Lee was hired by the team defending Robert E. Chambers Jr., who was accused of murdering Jennifer Levin in Central Park. Dr. Lee was never called to testify because he told Mr. Chambers’s lawyer, Jack Litman, that his client was “guilty as hell.” Mr. Chambers pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 1988.

…

In 2007, the judge in the murder trial of Mr. Spector ruled that Dr. Lee, a consultant for the defense, had removed something from the crime scene and hidden it from the prosecution.
Prosecutors contended that it was a piece of fingernail that would have shown that the actress Lana Clarkson had resisted having a gun placed in her mouth before being shot at Mr. Spector’s California home. The defense claimed that she had shot herself.
The judge did not hold Dr. Lee in contempt, and Dr. Lee denied taking anything from the crime scene. After the first trial ended in a hung jury, Mr. Spector was convicted of second-degree murder in 2009.
In 2023, Connecticut’s attorney general agreed to a $25 million settlement with two men who had spent three decades in jail after being convicted of murder. Those convictions, which were overturned in 2020, had been based in part on testimony by Dr. Lee regarding the supposed presence of blood on a towel. A federal judge ruled that Dr. Lee had fabricated the evidence, saying that there was no corroboration that he had conducted any blood tests on the towel.
Dr. Lee defended himself in a statement, saying, “I have no motive nor reason to fabricate evidence.”

Mary Beth Hurt. Other credits include “Law & Order”, “Law & Order:SVU”, and “Lady in the Water”.

James Tolkan. Other credits include “They Might Be Giants”, “Bone Tomahawk”, “Serpico”, “Prince of the City”, and “The Hat Squad”.

Letizia Mowinckel, historical footnote. She bought clothes for Jacqueline Kennedy.

Impressed by her friend’s style and thrift, Mrs. Kennedy enlisted Mrs. Mowinckel to obtain clothes discreetly from French designers and send them to the White House. During the election, the press had criticized the chic Mrs. Kennedy for favoring foreign designers. She chose the American designer Oleg Cassini, long known for his work with Hollywood stars, as her personal couturier during her husband’s presidency, but her taste for Parisian fashions was unabated.

Among the clothes she bought: the pink Chanel suit.

Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in aboard Air Force One just before it returned to Washington, and Mrs. Kennedy, who stood next to Mr. Johnson, refused to remove the suit. Mrs. Johnson recalled, “Then with something — if you can say a person that gentle, that dignified, had an element of fierceness — she said, ‘I want them to see what they have done to Jack.’”

Posted in History, Law, Movies, Obits, Science, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: March 24, 2026.

Tuesday, March 24th, 2026

For the record: NYT obits for Valerie Perrine and Brian Doherty.

Burning in Hell watch: Kermit Gosnell. I have my own opinions about abortion, which I’m not going to impose on anyone here. But the Gosnell case, as I recall, made even people who were pro-abortion sit up and say, “Hey, wait a minute, this is going too far.”

Posted in Law, Movies, Obits, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: March 23, 2026.

Monday, March 23rd, 2026

Valerie Perrine, actress. Other credits include “Homicide: Life on the Street”, “Walker, Texas Ranger”, and “W.C. Fields and Me”.

For the historical record: Robert S. Mueller III. WP.

Posted in Law, Movies, Obits, Politics, TV | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: March 20, 2026.

Friday, March 20th, 2026

Chuck Norris. THR. “The World Bows: Remembering Chuck Norris 1940-2026” from Black Belt.

Other credits include the bad “Hawaii Five-0”, “Sons of Thunder”, and “Firewalker“.

Ed Bernard, actor. Other credits include “Hardcastle and McCormick”, “Shaft” (the movie), “Cool Million”…

…and “Mannix”. (“A Question of Murder”, season 7, episode 22. He was “Bull Evans”.)

Jane Lapotaire, British actress.

For the historical record: NYT obit for Alvin Greene. (Previously on WCD.)

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Movies, Obits, Sports, Theatre, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: March 10, 2026.

Tuesday, March 10th, 2026

Bo Gritz.

Mr. Gritz served four tours in Vietnam as a Green Beret, during which he led a roving contingent of mostly Cambodian guerrillas deep behind enemy lines. He received more than 60 medals and commendations for his service.
But former comrades and journalists later raised questions about his record. In some cases, they said, his awards had come at his own recommendation.
In Mr. Gritz’s telling, he retired from the U.S. Army in 1978 at the request of a Pentagon intelligence official, who wanted him to develop a clandestine program to locate U.S. prisoners of war still alive in Southeast Asia. (It is unclear whether such a request was ever made.)
Just five years before, North Vietnam had released its remaining 591 American prisoners. But it became a matter of truth to some veterans, including Mr. Gritz, that hundreds had been left behind, primarily in Laos.
In 1981, Mr. Gritz put out a call for Special Forces veterans for a private rescue mission. They trained at a cheerleading camp in Central Florida. For guidance, he hired a psychic. Unsurprisingly, the plan fell apart after the volunteers soured on it.
A year later, thanks to money from the actors Clint Eastwood and William Shatner, Mr. Gritz and a small band of American civilians crossed from Thailand into Laos with a team of Lao guerrillas. A few days in, Laotian government forces attacked, killing two guerrillas and capturing an American.
Mr. Gritz returned to Thailand, paid a ransom to free the man and turned himself in to the Thai authorities. He and his accomplices were convicted of a long list of crimes, but were let go on the promise that they would not return.

He went on to become a survivalist, a presidential candidate on the Populist Party ticket, and “one of the best-known figures on the radical right”. He negotiated Randy Weaver’s surrender.

Alexander Butterfield. He was the guy who revealed to Congress Nixon’s secret taping system.

Mr. Butterfield had been in charge of White House security but had not been a member of Nixon’s inner circle and did not appear to be a major witness. But under questioning by Senator Fred D. Thompson, a Tennessee Republican who was chief minority counsel to the Watergate committee, Mr. Butterfield dropped a bombshell.
Q. Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president?
A. I was aware of listening devices, yes, sir.
Under the folksy prodding of Mr. Thompson and of Senator Sam J. Ervin Jr., a North Carolina Democrat who was the panel chairman, and Samuel Dash, the committee’s chief counsel, it all tumbled out — the story of a secret, sophisticated recording system that the president himself had authorized and that for more than two years had picked up virtually all of Nixon’s meetings and telephone conversations.

Monti Rock III. I’d never heard of him, either, but he was a frequent Carson guest, and this is one of the more entertaining obits I’ve read in a while.

It also gives me hope.

It was clear that Mr. Rock had few actual skills. He could not sing, dance or tell funny stories, as he was the first to admit. “I was a failure for 11 years on TV,” he said in a 1976 profile in The Province, a newspaper in Vancouver, British Columbia.

…

The details that Mr. Rock gave about his biography and career could not always be trusted. He claimed he was a guest of Mr. Carson’s 84 times, though the IMDb entertainment database says he was on 43 times. He also appeared on the talk shows of Merv Griffin, Joey Bishop and Mike Douglas. A 1966 singing performance on “The Merv Griffin Show,” available online, shows him in his flower.

He indeed fronted Disco-Tex and His Sex-O-Lettes, at the invitation of the songwriter and producer Bob Crewe. The group had a pair of hits, “Get Dancin’” in 1974 and “I Wanna Dance Wit’ Choo (Doo Dat Dance)” in 1975. Both reached the top 25 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.
Mr. Rock, shouting the lyrics over the singing of four female Sex-O-Lettes, took that tongue-in-cheek act on the road. Not everyone got the joke.
“Not only does Monti Rock III have no discernible talent whatsoever,” an entertainment writer for The Fort Lauderdale News wrote in a 1975 review, “he also has a filthy mouth.”

So a guy who had no discernible talent had two Billboard top 25 singles? Like I said, this gives me hope. And remember, this was before auto tune.

Posted in History, Music, Nixon, Obits, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: March 9, 2026.

Monday, March 9th, 2026

Country Joe McDonald, of Country Joe McDonald and the Fish.

The YouTube link doesn’t seem to work in the archived version, so here it is, for the hysterical record:

It has been a bad time for screenwriters.

Alan Trustman. Other credits include “They Call Me Mister Tibbs!”, “Hit!”, and “Lady Ice”. The NYT obit makes it sound like his career pretty much came to a screeching halt after he and Steve McQueen got into it while writing “Le Mans”.

Their differences proved irreconcilable. “Thank God I wasn’t involved,” Mr. Trustman told Hagerty, the car site. “I think he went through 10 to 15 directors and 10 to 15 writers and fired pretty much everybody in his life.”

Jeremy Larner. I wasn’t originally going to note this, but his arc is mildly interesting.

He has a total of four credits in IMDB. Two of those are as “Self”. The other one is for “Drive, He Said”, which he wrote (and which was based on his novel) and which you can find in the “America Lost and Found: The BBS Story” box set from Criterion.

I intended to note this the other day, but it got past me: Bruce Froemming, major leage umpire.

Froemming was one of the most durable umpires of his time: a 5-foot-8, 250-pound autocrat who called 5,163 regular season games (exceeded only by Joe West and Bill Klem) over a record 37 consecutive seasons beginning in 1971. He worked nine division series, 10 league championship series, five World Series and three All-Star Games. In 1986, The Sporting News named him the National League’s best umpire.

…

Umpires are known for their accuracy — or lack thereof — in calling balls, strikes and outs, as well as for their on-field disputes and occasional ejections. Froemming gave the heave-ho to players, managers and coaches 125 times from 1971 to 2007, far fewer than Klem’s record of close to 300 ejections. Three managers were each thrown out by Froemming three times: Davey Johnson of the Mets, Bobby Cox of the Atlanta Braves and Joe Torre, once with the St. Louis Cardinals and twice when he skippered the Mets.
Froemming booted out his last man, Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon, in the waning days of his last season, in 2007, for arguing a check swing call.

He also booted Billy Martin (though, as far as I can tell, there was no fistfight involved).

In 1976, Froemming ejected the fiery Yankees manager Billy Martin in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the World Series for tossing a ball at Bill Deegan, the home plate umpire, from the dugout. Martin, claiming that Deegan had tossed three balls out of play in his direction, rushed onto the field to argue his ejection.
“It’s a touchy situation,” Froemming said afterward, “and to have Martin start something at this point is something we can’t tolerate.”

Jennifer Runyon, actress. Other credits include “Carnosaur”, “The Falcon and the Snowman”, and “The Master”.

Lawrence sent over a NotTheBee obit for Alvin Greene, “the most bizarre Senate candidate in United States history”.

Frequently, “his jokes were not well understood by the media, such as when he told British newspaper The Guardian that one way to create jobs was to employ people to make toys in his likeness.”

Posted in History, Movies, Music, Obits, Sports, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: February 27, 2026.

Friday, February 27th, 2026

Dan Simmons passed away last Saturday. My source for this is a tweet Lawrence forwarded me from David Morrell: Lawrence has also posted his own obit, which is much better than anything I could post.

He was a pretty swell writer. I haven’t read everything he wrote, but I’ve read quite a bit. I liked Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion quite a bit. He also did some pretty good suspense books: I’m very fond of Darwin’s Blade and the first two Joe Kurtz books (I haven’t read the third). He also wrote The Terror, which was turned into a TV series.

FotB RoadRich sent over two obits: Dan McGrath, writer for “The Simpsons”. (He co-wrote the “Time and Punishment” segment of “Treehouse of Horror V”, the one where Homer turns his toaster into a time machine.)

Also by way of RoadRich, Elizabeth Snead, former THR writer. I missed this, but she sounds fun:

During THR’s Costume Designers Roundtable in 2012, Lincoln’s Joanna Johnston told Snead and executive features editor Stephen Galloway that designing wardrobes for film was “somewhere between a war and a circus.”

…

Snead often brought her poodle Mina on assignment. She found the abandoned dog, dingy gray and with chipped nail polish, on a street near Dupont Circle in Washington. Once she bathed the pooch, she discovered Mina had snow-white fur.
She retired from journalism in the mid-2010s and returned to Florida, where she turned her attention to animal activities, such as showing her pack of Maltese dogs competitively and breeding Napoleon cats.

Bobby J. Brown, actor. He played “Officer Bobby Brown” on “The Wire”, a character based on a real police officer named “Bob Brown”. I think RoadRich rolled his eyes a little when he told me this.

Other credits include “Law & Order: SVU”, “We Own This City”, and “From Within”.

Posted in Books, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 25, 2026.

Wednesday, February 25th, 2026

Lauren Chapin, actress. Other credits include “School Bus Diaries”, “The Amorous Adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza”, and “Scout’s Honor”.

Sondra Lee, actress. Noted:

Lee went on to direct cabaret shows based on the music of Stephen Sondheim, including I Know Things Now: My Life in Sondheim’s Words, performed by Jeff Harnar; #Sondheim Montage, performed by Harnar and KT Sullivan; and Another Hundred People, performed by Harnar and Sullivan.

Robert Carradine. Other credits include “Jackson County Jail” (Lawrence, I have this, if you want me to bring it over Saturday), “Django Unchained”, and “Timecop: The Berlin Decision”.

Posted in Movies, Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 20, 2026.

Friday, February 20th, 2026

Eric Dane, for the record.

I am not a big fan of that TV show, but ALS is a horrible disease, and he was only 53.

Posted in Obits, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: Februrary 19, 2026.

Thursday, February 19th, 2026

Tom Noonan, who I think was an underappreciated actor.

Other credits include the short film “They’re Made Out of Meat” (wait, what?), “12 Monkeys” (the series), “Roadside Picnic” (the series, wait, what?), “Heaven’s Gate”, and “F/X”.

David Hays, theater designer. He also co-founded the National Theater of the Deaf. I wanted to call this one out because there’s a pretty good “Mannix” episode (“The Silent Cry“, season 2, episode 1) that features actors from the NTD, and (as I recall) was filmed with their cooperation and support.

I’ve been holding this one for a few days, looking for a place for it: Bob Croft, pioneering free diver.

When he made his first record-setting dive, in 1967, Mr. Croft was a U.S. Navy petty officer first class working as a research subject on submarine escape procedures at the Naval Submarine Base in Groton, Conn. In a test dive at the 40-foot mark in a 118-foot-deep water tank there, he held his breath for 6 minutes 10 seconds — an astonishingly long time — by inflating his lungs 50 percent longer than normal human beings could.

…

He then embarked on a private expedition, financed largely by himself, to break the free-dive record of 197 feet set in 1966 by Jacques Mayol, one of his main rivals in the sport. On Feb. 8, 1967, about two miles off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Mr. Croft made his first attempt to top that mark, but fatigue and the water’s cold temperatures forced him to turn back at 185 feet.

…

Once he passed 200 feet, he continued to 212.7 feet — the deepest point of his descent — where he activated the sled’s hand brake and fastened an alligator clip to the rope. He then climbed the rope, hand-over-hand, to the surface.
In all, he had spent 2 minutes 6 seconds underwater.

…

Mr. Croft, a brawny 5-foot-8, raised his record to 217.5 feet in late 1967 and then to a remarkable 240 feet in August 1968, breaking a record of 231 feet that had been set by Mr. Mayol that January.
Mr. Croft retired from free diving after the 240-foot dive, still believing he could have gone deeper. He left his goal of 250 feet to others. It has long since been exceeded: In 2023, Alexey Molchanov of Russia set the current record of nearly 512 feet.

Posted in Geek, Mannix, Movies, Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Briefly noted.

Tuesday, February 17th, 2026

By way of CrimeReads, “The Three Lives of William Conrad: More Than Just the ‘Heavy’” by Keith Roysdon.

I think most people, if they think of William Conrad at all, think of “Cannon” or “Jake and the Fatman”. More sophisticated folks might be aware that he had a substantial radio career, including Matt Dillon in the radio version of “Gunsmoke”.

While his voice was perfect for narrating the noir TV drama “The Fugitive” from 1963 to 1967, there’s little in Conrad’s career to tip us to the lunacy of his narration of creator/producer Jay Ward’s “Rocky and Bullwinkle” cartoons and sister show “Dudley Do-Right.” Conrad’s narration is breathless and urgent and loose in the shows, which began in 1959. At times, Conrad – credited as “Bill Conrad” – is downright goofy.

I didn’t know that he also had a short but apparently successful career as a film director. (Lawrence, I ordered “Two on a Guillotine” for Halloween viewing.)

Posted in Movies, Radio, TV | 1 Comment »

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