TVSquad

A roundup of TV people from in front of the camera and behind the scenes who have passed away.

• Mel Harris: He was an exec at both Paramount and Sony Television who helped launch USA Network, Star Trek: TNG, and Entertainment Tonight. He was also one of the first executives in the 70s to push the idea of selling movies to the public on videotapes. He died of cancer at age 65.

We have a TV Royalty category here at TV Squad, and if there's anyone who worked in television and deserved the honor it's Bill Melendez.

Melendez was an animator for Walt Disney Studios in the 1930 and 40s, working on such classic movies as Fantasia and Pinocchio and Mickey Mouse shorts, then went on to make tons of movies, cartoons and commercials (he worked on many Bugs Bunny shorts and other famous cartoons) for well-known companies such as United Productions of America (where he was an animator on Gerald McBoing McBoing) and Playhouse Pictures. He then met Charles Schulz in 1959 and went on to animate (and often direct and produce) most of the Peanuts TV specials, including A Charlie Brown Christmas, A Boy Named Charlie Brown, It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and many, many others. Many people don't know this but he was also the voice of both Snoopy and Woodstock (they didn't talk, of course, but he did all of the howls and other noises). He worked on TV versions of Cathy and Garfield too.

A roundup of TV people from in front of the camera and behind the scenes who have passed away.

• Michael Pate: He was a veteran Australian actor who appeared in many TV shows over the years, including Batman, The Rifleman, The Time Tunnel, The Rat Patrol, Matlock Police, Hondo, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Disneyland, The Wild Wild West, Daktari, Get Smart, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Zorro, Wagon Train, Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Lassie, and a ton of westerns. He was also the first person to play the Felix Leiter character, in the 50s TV version of Casino Royale. He appeared in several movies, including Houdini, Major Dundee, The Silver Chalice, Howling III, Return of the Gunfighter, PT109, McClintock!, and Sergeants 3. He died of complications from pneumonia at age 88.
  

A roundup of TV people from in front of the camera and behind the scenes who have passed away.

• Jeff MacKay: He was a veteran character actor who you know as Mac from Magnum, P.I. and his role as Bud's father on JAG. He was also a regular on Tales of the Gold Monkey and Baa Baa Black Sheep and appeared on other shows such as Diagnosis: Murder, Outlaws, Airwolf, The Greatest American Hero, Hardcastle and McCormack, and the original Battlestar Galactica. He also appeared in such movies as All The President's Men and The Wild, Wild West Revisited. He died of liver failure at age 60.

A roundup of TV people from in front of the camera and behind the scenes who have passed away.

• Julius Carry: He was probably best known for his role as Lord Bowler on The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. Carry was also a regular on The District, Doctor, Doctor, and Do Over, and had recurring roles on Murphy Brown, Boy Meets World, and Two Guys, A Girl, and a Pizza Place. He also did guest spots on many other shows, including Columbo, Diagnosis Murder, Spin City, Caroline in the City, Earth 2, Grace Under Fire, Hill Street Blues, Empty Nest, Tales from the Crypt, Murder, She Wrote, Moonlighting, and many others. His last role was on an episode of The Unit. He also appeared in such movies as The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh, Moving, The Last Dragon, and The Man with One Red Shoe. He died of pancreatic cancer at age 56.

I was thinking about treating myself to a Brisco County marathon this weekend, and now I think that's a definite.

A roundup of TV people from in front of the camera and behind the scenes who have passed away.

• George Furth: He was a veteran character actor who appeared in tons of TV shows over the years, including L.A. Law, All in the Family, Murder, She Wrote, Happy Days, The Odd Couple, Bonanza, Green Acres, Adam-12, Night Gallery, I Dream of Jeannie, The Monkees, The Good Guys, That Girl, Batman, F Troop, McHale's Navy, The Defenders, The Nanny, and Wings, as well as movies such as Blazing Saddles, Shampoo, Airport '77, The Boston Strangler, Bulworth, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He was also an acclaimed playwright, writing the play Twigs and collaborating with Stephen Sondheim on Company, Merrily We Roll Along, and Getting Away with Murder. He died at age 75.

A roundup of TV people from in front of the camera and behind the scenes who have passed away.

• Bernie Brillstein: He was a veteran manager and producer who not only produced such shows as NewsRadio, Just Shoot Me, Mr. Show, It's Garry Shandling's Show, Heist, ALF, and The Martin Short Show, he helped bring Saturday Night Live and The Sopranos to television, and helped the careers of such performers as Brad Pitt, John Belushi, Lorne Michaels, Jim Henson, Peter Falk, Geena Davis, Norm Crosby, George Wendt, Richard Dreyfus, and many others, including several TV and film writers. He also wrote a memoir in the late 90s titled Where Did I Go Right? and produced such movies as The Cable Guy, Happy Gilmore, The Blues Brothers, and the two Ghost Busters films. He died of heart disease at age 77.

Sad news coming out of Chicago this morning; Bernie Mac has died. Mac had been in the hospital for the past week battling pneumonia. The 50-year-old comedian and star of Fox's The Bernie Mac Show had previously battled sarcoidosis, an immune system disorder that can affect the lungs, but that disease was said to have been in remission.

Rumors regarding the severity of Mac's illness swirled around the internet last weekend when a family member reportedly said that his condition was "very, very critical." However, Mac's publicist came out on Thursday and said that her client's condition was "stable."

In addition to his TV work, Mac was probably best known for co-starring with George Clooney and Brad Pitt in Ocean's 11 and its subsequent sequels. The Bernie Mac show ran for five seasons on Fox before it ended in 2006. I always enjoyed his Cliff Huxtable-as-a-movie-star take on The Bernie Mac Show as well as the different comedic sensibility he brought to the table in the Ocean's movies. Mac had a lot of comedy left in him, and I'm sorry to see him go.

A roundup of TV people from in front of the camera and behind the scenes who have passed away.

• Hiram Bullock: He was a veteran session guitarist probably best known to TV fans as being a guitarist in Paul Shaffer's band during the first couple of years of Late Night with David Letterman on NBC. He also played on classic albums by everyone from Billy Joel and Steely Dan to Barbara Streisand and Sting. He died in New York at age 52.

A roundup of TV people from in front of the camera and behind the scenes who have passed away.

• Larry Haines: He portrayed Stu Bergman on Search For Tomorrow for the entire series, from 1951 to 1986. He won two Emmys for the role. Haines also appeared in many other shows, including Kojak, Maude, The Defenders, The Nurses, Another World, and Loving, as well as the movies The Odd Couple (he played Speed) and The Seven-Ups. He died at age 89.

One of the Golden Girls has died.

Estelle Getty, who played Bea Arthur's mother (even though Arthur was a year older in real life) on the NBC hit comedy Golden Girls (which also starred Betty White and Rue McClanahan), passed away this morning in Los Angeles. Getty was 84 years old and had been suffering from a disease known as Lewy Body Dementia for a number of years.

Getty appeared in several other TV shows over the years, including the Golden Girls spinoff The Golden Palace (which also starred a young Don Cheadle), Empty Nest, Nurses, Brotherly Love, Mad About You, Touched By An Angel, Blossom, Newhart, Hotel, and many others. She also appeared in the movies Tootsie, Mask, Mannequin, and Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot!

Interesting trivia: Getty played her Sophia Petrillo character in no less than five different shows: Golden Girls, Empty Nest, The Golden Palace, Nurses, and Blossom. That's gotta be some sort of record. She also played a character named Sophia in an episode of Ladies Man in 2000, though the character had a different last name.

A roundup of TV people from in front of the camera and behind the scenes who have passed away.

• Evelyn Keyes: Although she was best known for her movie work, including The Seven Year Itch, Gone with the Wind, The Jolson Story, and Here Comes Mr. Jordan, she also guest starred on many TV shows, including The Love Boat, several episodes of Murder, She Wrote, Amazing Stories, and Climax! She was once married to jazz legend Artie Shaw and directors John Huston and Charles Vidor. She died in Montecito, CA at age 91.

Even though everyone knew he had been battling cancer for quite some time, this is still very sad news.

Tony Snow, the newsman who became White House press secretary and then returned to the world of journalism, died early this morning. He had been diagnosed with colon cancer years ago and had beaten it the first time, but then it came back and he had been undergoing chemotherapy treatments at the time of his death.

Snow joined FOX News Channel in 1996 and hosted FOX News Sunday and was a political analyst for the network. He also hosted his own radio show and used to fill in for Rush Limbaugh on the radio (and later Bill O'Reilly). Snow replaced Scott McClellan as press secretary at the White House in 2006 and left the position in September 2007, saying he wasn't leaving because of his health but because of financial concerns. He became a political analyst for CNN earlier this year.

Snow had a wife and three kids.

A roundup of TV people from in front of the camera and behind the scenes who have passed away.

• Lilyan Chauvin: She was a veteran actress you might remember as Joey's grandmother on Friends and the woman in the pilot of The Pretender who asks "Are you a doctor?" (Jarrod's response: "I am today"). She appeared on a ton of other shows over the years, including ER, Alias, Frasier, Star Trek: DS9, Ugly Betty, Malcolm in the Middle, The X-Files, Baywatch, The Young and the Restless, Falcon Crest, Fantasy Island, Man From Atlantis, The Bob Newhart Show, Mannix, The Adventures of Superman, Studio One, and many, many others. She died of cancer and heart disease at age 82.

I was never big on clowns when I was a kid. Except for one that is, Bozo.

Larry Harmon wasn't the only person to play Bozo The Clown, but he is the person most identified with the role. A man named Pinto Colvig was the first Bozo The Clown in the mid-1940s on several children's records, and then Harmon was hired to play Bozo in the mid-50s and eventually got the licensing rights to the character and arranged for various people to play the clown on TV in different markets, including Willard Scott in Washington, D.C., Frank Avruch in Boston, and Bob Bell in Chicago. The last show aired on WGN in 2001, and Harmon was involved in a controversy in 2004 when the International Clown Hall of Fame took down Harmon's plaque and recognized Colvig as Bozo. But Harmon never claimed to have created the character, just that he made him what he became.

Harmon died of congestive heart failure in Los Angeles at age 83.