RIP: Doctor Johnny Fever, Howard Hessman, 81

[thewayne]

[Updated to add Rolling Stone and HuffPo links and some other info and refreshed the posting date]

Possibly his best known performance was as the amazing disc jockey on WKRP In Cincinnati on CBS from 1978 to 1982, Hessman appeared on a wide variety of shows and a few movies. He was also a stage performer before making his break on TV.

One show he appeared on that this People obit does not mention is Soap, a delightful comedy spoofing soap operas. In it he played a defense attorney brought in to defend the Tates against murder charges. It was a wonderful role. WKRP, like Soap, had some truly great writers.

I had forgotten about his role in Spinal Tap. Apparently the actor playing the rocker couldn't improvise, so they brought in Hessman. Good call.

He was taken from complications from colon surgery, I only hope it wasn't peritonitis. Hessmqn actually had colon cancer, and surgery from that.


https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-news/howard-hesseman-wkrp-in-cincinnati-head-of-the-class-dead-obit-1292607/

https://people.com/tv/howard-hesseman-dies-81-wkrp-in-cincinnati-actor-colon-surgery/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/howard-hesseman-star-of-wkrp-in-cincinnati-dies-at-81_n_61f6ee87e4b094ce54ac1e30

Comments

[kathmandu]

Coincidentally, Soap and WKRP are both shows I only recently discovered, watching with friends over Zoom as quarantimes entertainment. They are indeed funny and quirky, and I liked his Johnny Fever portrayal.

[bibliofile]

Yeah, the NY Times didn't mention Soap either. They did talk about The Committee, though, which is nice. No one else in my family wanted to watch Soap, so I still haven't seen it. (Maybe I'll get to it someday.)

The surgery was last summer, so who knows?

[thewayne]

While they are somewhat dated in style, I find they hold up pretty well.  I started re-watching Soap back in September after my mom died, it was something that we watched together so it was a nice memory rekindler. It's interesting seeing shows that don't have computers and portable phones. :-)

[thewayne]

I'll have to look up the NYT obit as we do subscribe to it - initially to get my wife access to the crossword, but we do like the content, pricey though it may be.  I caught the news of his passing when I was cruising Apple News: I do not otherwise read People Magazine. :-) Soap is an amazing pastiche of soap operas, as I said.  It lead to the spin-off Benson, starring Robert Guillaume who was the butler in Soap and became the Governor's head of household and confidant in Benson.  Some amazing early career performances in both shows: Soap has an amazingly young Billy Crystal, Benson had René Auberjonois but so many guests that were cases of "Isn't that...."  The laugh tracks became a bit onerous, but they're sitcoms, so it is what it is.

[acelightning73]

I worked as a radio engineer and disc jockey shortly before that show first aired. I always watched it, and I kept squeeing over just how true to life most of it was. "As god is my witness.... I swear I thought turkeys could fly!" And Johnny Fever was the truest character. He's sorta the guy in the lyrics of Harry Chapin's "W*O*L*D" "Well, the drinkin I did on my last big gig, it made my voice go low. They said they wanted the 'young sound' when they let me go. So I drifted on down to Tulsa, Oklahoma where I got me a late-night talk show...Now I've worked my way down home again
Here to Boise, Idaho; That's how this business goes." Dr Jonny knows he'll never be Wolfman Jack, but he doesn't care any more.

[thewayne]

You've had quite a live: Aerospace, on the air, and quite a few stops inbetween!

[captainsblog]

I found it quite strange that he died on the same weekend his fictional hometown's AFC football team made it to the Super Bowl. I watched that show pretty regularly in its first-run era, even twice a week sometimes when I first moved here because Canadian television showed it at a different time. The first episode I thought of yesterday was called "The Contest Nobody Could Win," where Johnny misreads the rules for an on-air contest and offers $5,000 rather than $50.00 to the first caller to identify six song snippets. The episode was written by a guy from Buffalo who worked at the 60s and 70s local station here that dominated the top-40 market, and the botched contest, as well as the even more famous "Turkey Drop" episode, were allegedly inspired by real events at WKBW.

The contest episode had a few other behind-the-scene quirks, which I will probably post about.

[acelightning73]

I was in the Civil Air Patrol as a teenager. I have been hugged by Isaac Asimov. I may have been one of the first women radio engineers in New York City, but I can't prove it. I am a Mayflower descendant, and I'm thoroughly ashamed of the ways my ancestors treated the people they met when they arrived (they got thrown out of both England and the Netherlands for being too Puritanical) I am a Wiccan Priestess. I have been to Australia, Canada, Iceland, and Bermuda. I turned 74 years old this past December, and I'm still planning to have a big party when I turn 100(you're invited, of course). And once, when I'd been working on a big web design project, I found myself dreaming in HTML.

[thewayne]

Nice!  I do wish my wife had completed her pilot's license when she was a teen. I can't say I dream in code, but I think in relational database table design.  I was once in a meeting to discuss me creating a system for reporting vote results, and I designed the database during the meeting!  Spring fully formed into my mind.  Recently, I've been creating Lord of the Rings lyrics for the Lord of the Rings Online game, rewriting songs like Sound of Silence and Sting's Fields of Gold, and recently have been on a Hobbit food theme binge.  Sound of Silence leaped into my mind as I was waking up this morning: Oh my dark red glowing friend I’ll soon be back with you again for a banked stone oven.  I think I can do a lot with that opening.  I have lots of fun with lyrics, I was hanging out online with two friends who were practicing music, and they were noodling with Here Comes The Sun, and I sprang out with "Here Comes The Buns!", and immediately followed with "Damn, now I have to write it!" and have started doing so."