Don Knotts
Darren McGavin
Dennis Weaver
Jack Wild

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Artful Dodger dies

Jack Wild, shown in his role as the Artful Dodger in the 1968 film
"Oliver!," has died from cancer at the age of 53.
Photo: AP

Jack Wild, whose angelic, cheeky face shot him to stardom and almost an
Oscar as the Artful Dodger in the 1968 film Oliver!, has died from
cancer aged 53 after a life pitted with disappointment and illness.

The working-class boy from Hounslow, west London, never repeated his
early success and his fall was as meteoric as his rise. By the age of
21 he was an alcoholic and his career lay in ruins.

He later picked up minor film and television roles and made an attempt
at being a pop star but four years after cancer was diagnosed in 2000,
part of his tongue and his larynx were removed leaving him unable to
talk.

He took on a small non-speaking role in one film in 2005 and he
performed as a silent Baron Hardup in Cinderella at Worcester in a
Christmas panto season.

In a classic example of the perils that threaten child stars, Wild went
off the rails after Oliver!, which he made when he was just 15. So
powerful was his portrayal of the prince of London's pickpockets, that
it was he, not Mark Lester playing Oliver, who was nominated for an
Oscar for Lionel Bart and Carol Reed's film.

Lured to Hollywood soon after - to front the American children's
television series HR Pufnstuf and then star in a film version - he took
up heavy drinking, smoking and partying.

Without proper supervision, he lived at the home of one of his
producers who found him increasingly uncontrollable.

When Daniel Radcliffe won the film role of Harry Potter, Wild wrote him
an open letter of warning. He said:

"Like other child stars, I paid a high price for my instant success.

"I remember going to parties where the 'nibbles' were bowls of LSD,
marijuana, cocaine, uppers and downers. I stuck to the booze, but I
paid a heavy price for my old-fashioned addiction. Booze made me so ill
my heart stopped three times."

He was to spend the 1970s and 1980s in "a drunken haze" but, after
doctors warned him that he would die if he carried on drinking, he
dried out and became a born-again Christian.

Ron Moody, also nominated for an Oscar for playing Fagin in the film,
said yesterday: "We have lost a great artist and I've lost a great
friend."

But he added: "Jack was cheated out of a great career. He had a talent
that should have developed into even more talent as he grew older." He
said that Wild was hit by "pressure at a very early age".

"Jack also had bad luck with the fact that he got so ill. The talent
was still there but it didn't work out for him. I thought he'd fought
it [cancer]. It's very sad. He was a fighter."

At 23 and back in Britain, Wild married his childhood sweetheart,
Gaynor Jones, who became a backing singer with Kim Wilde and Suzi
Quatro.

Though Wild himself found some work - in a television series of Our
Mutual Friend, in the film farce Keep It Up Downstairs, and in 1991 in
a small role in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves - the marriage ended
because of his drinking.

Wild, the son of millworkers from Manchester who had moved south, found
himself in the same school panto as Phil Collins, the future Genesis
star.

Collins's mother was a talent agent and steered the young Wild into
stage school.

After drying out, Wild met Claire Harding when they were both working
in panto and they lived together for 10 years before marrying last
September.

Only two months ago, they moved into a new house in the village of
Tebworth in Bedfordshire where Wild died at midnight on Wednesday after
the cancer returned.

Alex Jay, Wild's agent, said yesterday that the actor had been planning
to rebuild his career, working as a mime in silent roles like Harpo
Marx.

A number of television and stage parts, including a role in Three Men
in a Boat, were being specially written for him.

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Darren McGavin

Actor famous for his role as Carl Kolchak

Michael Carlson

Tuesday February 28, 2006

The Guardian


Darren McGavin's career as an actor was as volatile as many of the
characters he made his speciality. As the first actor to star in two
hit television series simultaneously - Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer
(1956) and Riverboat (1958) - he might have expected stardom to follow.
But McGavin, who has died aged 83, is best remembered as Carl Kolchak,
the demented Chicago reporter fighting unseen supernatural evil. The
two Kolchak made-for-TV movies The Night Stalker (1972) and The Night
Strangler (1973), and the 1974 series Kolchak: The Night Stalker, with
McGavin's over-the-top performances, have become cult classics.

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An Appreciation
Don Knotts, Ever Proud to Be a Bumbler

By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN

Published: February 27, 2006

Don Knotts was a high-status comic who played low-status roles. Actors
who worked with him almost universally deferred to him as a comedic
grandmaster, yet his characters were not jokers but the butts of jokes.
He was absolutely flappable. No one had a better tremor or double-take,
and with his unmistakable homeliness - bulging eyes, receding chin,
stooped shoulders, broad hips - he didn't bother to play the wise
fool; he wisely stuck to just the fool.

Actor Don Knotts, 81, Dies; Won Fame as Barney Fife (Feb. 26, 2006)

Of Barney Fife, Mr. Knotts's character on "The Andy Griffith Show,"
Billy Bob Thornton said, "Don Knotts gave us the best character, the
most clearly drawn, most perfect American, most perfect human ever."

Mr. Knotts, who died Friday, grew up during the Depression, in
Morgantown, W.Va., where his mother leased a house and took in
boarders. He slept in the kitchen. His older brothers, Sid and Shadow,
were funny, but they also drank and fought, and Shadow died of an
asthma attack while Don was a teenager. Their father, who had suffered
hysterical blindness and a nervous collapse before Don was born, rarely
left his bed.

The Depression was a high time for Mr. Knotts's act. He practiced magic
and ventriloquism for the neighbors and the boarders, many of whom were
students or jobless and welcomed satire. When World War II came, his
friends thought the Army wouldn't take him, since he looked unwell and
undernourished, but he ended up serving out his duty as a comedian in
the Stars and Gripes, a revue that played in the South Pacific. At
first, he performed only with his ventriloquist dummy, Danny, but one
day he caught Red Ford, an older Texas comic, staring at him and
laughing. "You know something?" Mr. Knotts remembered Ford saying in
"Barney Fife, and Other Characters I Have Known," his 1999
autobiography. "You're a funny little *****."

He was a generous performer who liked to share the stage, and he
thrived in duets, teams, variety shows, ensembles. Back in New York, he
noticed a man whose hands shook and who spilled water; he combined that
with Robert Benchley's famous apologetic speaker from the monologue
"Treasurer's Report," and the nervous character, who went on to fame on
"The Steve Allen Show," was born.

Mr. Knotts plainly stole stuff, and other comics didn't mind lending
him material. He was wonderfully unthreatening to other male comics,
all of whom could think of themselves as one step closer to leading men
than Mr. Knotts was. It's hard to think of an actor, in fact, who got
more helping hands than Mr. Knotts in his early days. Male actors were
forever offering him parts, trying to get him to join their acts.
Sharing the stage with this skinny, spazzy guy could only make them
look more commanding.

Among these mentors was Andy Griffith, whom he met when they were both
cast in the play "No Time for Sergeants" in 1955. Mr. Griffith and Mr.
Knotts cracked each other up. A few years later, when Mr. Knotts
proposed himself as a deputy to Andy Taylor on Mr. Griffith's sitcom,
Mr. Griffith went for it. Andy's crinkly, deep-set eyes conveyed calm
and sagacity, while Barney's popped ones expressed pure anxiety -
something akin to horror at the demands of ordinary life.

Mr. Knotts's popular movies, "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken," "The
Incredible Mr. Limpet," "The Reluctant Astronaut" and "The Shakiest Gun
in the West," put him on a winning streak. To comedy geeks, especially
the preteen kind, his send-up of 60's superheroism came as a delight
and a relief.

One by one, Mr. Knotts mocked the pretenses of the comic actor who
often has his eye on nobler pursuits. In the nervous man, he reveled in
the discomfort that most comics tend to pass off as indignation or
savoir-faire. As Barney, he satirized swagger and self-importance.
Finally, on "Three's Company" in the late 70's and 80's, he sent up the
comedian's hypersexuality, which is often his pride. Mr. Knotts, over
and over, was willing to play the desperate, pathetic
low-man-on-every-pole. He did it so well - never forsaking his
persona and trying to seize the lead, as nearly all major comedians do
these days - that his talent for abasement became a source,
paradoxically, of great authority. By revealing but never indulging
these pretenses, he enlightened everyone he worked with, and his
audiences.

And once in a great while he even got to be the hero. On "The Loaded
Goat," a winning episode of "The Andy Griffith Show," it's Barney who
saves the day. Playing an achingly melancholy song on his harmonica, he
leads a dangerous goat, which has swallowed dynamite, out of town.

=======================================

Posted on Tue, Feb. 28, 2006

Dennis Weaver of 'Gunsmoke,' 'McCloud' fame dead at 81BOB
THOMASAssociated PressLOS ANGELES - First as Marshal Matt Dillon's
frenetic sidekick, Chester Goode, later as Sam McCloud, the folksy,
fish-out-water sheriff who chased outlaws through the gritty streets of
New York City on a horse, Dennis Weaver captivated television viewers
for decades.
As word of his death spread this week, friends in and out of the
business told of how the actor-activist had the same effect on them,
throughout a lifetime.
Weaver died Friday from complications of cancer at his home in Ridgway,
Colo., his publicist, Julian Myers, announced Monday. He was 81.
"He was a wonderful man and a fine actor, and we will all miss him,"
said Burt Reynolds, who appeared with Weaver in "Gunsmoke" in the early
1960s.
Linda Gray, who played Sue Ellen Ewing on the long-running "Dallas"
television show, recalled Monday how a chance conversation with
Weaver's wife at the health-food store the couple operated helped
launch her own career.
When Gray mentioned to Weaver's wife that she was an actress, the actor
got her a role on his hit 1970s show "McCloud."
"We've been family ever since," Gray said. "His spirit will always live
on."
Weaver himself had been a struggling actor years before, earning $60 a
week delivering flowers, when he landed the role of Chester on
television's long-running "Gunsmoke" in 1955.
He played the part with a stiff-legged gait, and that, coupled with his
frantic call for Marshal Matt Dillon with the high-pitched "Mis-Ter
Dil-lon, Mis-Ter Dil-lon" any time trouble was brewing, made him an
immediate hit. He won an Emmy for the role in the 1958-59 season.
"It is a very sad time and a big loss for me personally," said James
Arness, who played Marshal Dillon and who said the two remained friends
throughout their lives.
Clint Howard, brother of director Ron Howard, said Weaver introduced
his parents, Jean Speegle and Rance Howard, in 1947 when the three were
drama students.
"Because of Dennis, Ron and I exist, said Howard, who acted alongside
Weaver in the 1967 film "Gentle Giant."
Weaver's 50-year acting career included stage and film, but it was
television where he had his greatest success.
In addition to "Gunsmoke" and McCloud," Weaver starred opposite a
600-pound black bear on the 1960s television series "Gentle Ben" and
faced down a murderous big-rig driver in the classic 1971 made-for-TV
movie "Duel" that was directed by a young Steven Spielberg.
He also starred in last year's "Wildfire" as the eccentric owner of a
thoroughbred racing ranch.
"His performance never ceased to dazzle us," the ABC Family channel,
which carried the show, said in a statement. "He was an American legend
not only for his contribution to the acting community but for his
extensive and inspirational environmental work."
A vegetarian and activist for environmental causes, Weaver was a past
president of the Screen Actors Guild and of the organization Love Is
Feeding Everyone.
He founded the Institute of Ecolonomics, which sought solutions to
economic and environmental problems, and he spoke at the United
Nations, Congress and elsewhere.
His "Earthship" home was the most visible of Weaver's crusades. He and
his wife, Gerry, built the solar-powered Colorado dwelling out of
recycled tires and cans. Its thick walls helped keep the inside
temperature even year-round.
Weaver, who never lost his southwest Missouri accent, was born June 4,
1924, in Joplin, Mo., where he excelled in high-school drama and
athletics. After Navy service in World War II, he enrolled at the
University of Oklahoma and nearly qualified for the Olympic decathlon.
Universal Studios signed him to a contract in 1952, but he struggled to
find work until "Gunsmoke" came along three years later. He
acknowledged in his 2001 autobiography that he originally considered
his character of Chester Goode "inane."
He finally persuaded himself, "I'll correct this character" by using
the training he'd received at New York's prestigious Actors Studio and
in such stage productions as "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "Come Back,
Little Sheba."
He left the series in the middle of its 20-year run to pursue other
opportunities, and he had several other series over the years.
But it was in "McCloud" that Weaver said he found "the most satisfying
role of my career."
The show featured him as Sam McCloud, a New Mexico lawman cast on the
streets of New York City with a horse, a sheepskin coat and a folksy
manner that belied his shrewd crime-solving talent. It aired from 1970
to 1977.
Weaver is survived by his wife; sons Rick, Robby and Rusty; and three
grandchildren.
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