NEW YORK (AP) — George Wendt, an actor with an Everyman appeal who performed the affable, beer-loving barfly Norm on the hit Eighties TV comedy “Cheers” and later crafted a stage profession that took him to Broadway in “Artwork,” “Hairspray” and “Elf,” has died. He was 76.
Wendt’s household mentioned he died early Tuesday morning, peacefully in his sleep whereas at residence, in line with the publicity agency The Company Group.
Rhea Perlman, from left, Kelsey Grammar, Ted Danson, John Ratzenberger, George Wendt current the award for excellent writing for a comedy sequence throughout the seventy fifth Primetime Emmy Awards on Monday, Jan. 15, 2024, on the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (AP Photograph/Chris Pizzello, file)
“George was a doting household man, a well-loved buddy and confidant to all of these fortunate sufficient to have identified him,” the household mentioned in an announcement. “He will probably be missed without end.” The household has requested privateness throughout this time.
Regardless of an extended profession of roles onstage and on TV, it was as mild and henpecked Norm Peterson on “Cheers” that he was most related, incomes six straight Emmy Award nominations for greatest supporting actor in a comedy sequence from 1984-89.
FILE -Boston Pink Sox third baseman Wade Boggs, middle, poses, March 2, 1988, with the solid of “Cheers” throughout rehearsal for an episode by which he seems. Solid members embrace, John Ratzenberger, Rhea Perlman, George Wendt, Woody Harrelson, Kirstie Alley and Ted Danson. (AP Photograph/Ira Mark Gostin, File)
The sequence was centered on lovable losers in a Boston bar and starred Ted Danson, Shelley Lengthy, Rhea Perlman, Kelsey Grammer, John Ratzenberger, Kirstie Alley and Woody Harrelson. It might spin off one other megahit in “Frasier” and was nominated for an astounding 117 Emmy Awards, successful 28 of them.
Wendt, who spent six years in Chicago’s famend Second Metropolis improv troupe earlier than sitting on a barstool on the place the place everyone is aware of your identify, didn’t have excessive hopes when he auditioned for “Cheers.”
“My agent mentioned, ‘It’s a small position, honey. It’s one line. Truly, it’s one phrase.’ The phrase was ‘beer.’ I used to be having a tough time believing I used to be proper for the position of ‘the man who regarded like he needed a beer.’ So I went in, they usually mentioned, ‘It’s too small a job. Why don’t you learn this different one?’ And it was a man who by no means left the bar,” Wendt informed GQ in an oral historical past of “Cheers.”
George Wendt participates throughout a Q&A panel on Day 2 at Wizard World on the Donald E Stephens Conference Heart, Saturday, Aug. 24, 2019, in Chicago. (Photograph by Rob Grabowski/Invision/AP, file)
‘Cheers’ and a barstool
“Cheers” premiered on Sept. 30, 1982, and spent the primary season with low scores. NBC president Brandon Tartikoff championed the present, and it was nominated for an Emmy for greatest comedy sequence in its first season. Some 80 million individuals would tune in to observe its sequence finale 11 years later.
Wendt grew to become a fan favourite in and out of doors the bar — his entrances have been cheered with a heat “Norm!” — and his wisecracks at all times landed. “How’s a beer sound, Norm?” he could be requested by the bartender. “I dunno. I often end them earlier than they get a phrase in,” he’d reply.
Whereas the beer the solid drank on set was nonalcoholic, Wendt and different “Cheers” solid members have admitted they have been tipsy on Might 20, 1993, after they watched the present’s closing episode then appeared collectively on “The Tonight Present” in a reside broadcast from the Bull and Finch Pub in Boston, the bar that impressed the sequence.
″We had been ingesting closely for 2 hours however no one thought to feed us,” Wendt informed the Beaver County Instances of Pennsylvania in 2009. “We have been nowhere close to as cute as we thought we have been.”
Perlman, who recurrently served Wendt on “Cheers,” in an announcement known as him “the sweetest, kindest man I ever met. It was unattainable to not like him.
“As Carla, I used to be usually standing subsequent to him, as Norm at all times took the identical seat on the finish of the bar, which made it simple to seize him and beat the crap out of him not less than as soon as per week. I cherished doing it and he cherished pretending it didn’t harm. What a man! I’ll miss him greater than phrases can say.”
After “Cheers,” Wendt starred in his personal short-lived sitcom “The George Wendt Present” — “too dangerous he needed to step out of Norm and down so removed from that nook stool for his debut stanza,” sniffed Selection — and had visitor spots on TV exhibits like “The Ghost Whisperer,” “Harry’s Legislation” and “Portlandia.” He was a part of a brotherhood of Chicago Everymen who gathered over sausage and beers and adored “Da Bears” on “Saturday Evening Stay.” In 2023, he competed on “The Masked Singer.”
Second profession on stage
However he discovered regular work onstage: Wendt slipped on Edna Turnblad’s housecoat in Broadway’s “Hairspray” starting in 2007, and was within the Tony Award-winning play “Artwork” in New York and London.
He starred within the nationwide tour of “12 Indignant Males” and appeared in a manufacturing of David Mamet’s “Lakeboat.” He additionally starred in regional productions of “Loss of life of a Salesman,” “The Odd Couple,” “By no means Too Late” and “Funnyman.”
“A, it’s by far essentially the most enjoyable, however B, I appear to have been kicked out of tv,” Wendt informed the Kansas Metropolis Star in 2011. “I overstayed my welcome. However theater fits me.”
Wendt had an affinity for enjoying Santa Claus, donning the well-known purple outfit within the stage musical “Elf” on Broadway in 2017, the TV film “Santa Child” with Jenny McCarthy in 2006 and within the doggie Disney video “Santa Buddies” in 2009. He additionally performed Father Christmas for TV specials by Larry the Cable Man and Stephen Colbert.
“I feel it simply proves that should you keep fats sufficient and get sufficiently old, the provides begin rolling in,” the actor joked to the AP in his Broadway dressing room.
Born in Chicago, Wendt attended Campion Excessive College, a Catholic boarding faculty in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, after which Notre Dame, the place he not often went to class and was kicked out. He transferred to Rockhurst College in Kansas Metropolis and graduated, after majoring in economics.
He discovered a house at Second Metropolis in each the touring firm and the mainstage.
“I feel comedy is my lengthy swimsuit, for positive. My strategy to comedy is often not full-bore clownish,” he informed the AP. “In the event you’re making an attempt to showboat or step outdoors, it doesn’t at all times work. There are specific performers who nearly specialise in doing that, they usually do it very well. However that’s not my strategy.”
Cheers for beer
He had a lifelong affiliation with beer. He had his first style as an 8-year-old and received drunk at 16, on the World’s Honest in New York.
His beer data was poured into the ebook ″Ingesting With George: A Barstool Skilled’s Information to Beer,” co-written with Jonathan Grotenstein. One line: “Will Rogers as soon as mentioned he by no means met a person he didn’t like. I really feel the identical about beer.”
Half autobiography, half beer drinker’s information, the ebook had Wendt’s conversational tone and lists, comparable to “5 Good Bar Bets,” ″77 Toasts from Across the World” and ”(Extra Than) 100 Methods to Say That You’re Drunk,” which alphabetically lists 126 synonyms from “annihilated” via “zozzled.”
He’s survived by his spouse, Second Metropolis alum Bernadette Birkett, who voiced Norm’s never-seen not-so higher half, Vera, on “Cheers”; his kids, Hilary, Joe and Daniel; and his stepchildren, Joshua and Andrew.
“From his early days with The Second Metropolis to his iconic position as Norm on ‘Cheers,’ George Wendt’s work showcased how comedy can create indelible characters that really feel like household. Over the course of 11 seasons, he introduced heat and humor to considered one of tv’s most beloved roles,” Nationwide Comedy Heart Government Director Journey Gunderson mentioned in an announcement.