New York (AP) – George Wendt, An actor with a charm of everyone who has played the affable and beer -loving norm in the TV comedy of the 1980s “Cracks” And later designed a career on stage that took him to Broadway in “Art”, “Hairspray” and “Elf” died. He was 76 years old.
Wendt’s family said he died early Tuesday morning, peacefully in his sleep while he was at home, according to the advertising firm The Agency Group.
Rhea Perlman, on the left, Kelsey Grammar, Ted Dance, John Ratzenberger, George Wendt presents the prize for an exceptional writing for a series of comedy during the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards on Monday, January 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo / chris pizzello, file)
“George was a loved father, a beloved friend and confidant to all those who are fortunate to have known him,” the family said in a statement. “We will miss it forever.” The family asked for privacy during this period.
Despite a long career of roles on stage and on television, he was as sweet and weighed Norm Peterson on “Cheers” that he was the most associated, winning six consecutive nominations of the Emmy Awards for the best support actor in a series of comedy from 1984 to 1989.
File -Boston Red Sox, third goal player Wade Boggs, Center, Pose, March 2, 1988, with the cast of “Cheers” during the rehearsal for an episode in which he appears. Distribution members include John Ratzenberger, Rhea Perlman, George Wendt, Woody Harrelson, Kirstie Alley and Ted Darme. (AP photo / IRA Mark GOSTIN, file)
The series was centered on adorable losers in a boston bar and played Ted in danson, Shelley Long, Rhea Perlman, Kelsey Grammer, John Ratzenberger, Kirsty Alley and Woody Harrelson. He would turn another Megahit in “Frasier” and was nominated for 117 amazing Emmy Awards, winning 28.
Wendt, who spent six years in the famous troop of the second city of improvisation in Chicago before sitting on a bar stool where everyone knows your name, had no great hopes when he auditioned for “Cheers”.
“My agent said,” It’s a small role, darling. It’s a line. In fact, it’s a word. The word was “beer”. I was struggling to believe that I was right for the role of “the guy who seemed to want a beer”. So I entered, and they said: “He’s too small. And he was a guy who never left the bar,” Wendt told GQ in an oral story of “Cheers”.
George Wendt participates during a panel of questions / answers on day 2 at the Wizard World at the Donald E Stephens Convention Center, Saturday August 24, 2019, in Chicago. (Photo of Rob Grabowski / Invision / AP, File)
‘Cheers’ and a bar stool
“Cheers” was created on September 30, 1982 and spent the first season with low notes. The president of NBC, Brandon Tartikoff, defended the show, and he was nominated for an Emmy for the best comedy series of his first season. Some 80 million people connect to watch its final series 11 years later.
Wendt has become a favorite of fans inside and outside the bar – his entries were applauded with a “standard!” Warm. – And his mistakes have always landed. “How’s a beer sound, standard?” It would be requested by the bartender. “I don’t know. I usually finish them before they take a word, ”he replied.
While the beer that the casting drank on the set was non -alcoholic, Wendt and other members of the “Cheers” distribution admitted that they came on May 20, 1993, when they watched the last episode of the show, then appeared together on “The Tonight Show” in a live program of the Bull and Finch Pub in Boston, the bar that inspired the series.
“We have been drinking a lot for two hours but no one thought of feeding us,” said Wendt at the Beaver County Times in Pennsylvania in 2009. “We were far from cute as we thought.”
Perlman, who regularly served Wendt on “Cheers”, in a press release called him “the sweetest and nicest man I have ever met. It was impossible not to love him.
“As Carla, I often stood next to him, because Norm always took the same seat at the end of the bar, which facilitated him and beat him shit at least once a week. I loved doing it and he liked to pretend that it didn’t hurt. What a guy! I will miss it more than words cannot say. ”
After “Cheers”, Wendt played in his own short -term sitcom “The George Wendt Show” – “Too bad he had to get out of the standard and down so far from this corner stool for his first stanza”, sniff the variety – and had invited places in television shows like “The Ghost Whisperer”, “Harry’s Law”. He was part of a brotherhood of Chicago all the men who gathered on sausages and beers and Adored “Da Bears” on “Saturday Night Live”. In 2023, he participated in “The Masked Singer”.
Second career on stage
But he found stable work on stage: Wendt slipped on the house coat of Edna Turblad in Broadway “Hairspray” from 2007, and was in the award -winning “Art” of Tony Award in New York and London.
He played in the national tour of “12 Angry Men” and appeared in a production of “Lakeboat” by David Mamet. He also played in regional productions of “Death of a Salesman”, “The Odd Couple”, “Never Too Lard” and “Funningman”.
“A is by far the most fun, but B, I seem to have been expelled from television,” Wendt told Kansas City Star in 2011. “I exceeded my welcome. But the theater suits me.”
Wendt had an affinity to play Santa Claus, wearing the famous red outfit in the musical of stage “Elf” on Broadway in 2017, the TV movie “Santa Baby” with Jenny McCarthy in 2006 and in the Doggie Disney “Santa Buddies” video in 2009.
“I think it just proves that if you stay fat enough and get old enough, the offers are starting to ride,” joked the actor at the AP in his Broadway locker room.
Born in Chicago, Wendt frequented Campion High School, a Catholic boarding school with dog meadow, Wisconsin, then Notre Dame, where he rarely went to class and was expelled. He was transferred to Rockhurst University in Kansas City and graduated, after having specialized in economics.
He found a second city house in the tour company and the main scene.
“I think that comedy is my long costume, that’s for sure. My approach to comedy is generally not a complete clownic,” he said at the AP. “If you try to show or go out, it doesn’t always work. There are some artists who specialize almost in fact, and they do it very well. But it’s not my approach.”
Bravo for beer
He had an association for life with beer. He had his first taste at 8 years old and got drunk at 16, at the World Exhibition in New York.
His beer knowledge was poured into the book “Drink with George: A Barstool Professional’s Guide to Beer”, co-written with Jonathan Grotenstein. A line: “Will Rogers said he had never met a man he didn’t like. I feel the same in beer.
Partly the autobiography, partly the guide of the beer drinker, the book had the tone and the conversational lists of Wendt, such as “Five Good Bar Bets”, “77 toasts around the world” and “more) in 100 ways of saying that you are drunk”, which lists alphabetically 126 synonyms of “destroyed” to “Zezzled”.
He is survived by his wife, the second former Bernadette Birkett, who expressed half norm, never so better, Vera, on “Cheers”; his children, Hilary, Joe and Daniel; And his fine child, Joshua and Andrew.
“Since its beginnings with the second city in its emblematic role of norm on` “ cheers ”, the work of George Wendt has shown how the comedy can create indelible characters that resemble the family. During 11 seasons, he brought heat and humor to one of the most loved roles on television, “said the Executive Director of the National Comedy Center, Gunderson GUNDERSON.
