Excellent post. I often wonder how these TV actors feel about staying with some silly sitcom for year after year because they’re pulling in big, reliable bucks, possibly after years of starving and waiting tables. If you have ambitions of going on to bigger and better things career-wise (and think you have the acting talent to do it, of course), you have to make the jump before everyone stops watching the TV show, right?
Sometimes, unfortunately, it seems like a matter of luck and Who You Know vs. aging and typecasting.
I’ve heard that kid from the Andy Griffith Show did a few things after the show was over.
Oh, and whoever it was who played Richie Cunningham on Happy Days also did some stuff…
How about Noah Wyle who plays John Carter on ER? That guy is the only character left from the original ER cast. And he’s said how grateful he is to the show and how he feels they are owed loyalty.
Wayne Rogers didn’t act much, but his personal fortune is estimated in the low hundreds-of-millions. He’s a financial manager for some really big stars.
Yeah, that was an odd career move, but he’s won millions. And he owes it all to Jonathan Frakes.
Re: Jumping-the-Shark, I actually heard it on MSNBC the other day used in a non TV series sense; the pundit was theorizing that Bush might have Jumped-the-Shark with his hawk policies towards Iraq. The cool thing is that he didn’t even give an explanation for the line, just assuming it would be understood. Odd the images it gives you of Bush in a leather jacket and light blue swimtrunks skiing behind the boat.
He gets double-suck points because his departure killed a great show (which admittedly was already sick, but was getting better). I’d love to see a reunion movie where we catch up with Marilyn (who doesn’t change expression when she sees Joel for the first time in a decade), meet Shelley/Holling and Maurice/Barbara’s kids, etc… Sigh.
I don’t think Ray Romano deserves to be here. After next year, it will have been 7 seasons, the full extent of his contract. He’s rich enough never to have to work again, and his syndication shares should move him from merely very rich to obscenely rich.
I’d like to suggest an addition. Sherry Stringfield left ER after it’s second (IIRC) so that she could move to New York and spend more time with her boyfriend.
And another pat on the back for Henry Winkler. At the height of it’s popularity, the producers wanted to change the name to Fonzie’s Happy Days and make his character the lead rather than a foil for the Cunninghams. He insisted that the name and format stay as they were.
Number Six, I’m glad you added a bit more to the Henry Winkler angle here. Far from desiring to take over the entire show ( and nation for a year or two… ), Winkler was very much the team player. I get this from the man who directed the PILOT of “Happy Days”. Don’t ask me his name. I shot an episode of “Early Edition” in Chicago a few years back, and he was the Director. Once I heard he’d shot the Pilot of “Happy Days”, I was all ovah him.
His take- a highly educated one- was that it was class acts through and through. That show died a prolonged death, but the earlier years were vintage decent writing, amazing comic timing and no celebrity hogs. When The Fonz broke out, you are right- he demurred and kept the show on keel. The last moment of the pilot truly solidified the entire character anyway, and stands in my head as one of the best starts a series ever had.
Fonzie has failed a test. Richie offers to tutor him, since they’re good friends and work with him to keep him in high school. This character NEVER looked so outcast and vulnerable as the last moment, when he politely declines Richie’s offer. The camera booms up slowly above him, as he crumples the test up, kickstarts his motorcycle and leaves High School.
The stage was set, and they all made the most of it.
I don’t watch “Raymond” ( to return to the OP, finally…gasp gasp ), but I have to say, Romano is not doing a Maclain Stevenson. He will fulfill his contract, knows his hit is wearing thin and going sour, and wishes to end it BEFORE they all drag it through the mud of a tragic last season.
I respect the move. Well, as much as I can respect anything done by a guy paid $ 800,000 a week to talk about his real life family.
On a related note, Sherry Stringfield stunned everybody by leaving just as the show was peaking, but now she’s back. Wylie is the only original character who’s been with the show continuously.
I wonder if Anthony Edwards will end up making Revenge of the Nerds III: Nerds on Wall Street.
I think that John Goodman can arguably be added to Cervaise’s list of anti-MacLeans. He stuck with that TV show for what, eleven years? At the same time he was snagging some excellent supporting roles from the likes of the Coen brothers, and a fair number of leads as well, so that at this point I think he is probably just as well known as a screen actor as he is as a sit-com dad.
Then again, the occasional stinker such as King Ralph probably helped to keep him honest.
I think when Mark Harmon left St. Elsewhere, he thought he was going to be a big movie star. But David Caruso has to be the prototype because NYPD Blue was perfect for him and he quit after one great season to catch a one-way* train to Straight-To-Video land.
Anyway, has anyone ever left a TV show (other than possibly Saturday Night Live) to pursue a movie career and not sunk like a lead balloon? Did Bruce Willis quit Moonlighting or was it cancelled?
*I take this back if his new CSI series is a hit.
