http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060226/ap_en_tv/obit_mcgavin
I thought he was great as the dad in A Christmas Story and The Night Stalker 
sad
Best…dad…ever.
Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I just heard Don Knotts died yesterday. How sad!
And now I’ve just seen the thread below about Don Knotts.
Dammit, it’s turning out to be a sad weekend.
I admired this actor’s work tremendously.
Sir Rhosis
The AP story linked in The Celebrity Death Pool 2006 has Darrin McG starring in a TV series called “The Night Prowler”. WTF?!?! :mad:
God bless ya, Carl Kolchak!
^^The story quotes McGavin’s son as saying he was separated from his wife, Kathy Browne. Yeah, separated by her own death a couple years ago!
Sir Rhosis
Sorry to hear that, but I honestly thought he was already dead. No idea why I thought so.
Some trivia: while not what you would generally consider an exotic Asian despot type, McGavin took over for a dying Yul Brynner for some of his The King & I appearances. Reviews were basically “he’s not as bad as you’d think”.
Between this and Don Knotts, I cannot tell you how sad I am.
VCNJ~
Darren McGavin always gave great performances, imho–the most memorable are probably Kolchak the Night Stalker and of course the Dad in “The Christmas Story.” Coupled with the passing of Don Knotts, this is definitely a bad weekend for entertainment. We will at least have the many movies and TV shows they both appeared in to remember them by.
RIP Darren and Don
Very sad news.
(Didn’t he have a recurring role as as Murphy Brown’s father? That was an inspired bit of casting – Murphy Brown as Kolchak’s daughter, of course, it all makes sense!)
Oops, sorry, should have read the obit before posting – yes, that role is mentioned.
From the earlier thread:
When I was a kid I had a hammock strung between two posts of the patio. I’d take my little 9" B&W TV I got as a birthday present and put it on the little raised area between the sliding glass doors and the rest of the patio. There, in my sleeping bag (which I still have) I would lie in my hammock and watch Kolchak: The Night Stalker in the dark. Being outside, in the dark, with only the feeble light from the TV, and watching Kolchak battle mysterious monsters scared the hell out of me. I did it every week. (The scariest one for me was the one with the swamp monster.)
I watched a few episodes a couple of years ago. In retrospect, they were often laughable. But they were great when I was a kid. If I’d ever paid attention to the schedule, I would have watched all of them again. And would there have been a Mulder, if not for Kolchak?
Oh no! I loved him.
I never would have put him as older than Don Knotts, though.
I was at Costco tonight and just out of the blue was the DVD for ‘No Deposit No Return’ with both Don Knotts and Darrin McGavin on the cover. I of course had to buy it.
He did indeed and he won an Emmy for that role.
I thought he had died because they digitally inserted his image to the new Night Stalker series pilot.
He was a great actor. Dammit.
I loved his work in the little-seen From the Hip:
“We’ll have to change the name of the firm to Sleaze, Sleaze, and Pander!”
It’s goofy I know, but besides “Night Stalker” as a kid I also loved Mission Mars. I don’t remember anything about it but the ending and the finding of the frozen cosmonaut.
I have long enjoyed his work. His work with the Actors Group and later Actors Studio definitely came through.
I felt he did a wonderful job on Riverboat in addition to the shows already menioned here.
Perhaps one of his most memorable roles, at least in my mind, was in Magnum PI as a Hemingwayesque author looking for an acceptable way to die.
He always brought a sense of humor to his roles, so you could know it was OK not to take it too seriously. For me at least, that was one of the reasons Kolchak was entertaining.