# Dean Wormer dies (And the secret) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 4, 2005, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dean-wormer-dies-and-the-secret/288318 "2005-02-04T04:15:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Tigers2B1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc29f/32.png) [@Tigers2B1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tigers2B1)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2005, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dean-wormer-dies-and-the-secret/288318/1 "2005-02-04T04:15:18Z")
> [@](#): > > Dean Vernon Wormer: As of now they’re on Double SECRET Probation! And so the meaning of “Double Secret Probation” is lost forever. RIP cool dude - [http://www.canada.com/entertainment/story.html?id=acf88ae1-b307-408e-b6ee-8bcbfcfedc3e](http://www.canada.com/entertainment/story.html?id=acf88ae1-b307-408e-b6ee-8bcbfcfedc3e) ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2005, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dean-wormer-dies-and-the-secret/288318/2 "2005-02-04T04:37:18Z")
Pity. I remember him as the Mayor on _Sledge Hammer_. Something I hadn’t known before checking his imdb page was he’d done a lot of cartoon voice work, including numerous Marvel characters. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2005, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dean-wormer-dies-and-the-secret/288318/3 "2005-02-04T05:06:17Z")
“Fat, Dumb, and Stupid is no way to go through life, son.” ---
**Author:** ![Tracy\_Lord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@Tracy\_Lord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tracy_Lord)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2005, 8:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dean-wormer-dies-and-the-secret/288318/4 "2005-02-04T08:36:26Z")
We had a sort of honorary _Animal House_ viewing in the dorm lounge tonight. “The time has come for someone to put his foot down. And that foot is _me_.” ---
**Author:** ![wolf\_meister](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolf_meister/32/15202_2.png) [@wolf\_meister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolf_meister)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2005, 9:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dean-wormer-dies-and-the-secret/288318/5 "2005-02-04T09:15:19Z")
Well how about posting his real name? **John Vernon** He was a great character actor. (I saw him in “Charlie Varrick” just a few nights ago.) Here’s his IMDB listing: > **[John Vernon - IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006893/)** > > John Vernon, Actor: Dirty Harry. John Vernon was a prolific stage-trained Canadian character player who made a career out of convincingly playing crafty villains, morally-bankrupt officials and heartless authority figures in American films and... ---
**Author:** ![Jeff\_Lodoen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b3f665/32.png) [@Jeff\_Lodoen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff_Lodoen)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2005, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dean-wormer-dies-and-the-secret/288318/6 "2005-02-04T12:54:13Z")
> [@Bryan Ekers](#): > > Pity. I remember him as the Mayor on _Sledge Hammer_. Something I hadn’t known before checking his imdb page was he’d done a lot of cartoon voice work, including numerous Marvel characters. Yeah on the '60s Marvel show: Iron Man, Sub Mariner and Glen Talbot. Later, Doctor Doom, Doctor Strange and Thunderbolt Ross. It claims his first role was the voice of Big Brother in the 1956 version of “1984”. Anybody here ever seen it? ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2005, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dean-wormer-dies-and-the-secret/288318/7 "2005-02-04T12:55:19Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > “Fat, Dumb, and Stupid is no way to go through life, son.” Drunk, not dumb. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Scrivener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@The\_Scrivener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Scrivener)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2005, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dean-wormer-dies-and-the-secret/288318/8 "2005-02-04T12:57:59Z")
Reunited with Senator Blutarsky at long last… R.I.P., John Vernon. ---
**Author:** ![Jaade](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/dfb087/32.png) [@Jaade](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaade)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2005, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dean-wormer-dies-and-the-secret/288318/9 "2005-02-04T13:08:31Z")
Ok, help me out. I’ve not seen a lot of these shows or movies that he played in. I heard on the radio this morning that he was on the Munsters, which I have seen. 🙂 Who was he? Side note: He was in “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka” as Mr. Big. I’ve seen that movie, but it has been a long time! ---
**Author:** ![Labdad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/439d5e/32.png) [@Labdad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Labdad)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2005, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dean-wormer-dies-and-the-secret/288318/10 "2005-02-04T13:14:40Z")
> [@wolf\_meister](#): > > Well how about posting his real name? > **John Vernon** > He was a great character actor. (I saw him in “Charlie Varrick” just a few nights ago.) “Charley Varrick” is one of my favorite films! Apparently, Tarantino liked it, too, because he incorporated one of Vernon’s lines into “Pulp Fiction:” “They’re going to send a couple guys down here who will go to work on you with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch until they get what they want.” ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2005, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dean-wormer-dies-and-the-secret/288318/11 "2005-02-04T13:17:14Z")
“Mr. Blu… Mr. Blutarsky. Zero. Point Zero.” “Put a sock on it, son, or you’ll be out of here like shit through a goose.” - Actually, I remember John Vernon most from the Clint Eastwood pictures he popped up in (or, perhaps I should say Don Siegel pictures). Remember him as the wishy washy liberal mayor in “Dirty Harry”? Or as Clint’s old Civil War commander in “The Outlaw Josey Wales”? ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2005, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dean-wormer-dies-and-the-secret/288318/12 "2005-02-04T15:31:06Z")
[tinfoil hat on/] Are we sure he isn’t on double secret resuscitation? [infoil hat off] ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2005, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dean-wormer-dies-and-the-secret/288318/13 "2005-02-04T15:52:49Z")
> [@Tigers2B1](#): > > And so the meaning of “Double Secret Probation” is lost forever. RIP cool dude - > > [Canada.Com | Homepage | Canada.Com](http://www.canada.com/entertainment/story.html?id=acf88ae1-b307-408e-b6ee-8bcbfcfedc3e) Double Secret Probation just meant that the Deltas were excluded from their final expulsion hearing without notification. ---
**Author:** ![Wartime\_Consigliori](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/9d8465/32.png) [@Wartime\_Consigliori](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wartime_Consigliori)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2005, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dean-wormer-dies-and-the-secret/288318/14 "2005-02-04T18:12:20Z")
“Mr. Daniel Simpson Day _has_ no grade point average…all courses incomplete!” (I love that line for some reason) ---
**Author:** ![Airblairxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Airblairxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airblairxxx)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2005, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dean-wormer-dies-and-the-secret/288318/15 "2005-02-04T18:58:41Z")
> [@wolf\_meister](#): > > Well how about posting his real name? > **John Vernon** Why not, indeed? **Adolphus Raymondus Vernon Agopsowicz**. (From the cite in the OP.) I wonder why he changed it? ---
**Author:** ![G.B.H.Hornswoggler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c67d28/32.png) [@G.B.H.Hornswoggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/G.B.H.Hornswoggler)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2005, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dean-wormer-dies-and-the-secret/288318/16 "2005-02-04T19:23:37Z")
And so yet another of my childhood (well, college, in this case) dreams is tragically crushed. A firend of mine and I would spend time in college thinking up TV shows that we wanted to create, and our _magnum opus_ was going to be **The John Vernon Show**. John would play the gruff – but _lovable_ – dean of a small, liberal-arts college, with the requisite long-suffering wife, teenage daughter, and rapscallion son. (There would also be his neighbors, a “wacky” British couple who were both professors of some sort.) Oh, sure, you might say that I have no connection with the TV industry, and that such a show would never have existed. But wouldn’t it have been a better world if that show _had_ been? Say, Wednesday nights at 9:00 on ABC, 1993-1999? Farewell, John. Somewhere there’s a Character Actor’s Heaven, and they’ve saved you an office with a big wood desk to scowl over. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2005, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dean-wormer-dies-and-the-secret/288318/17 "2005-02-04T21:11:17Z")
> [@wolf\_meister](#): > > He was a great character actor. (I saw him in “Charlie Varrick” just a few nights ago.) Ditto, but the movie I watched was John Boorman’s _Point Blank._ Vernon played the guy who double-crossed Lee Marvin and left him for dead, and who later gets his comeuppance in remarkably ignominious fashion. I won’t spoil it, because it’s a great movie, but it’s one of the most hard-boiled and unsentimental character exits I’ve ever seen. RIP, Mr. V. ---
**Author:** ![Reeder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Reeder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeder)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2005, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dean-wormer-dies-and-the-secret/288318/18 "2005-02-04T22:21:31Z")
A special place in heaven is reserved for those working class actors that entertained us so. ---
**Author:** ![5\_time\_champ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/5/278dde/32.png) [@5\_time\_champ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/5_time_champ)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2005, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dean-wormer-dies-and-the-secret/288318/19 "2005-02-05T04:25:31Z")
> [@](#): > > Who dumped a truckload of fizzies into last years swimmeet. Who delivered the medical school cadavers to the alumni dinner. Every spring the trees are filled with underwear, every fall the toliets explode. For Airplane II: " I don’t impressions, I’m a psychiatrist."