One of the few episodes of “House” that I ever watched; when I saw him, I said, “holy crap, that’s Johnny Fever!”
He had a bit part as Duke Fame, who was booked to play that night at the Enormodome.
Another surprising ( in hindsight ) role was when I fairly recently watched a re-run of ‘Dragnet’ in which he was on the panel of a live TV Q&A show which was to ( ostensibly ) skewer the LAPD. He and another, clearly on the left, shot barbs at the ubiquitously stiff ‘Friday’ and slightly less stiff ‘Gannon’.
There are some nice subtle moments in that clip. His feeling that he’s too old to work at a rock station anymore (evident by the fear in his voice, as well as the dialogue), his moment of hesitation before he assumes the Johnny Fever persona. Little moments that a lesser actor might have let pass by.
I remember him from One Day at a Time. He came in during the final season as Bonnie Franklin’s new love interest. He also showed up in a couple of episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, credited under his early stage name “Don Sturdy.” I also remember him as a lawyer on Soap (appearing alongside Gordon Jump, a few years before WKRP). I think the last time I saw him was an episode of, of all things, Mike and Molly.
He had a long career, which suggests that people found him reliable and good to work with. Johnny Fever was only a small part of what he could do.
It’s been awhile since I’ve thought about Howard Hesseman, but I’ll miss him.
Something I was totally unaware until coming across this article in wake of his passing:
Howard Hesseman played one of the earliest openly gay characters on an American sitcom, and possibly the first established character who then came out of the closet. To be fair, he was only a recurring character and only appeared in a handful of episodes. But the above article argues that it really was a ground-breaking role.
Not mentioned, but for a character actor still trying to break into leading roles, even in the 1970s, I think it took a bit of genuine moral courage to take a role as an openly gay man.
I loved Howard Hessman as Dr. Johnny Fever and enjoyed him as the teacher in Head of the Class. One other key role that he played was a recurring part as one of Dr. Hartley’s patients. It’s a pretty strong episode and Matt Baume explains why in his video here.
Well, I sure did. And wore that “shirt over t-shirt” look almost every day… when I walked into my classroom with a quip or a random fact just like he did in Head Of The Class.
I’m not saying I’m so easily influenced as to become a teacher because…oh, okay, I’ll admit it! And I wanted to hitchhike on the back of a truck to work too!
Since everybody has relayed the usual WKRP anecdotes (“Booger!” and the “Turkeys”) I’m going to lay this one out:
A punk group called The Scum of The Earth (and they pretty much are, despite the fact that they are snappy dressers) is booked for a WKRP promotional gig. At the eleventh hour, the Scum decide they’re not going through with the gig. Andy and Venus are prepared to duke it out with the Scum to get them onstage. Fever, after a shot him lying on the couch, stiffly gets up, faces the Scum and menacingly mutters, “Rock and roll…” Shows that the laid-back Fever can be a badass.
RIP Mr. H. So glad to have known your work.
I don’t think it was “menacing” so much as it was “resigned.” Just the way he folds his sunglasses shows he knows the drill.
You may be right.
There’s also Johnny’s “been-there-done-that” attitude toward Scum of the Earth in the first place. As he’s babysitting them in their dressing room before the concert, he clearly finds their antics to be childish and absurd, and tells them he thinks they’re boring.
They respond by doing some destructive thing, knocking something over, or deliberately spilling water, or something like that–I don’t remember exactly what, but it was something equally childish and attention-seeking.
Johnny deadpans, “I take it back. You’re fascinating.”
Here’s a cool pic from 2014.
Michael Tran/FilmMagic, via Getty Images
When I lived in L.A., I worked for a small ecommerce site that had its offices just off the elevator lobby of a cool deco building in Midwilshire. Just down a back hallway was a casting office. So I was treated constantly to actors getting off the elevator, sticking their head into my office and looking around, and I’d direct them to where they were supposed to go. I’d often chat with them after their appointment as they were waiting for the elevator, and there were a few times I found myself riding up the elevator after lunch with the likes of Tim Thomerson, Michael Ironside or Bill Paxton (RIP).
(somehow I suspect, at the rate of celebrity deaths we’re witnessing these days, I could wind up recycling that opening paragraph many times in Cafe Society threads, but anyhow…)
Hesseman was one of those encounters. I got to tell him how much I loved WKRP growing up, and how the episode about the Who concert tragedy had just been rerun and it still held up. He was charming and disarming, as friendly a guy as you could hope to meet. Head of the Class was another huge show for me back in the day; it premiered in my freshman year of high school and it wrapped as I was graduating (HS in Ontario at the time was typically five years long), so it nicely aligned with my own secondary school experience.
alongside Gordon Jump, a few years before WKRP
The Piece of Cholif?
My niece’s name is Chloe; when she was a little girl, one of the family’s nicknames for her was Chill-Low (a mispronunciation of her name), which quickly mutated into calling her the Piece of Chileef, because her mother and grandparents were all fans of Soap.
Dog of Scum of the Earth was played by Michael Des Barres, who became one of the new dj’s in the New WKRP in Cincinnati.
Howard Hesseman not only appeared in the later series, he directed two episodes of it, as well as one in the original.
I believe he was the TV writer and patient of Bob Newhart who came with the kids’ show called The Nazi Hour.
Yeah, a hilarious show with a perfect cast.
This sad news has caused me to get out my WKRP box set and watch the show again.
“I live like a college student. I own two pairs of socks and I eat over the sink. A year ago, I was living in a van, in Florida. It wasn’t my van. I didn’t care!”
RIP Johnny.
Nitpick, he played Terry Ladd, Duke Fame’s agent.
I pointed it out because he and McKean had crossed paths more tha once, hence the tweet.
MeTV is showing some Johnny Fever episodes this Sunday.