He’s another one I didn’t know was still alive. Still, 88 isn’t that terribly old nowadays. Of course, he played ‘Vic Fontaine’ on ST:DS9, so I should have realised.
I was going to post that, on paper, that character shouldn’t have worked — but Darren was so good in the role that everything clicked.
And then I checked wikipedia, which says that the character “was praised by critics, who specifically said that the premise should not have worked but did, due to both the writing and Darren’s performances.”
Do you know how difficult it was for a seven-year-old to copy that slow-motion-roll-into-the-scene technique they used when we were playing TT in the club basement? Watch out furniture!
There was a generic actor for many years James Karen. One of those faces you recognize, but don’t always have the name (like Len Cariou or Sam Wannamaker). He was on David Letterman’s old NBC program one night, and when David Letterman mentioned him, Paul intoned, “Goodbye, cruel world, I’m off to join the circus.”
Paul had some fun intro music that had puns on the guests’ names. Two that I remember are when C.Z. Guest was a, well, a ‘guest,’ her intro was “Legs” by Z.Z. Topp.
And after David Letterman read the Top 10 list of “Things the Contras are most thankfule for,” the music was “I Ran” buy A Flock of Seagulls.
Nothing more to add about Darren, though, but I did enjoy “Quantum Leap” “The Time Tunnel” and I thought the hourglass logo for “Project Tic Toc” was pretty cool, and the intro to the program was a cartoon of a man trapped in the sands of time.