Howard Hesseman, the actor and improvisational comedian best known for playing a stuck-in-the-’60s radio disc jockey in the TV sitcom “WKRP in Cincinnati,” died on Saturday in Los Angeles.
He was 81.
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| Howard Hesseman 1940-2022 |
Hesseman received two Emmy nominations for playing Dr. Johnny Fever on “WKRP in Cincinnati,” which ran on CBS for four seasons from 1978 to 1982.
The series portrayed a struggling Top 40 rock radio station, where the staff rages against the age of disco with hard rock and punk songs. Hesseman’s hard-living character, having been pushed from a Los Angeles station where he was a star, serves as a senior member of the counterculture at the Midwestern outlet after smooth-talking his way into a job.
Johnny Fever was a cherished character on TV who embodied the essential traits of 1960s counterculture: the worship of rock bands; not-so-veiled drug references; long, shaggy hair.
He told WXYZ-TV Detroit in 2012 that the show was made up of “a lovely company of actors, bolstered by a lovely bunch of writers, so it made going to work fun every day.”
George Howard Hesseman was born Feb. 27, 1940, in Lebanon, Ore., and raised as an only child by his mother and stepfather.
Hesseman, who was also admired for his improvisational talent, played small parts in “The Andy Griffith Show” and “Sanford and Son.”
George Spiro Dibie, the former national president of the International Cinematographers Guild, recalled in an interview with the Television Academy Foundation that Hesseman’s experience was evident on the set of “Head of the Class,” a sitcom that ran on ABC from 1986 to 1991.
“He was even telling some directors what to do,” he said. Mr. Hesseman played Charlie Moore, a teacher at a Manhattan high school contending with a class of overachieving students.
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