R.I.P.: Radio Personality, Actor Jay Thomas

Jay Thomas, a comic actor and radio personality whose work on the television series “Murphy Brown” won him two Emmy Awards in the early 1990s, died on Thursday at his home in Santa Barbara, Calif.

He was 69-years-of-ag and he cause was cancer, his agent, according to The NYTimes.

Thomas was a morning radio personality in New York in the mid-1970s on Top40 WXLO 99X (now WEPN 98.7 FM), and in Los Angeles beginning in 1989 on KPWR "Power 106".  He also had stintds at WAPE in Jacksonville, WBSR in Pensacola.

In 1979 when he was cast in a recurring role on “Mork & Mindy,” the ABC sitcom about a space alien played by Robin Williams. Mr. Thomas played Remo DaVinci, co-owner of a deli, and appeared in dozens of episodes during the run of the show, which ended in 1982.

After that, the work came fairly regularly, often in the form of smaller TV roles but also the occasional movie appearance, most notably in “Mr. Holland’s Opus” in 1995.

Between “Mork & Mindy” and “Murphy Brown” his most prominent role was a recurring spot on “Cheers” in the 1980s as Eddie LeBec, an ice hockey player who was married to Carla Tortelli (Rhea Perlman), a waitress at the Boston bar of the show’s title.

Thomas was one of the main characters in “Love & War,” a CBS sitcom that ran for three seasons beginning in 1992. His other television credits included the ABC ensemble series “Married People” in the early 1990s and the recent Showtime series “Ray Donovan.”

His quick tongue also served him well on the talk-show circuit. Thomas made his annual Christmastime appearance with David Letterman for the first time in December 1998. Letterman and one of his other guests that evening, then-New York Jets quarterback Vinny Testaverde, took turns tossing footballs at the Christmas tree across the stage, atop which sat a large meatball. As the two tried to knock off the meatball and failed repeatedly, Thomas came out, decided to join in the festivities, and knocked the meatball off of the tree. Thomas had played quarterback on his college football team.

When Letterman talked with Thomas later on, Thomas told a story about when he was a young disc jockey at Top40 WAYS 610 AM  (now WFNZ) in Charlotte, North Carolina. Thomas had been making a promotional appearance at a local car dealership which had also booked Clayton Moore to make an appearance, dressed in his Lone Ranger costume.



Thomas was born Jon Thomas Terrell in Kermit, Tex., on July 12, 1948, and raised in New Orleans. During college — he attended several universities — he started dabbling in sportscasting and also did stand-up comedy.

On the radio, he honed skills with stunts like inviting callers to do imitations to win some nominal prize. Most of them were terrible and he would let them go on just long enough so he could say so with some fanfare.

“When New York called I was making six figures in Charlotte and was part owner of the station,” Peter Kanze’s reelradio reported Thomas writing on his website. “I was married and the owners all but told me that one day the stations would be mine. But I needed to know what it was like at the Big Show. So, for less money, I went to 99X in NYC. I couldn’t believe there was so little competition. Imus was in the market, but he was either drunk or drugged out and ended up in Cleveland. So I just went nuts.”

His timing was impeccable. Radio stations in the ‘70s were going through the often-misnamed “shock jock” phase and looking for morning hosts who could, well, go nuts.

Jay Thomas

The Huffington Post reports after Mork and Mindy Thomas returned to New York as morning host at WKTU, where he was bumped when the station changed call letters and hired a guy named Howard Stern for mornings.

One of his producers at WKTU was a young Freddie Colon, who went on to his own long career in New York radio.

“This one hurts deep,” Colon posted Thursday on the New York Radio Message Board. “I was blessed to have been Jay’s producer on his morning show at 92WKTU. The way he would interact on phone calls with listeners was magic.

“Jay was funny, a great actor and mostly a great human being. I will never forget his walk. He waddled. One day I asked him, ‘Why do you waddle when you walk?’” He answered, ‘It’s because of all the money I have in my pockets.’ God bless you, Jay.”

After a decade at KPWR, Thomas started a weekly show in 2005 on one of Stern’s Sirius, now SiriusXM, channels.

He is survived by his wife, Sally Michelson, whom he married in 1987, and their two children, Samuel and Jacob. In recent years he reunited with a son he had fathered in his 20s who was given up for adoption, the country singer J. T. Harding.