Actor Dennis Weaver, a regular on the television series Gunsmoke and McCloud, has died at age 81. Weaver died of cancer last Friday at his home in Ridgway, Colo. The actor was most memorable for his portrayal of slow-witted Deputy Chester Goode in the long-running western Gunsmoke, and a cowboy detective in New York City in McCloud.
Weaver was born in June 1924 in Joplin, Mo., where he performed in high school productions. He served in the U.S. navy during the Second World War and then enrolled at the University of Oklahoma. A gifted athlete, he placed sixth in the decathlon at the 1948 U.S. Olympic trials.
The budding performer studied at the Actors Studio in New York City and appeared in plays such as A Streetcar Named Desire. He headed to Hollywood during the 1950s, delivering flowers to survive when he was offered the Gunsmoke spot on CBS.
Weaver revealed in his 2001 autobiography that he found the Chester role "inane."
“With all my Actors Studio training, I’ll correct this character by using my own experiences and drawing from myself,” said Weaver, who gave his character a bad leg and a limp out of fear that he would not be noticed when playing scenes with the 6' 9" James Arness unless his character had an unusual trait that would call attention to him..
The role, which he played for nine years, won him an Emmy in the 1958/1959 season. In 1966, Weaver starred in another series, Gentle Ben, about a family that adopts a black bear as a pet. It lasted two seasons. He was later offered the character of Sam McCloud, calling it “the most satisfying role of my career.”
McCloud ran from 1970 to 1977, with Weaver playing the fish-out-of-water role of a New Mexico detective who brings his unique crime-fighting tactics to the streets of New York.
His film credits include Dragnet (1954), Seven Angry Men (1955), Touch of Evil (1958), and Way … Way Out (1966). He has more than 100 film and TV credits, making TV appearances until 2005. Most notably, he appeared as the lead character of David Mann in the 1971 television movie Duel, about a commuter who is terrorized by the driver of a tractor-trailer. The movie was one of the first ever directed by Steven Spielberg. Weaver's other TV series include Kentucky Jones, Emerald Point N.A.S., Stone and Buck James.
Weaver also was a committed environmentalist and combated world hunger. He headed Love is Feeding Everyone, which served meals to 150,000 needy people every week in Los Angeles. He also founded the Institute of Ecolonomics, focusing on solutions to economic and environmental problems. Weaver and his wife Gerry once built a solar-powered home out of recycled tires and cans dubbed “Earthship.”
Also passing away on Friday was Don Knotts, who won TV immortality and five Emmys for playing the bumbling Deputy Barney Fife on 'The Andy Griffith Show' with self-deprecating humor, was remembered by his friend and co-star as a comedic genius who wrote some of the show's best scenes.
''Don was a small man ... but everything else about him was large: his mind, his expressions,'' Griffith told The Associated Press on Saturday. ''Don was special. There's nobody like him.''
Knotts, 81, died Friday of pulmonary and respiratory complications at the University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center, said Sherwin Bash, his friend and manager.
His half-century career included more than 25 films and seven TV series, most notably playing the bug-eyed deputy who carried in his shirt pocket the one bullet he was allowed after shooting himself in the foot. The constant fumbling, a recurring sight gag, was typical of his self-deprecating humor.
The show ran from 1960-68, and was in the top 10 of the Nielsen ratings each season, including a No. 1 ranking its final year. It is one of only three series in TV history to bow out at the top: The others are ''I Love Lucy'' and ''Seinfeld.'' The 249 episodes have appeared frequently in reruns and spawned a large, active network of fan clubs.
Knotts, whose shy, soft-spoken manner was unlike his high-strung characters, once said he was most proud of the Fife character and didn't mind being remembered that way. He also played the would-be swinger landlord Ralph Furley on ''Three's Company,'' which he joined in 1979, and was an original cast member of ''The Steve Allen Show,'' the comedy-variety show that ran from 1956-61.
Knotts' G-rated films were family fun, not box-office blockbusters. In most, he ends up the hero and gets the girl -- a girl who can see through his nervousness to the heart of gold. In the part-animated 1964 film ''The Incredible Mr. Limpet,'' Knotts played a meek clerk who turns into a fish after he is rejected by the Navy and The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966) in which he plays a quirky typesetter for the town paper who aspires to move up from his basement office to be a full-fledged reporter. He also pines for town babe Alma.
Both of these films I remember seeing a decade later in a small single screen cinema here in Hamilton, and being thoroughly entertained. More than I can say for today's 'G' rated fare which rely on 'toilet humour and rarely develop any new comedic talent.
In 1998, he had a key role in the back-to-the-past movie ''Pleasantville,'' playing a folksy television repairman whose supercharged remote control sends a teen boy and his sister into a TV sitcom past.
film facts courtesy, IMDB, CBC Entertainment and the NY Times.
Later,
Kenaz
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