George Wendt, Cheers Star, Dies at 76

Sad news to report but long time actor best known for playing Norm Peterson on the long-running sitcom Cheers, George Wendt has passed away. He was 76. The legendary actor died on Tuesday, May 20. His publicist Melissa Nathan confirmed, “Beloved actor and comedian, George Wendt, best known for starring in the NBC hit comedy Cheers, has passed away.” “George’s family confirmed the news of his death early Tuesday morning, announcing he died peacefully in his sleep while at home,” the statement continued. “George was a doting family man, a well-loved friend and confidant to all of those lucky enough to have known him. He will be missed forever.”

“The family has requested privacy during this time.” George was born in Chicago in 1948. He was one of nine children; his sister Kathryn is the mother of actor and comedian Jason Sudeikis. He flunked out of Notre Dame and then worked at his father’s real estate office in Chicago before graduating from Rockhurst College. In 1974, he started training in comedy at Chicago’s The Second City theater. There he met Bernadette Birkett, whom he married in 1978. He and his wife shared three children: Hilary, Joe, and Daniel. Although he ultimately succeeded as a comedian, he was fired by the theater once and quit once. “I sucked, basically,” he told The AV Club in 2009. “‘Sucked out loud,’ I think was the quote.” He added, “For somebody who made his living at it for six years, I’m probably the worst improviser of all time.”

Wendt’s earliest roles included small parts on series including Hart to Hart, Soap, Taxi and M*A*S*H. He also appeared in a handful of films, including My Bodyguard, Jekyll and Hyde... Together Again and Airplane II: The Sequel. In 1982, he was cast on the sitcom Making the Grade, which was canceled after six episodes. This allowed Wendt to join the cast of Cheers, which premiered the same year. His character, Norm Peterson, was a frequent customer at the bar, and one of only three characters to appear in every episode. “My friend Pat Finn always reminds me what the audition was for Cheers: I needed to look like a guy who wanted to have another beer,” Wendt told Chicago Magazine in 2021. “Norm is just me with better writing,” he explained.

“There were hundreds, if not thousands, of actors who could have delivered on the absolute gems that I was handed on a silver platter every Wednesday morning.” After a first season with shaky ratings, the show became a massive success. "I get a lot of free beers. It's one of the great perks of employment history,” Wendt told The Washington Post in 1985. "Whenever I go out, people are always sending over a beer, or a round, for me and my friends.” Wendt was a six-time Emmy nominee for his role on the series. He became very close to castmates Ted Danson, Shelley Long, Rhea Perlman, John Ratzenberger, Kelsey Grammer and Woody Harrelson.

When the series ended in 1993, Wendt’s wife told PEOPLE of the Cheers cast, “They get along like siblings. To somebody peeking in from the outside, they look like they’re having the greatest time in the world.” When Wendt hosted Saturday Night Live in 1991, he joined Bill Swerski's Super Fans, a sketch about a group of Bears fans discussing their favorite teams, including, iconically, “Da Bears.” Wendt’s episode was the second appearance of the group of fans, and Wendt told the Chicago Tribune in 2019, from there “It took on a life of its own.” The sketch recurred on the series multiple times, and Wendt and Robert Smigel reprised their roles at actual Bears and Chicago Bulls games for decades. Even Michael Jordan appeared in the sketch when the NBA legend hosted in 1991.

In 1995, Wendt starred on The George Wendt Show, but it was canceled after one season. “I don’t want to be Norm forever,” he told The Los Angeles Times before the series premiered — before admitting his new character was “very Norm-like.” Wendt played the killer in one of the final episodes of Columbo in 1995. Other TV appearances included Seinfeld, The Simpsons, the TV film Bye Bye Birdie, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Hot in Cleveland, Portlandia and Fresh Off the Boat. He also appeared in dozens of films, including Fletch, Forever Young, Spice World, Sandy Wexler and Grand-Daddy Day Care. Wendt acted in many regional theater productions and on Broadway a handful of times, including playing Edna Turnblad in Hairspray in 2007 and playing Santa in the musical Elf in 2010.

He played Santa in a number of other projects, including in 2006’s Santa Baby, 2008’s A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!, 2009’s Santa Buddies and 2012’s Merry In-Laws. “It’s really hard to eat much with all that hair on,” Wendt joked to The New York Times in 2022 about the challenges of playing Kris Kringle. “That beard — that’s awful. It just goes right in your mouth, no matter how careful you are.”

In 2023, he competed on The Masked Singer. Wendt reunited with his Cheers costars Danson, Grammar, Perlman and Ratzenberger at the 2023 Emmys to present the award for outstanding directing for a comedy series. Wendt’s acting philosophy was simple. He told the Chicago Tribune in 2002, “I just look for fun things to do.” His biggest advice for aspiring actors was “Have fun,” he told Solzy at the Movies in 2019. “Look, it’s brutal out there. If you’re not having fun, it’s not worth it.”

George Wendt is survived by his wife and children...

Kirstie Alley, Actress Dies at 71

Well this is sad news she was 71 and after decades of weight issues she's now passed on. Kirstie Alley, the Emmy-winning comic actress known for her turns on Cheers, Veronica’s Closet and the three Look Who’s Talking films, has died. Again she was 71.

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— Kirstie Alley (@kirstiealley) December 6, 2022

Alley died after a battle with cancer “only recently discovered,” her children True and Lillie Parker announced Monday, describing their mom as “incredible, fierce and loving.” No other details were immediately available.  

“She was surrounded by her closest family and fought with great strength, leaving us with a certainty of her never-ending joy of living and whatever adventures lie ahead,” they said in a statement. “As iconic as she was on screen, she was an even more amazing mother and grandmother.”

They added that they were “grateful for the incredible team of doctors and nurses at Moffitt Cancer Center” in Tampa, Florida.

The bawdy Alley collected eight Emmy nominations during her career, the first five for playing bar manager Rebecca Howe on NBC’s Cheers after effectively taking over in 1987 for Shelley Long, who had quit the Boston-based series. She won in 1991 and worked on the show through its 1993 conclusion.

She then starred on NBC’s Veronica’s Closet as Veronica “Ronnie” Chase, the head of a lingerie company in New York City. Created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, the show aired for three seasons, from September 1997 to December 2000.

She played the accountant Mollie Jensen, a single mother who has a baby (whose thoughts were voiced by Bruce Willis), opposite John Travolta in the hit comedy Look Who’s Talking (1989), directed by Amy Heckerling, then returned for sequels in 1990 and 1993.

The green-eyed, husky-voiced Alley landed a second Emmy in 1994 for her turn as a woman who insists on caring for her autistic son alone in the telefilm David’s Mother, and she was nominated again in 1997 for her performance in the Mario Puzo miniseries The Last Don.

In 2005, she played a fictionalized version of herself on Showtime’s Fat Actress (she was a spokesperson for Jenny Craig and had weight issues during her life.)

More recently, she starred on TV Land’s Kirstie in 2013-14 as a Broadway diva and was on the 2016 Fox show Scream Queens.

“‘Ignorance is bliss’ applies to me,” she said in 2013. “I want to try things that I haven’t done. Anything that sounds exciting, I’m in.”

Alley was born on Jan. 12, 1951, in Wichita, Kansas. Her father, Robert, owned a lumber company, and her mother, Lillian, was a homemaker. (In 1981, a car accident involving a drunk driver killed her mom and left her dad seriously injured.)

As a kid, she “was either on the swings brooding, ‘Why do people blink? Where is God? Why am I here?’ — I was very esoteric, I guess — or funny-crazy-wild,” she said. “There wasn’t a lot of in-between. I’m still that way, I guess. Hot or cold. I’m always contemplating the universe.”

She graduated from Wichita Southeast High School in 1969, married her high school sweetheart, Bob Alley, in 1970 and spent two years at Kansas State University before coming to Los Angeles, where she appeared as a contestant on Match Game in 1979, winning about $6,000.

She played a Vulcan Starfleet officer in her first film, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn (1982), was a regular on the ABC series Masquerade in 1983-84 and portrayed a Playboy Club-era Gloria Steinem in the 1985 telefilm A Bunny’s Tale.

She then worked on the acclaimed miniseries North and South, Books 1 and 2 in 1985 and ’86 and starred opposite Mark Harmon in Summer School (1987).

When Long departed, the Cheers producers decided to return to the show’s original concept, where Sam Malone (Ted Danson) works for a woman, director and series co-creator James Burrows recalled in a 2003 interview.

“We told Jeff Greenberg our casting director we wanted a beautiful, tough-looking woman. And swear to God, the first words out of his mouth was, ‘Kirstie Alley,'” he said.

Her Rebecca starts out managing the bar for the corporation that bought Cheers from Sam, and she has lots of failed relationships with rich guys before she marries a plumber.

In 2010, she was the subject of the A&E reality series Kirstie Alley’s Big Life. The show chronicled her battle with weight and the launch of her weight-loss company.

Alley’s film résumé also included Shoot to Kill (1988), Madhouse (1990), Sibling Rivalry (1990), John Carpenter’s Village of the Damned (1995), Woody Allen’s Deconstructing Harry (1997), For Richer or Poorer (1997) and Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999).

She competed twice on Dancing With the Stars and this year was on The Masked Singer as Baby Mammoth.

She wrote a memoir, The Art of Men (I Prefer Mine al Dente), published in 2012. She revealed that she fell in love with Patrick Swayze on North and South and with Travolta on the first Look Who’s Talking film even though she was married to her second husband, actor Parker Stevenson.

They were married from 1983 until their 1997 divorce and adopted True and Lillie. Survivors also include her grandson, Waylon.

In that 2013 interview, Alley said that “I would really like to win an Academy Award just to astonish myself. I don’t think I’ve ever played the role where I would say, ‘Oh, my God, you’re an amazing actress!’ That would prove that this wasn’t all just a joke.”