Actor Howard Hesseman has died.
His wife, actress and acting teacher Caroline Ducrocq, told The Hollywood Reporter that the veteran actor died in Los Angeles on January 29 due to complications from colon surgery.
Hesseman’s career spanned six decades, beginning with small parts on shows like “The Andy Griffith Show” and “Dragnet.” But he is primarily known and loved as DJ “Dr. Johnny Fever” on the hit 1980s sitcom, “WKRP in Cincinnati.”
On the show, Hesseman portrayed a wise-cracking, perpetually annoyed, aging hipster who was stuck at a failing Top 40 radio station. He garnered two Emmy nominations for his work. The character was a perfect summation of the jittery, sarcastic, hungover hippie vibe he often utilized through hundreds of appearances in TV and film.
While WKRP only lasted four whole seasons, it has become a beloved cult TV favorite.
As The Hollywood Reporter explained, WKRP creator Hugh Wilson – who was a former sales executive at a Top 40 radio station himself – based the Johnny Fever character on “a guy I knew in Atlanta called Skinny Bobby Harper... he was the morning guy, so Skinny had to get up at 4 in the morning to get in there. But he also loved being in the bars at night. He was like Fever… In the pilot, I said [to Hesseman], ‘You’ve got to play it like you’re sleepwalking, because you should be asleep by 8, but 8 is just when you’re going out.’”
Hesseman continued his sitcom success in the high school-set comedy, “Head of the Class,” which ran on ABC from 1986-1991. The actor brought his wisened ex-hippie vibe down a few notches as the caring, involved history teacher, Charlie Moore. The show was recently brought back for streaming on HBOMax.
Hesseman revived Johnny Fever in the reboot, “The New WKRP in Cincinnati” from 1991-1993, and since then appeared in numerous films and TV shows, most notably on “One Day at a Time” as Ann Romano’s (Bonnie Franklin) boyfriend, Sam Royer.
Born on February 27, 1940, in Lebanon, Oregon, to an auto parts salesman and a musician, Hesseman honed his acting chops in the 1960s with the San Francisco improv group The Committee, and was actually a radio disc jockey for a spell before becoming one of the busiest character actors in Hollywood.
As The Hollywood Reporter notes, Hesseman’s demeanor came from some amount of real life experience. He spent 90 days in the San Francisco County Jail in 1963 for selling an ounce of marijuana (a conviction that was thrown out); and in a 1983 profile in People, he did admit to conducting “pharmaceutical experiments in recreational chemistry.”
The 1970 into the ‘80s were Hesseman’s proving ground, getting consistently great parts in hits like “Billy Jack,” “Shampoo,” “The Sunshine Boys,” “The Jerk,” “Doctor Detroit,” and “This is Spinal Tap,” and on sitcoms like ”Laverne & Shirley,” “Rhoda,” “Sanford & Son,” and “Soap.” He also hosted “Saturday Night Live” three times over the years. His later career offered more serious roles in shows like “CSI,” “Chicago Med,” and “Boston Legal.”
He was perhaps at his best though when he could bring his droll, odd mix of cynical optimism to the edgiest cult vehicles of his career, like the surrealist soap opera parody “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” and “Rubin & Ed,” a truly out-there buddy road picture that paired him with Crispin Glover.
He returned to the sitcom world in 2017 with the ABC show “Fresh Off the Boat.” His final role was in the 2018 film “Dirty Politics.”
According to TMZ, his wife was with him by his side, holding his hand when he passed, and was surrounded by other family members.
Hessemman is survived by his wife and their godchildren Grace, Hamish, and Chet.
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