Appreciation: Richard Dawson brought a bit of England to America

The career of Richard Dawson, who died Sunday at age 79, breaks down, broadly speaking, into two not unrelated parts, each of which displayed and depended upon a certain roguish, vaguely foreign charm. American audiences first got to know him as Cpl. Peter Newkirk on the prisoners-of-war sitcom "Hogan's Heroes"; later we grew to love him as the first and still most famous host of "Family Feud" for the entirety of its first run (1976-85) and for the final season of its second (1994-95), after which he retired from show business.

The mid-1960s was a good time to be English in America. (Even if you were only halfway so: the British-born Dawson's father was American.) It was the age of the Beatles and Bond, and to my own impressionable eye, this made Dawson's Newkirk (even more than star Bob Crane's Col. Hogan) the most attractive member of the cast. (I was little enough to take its nonsense seriously.) There was a knowingness to the character that was not quite a naughtiness, a Cockney cocksureness, a streak of larceny appealingly turned to heroic ends.

These qualities Dawson imported, because they may have in some way been native to him, into his post-"Hogan" career, first as a cast member on "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In," already in progress, and then on the deceptively hip '70s version of "Match Game," where the contest itself was less the point than the loose banter of the panelists. Then came "Family Feud" -- perhaps the most American of great American game shows, with its contestants representing unity and diversity -- where he dispensed innumerable kisses and compliments and kept order with a gently ironic edge.

Apart from "Hogan," Dawson's other acting appearances, which included several episodes of the underrated "The New Dick Van Dyke Show" and a dark inversion of his "Family Feud" persona in the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger sci-fi film "The Running Man," were few; a psych-pop single, "Apples and Oranges," from 1967, led nowhere, but it remains an interesting artifact of its time.

He was above all a television personality, which has sometimes been described as "being famous for nothing" but in fact requires a particular set of talents, by no means easy to come by: quickness, confidence and the ability to be amusing, accessible and alive on a TV screen. The sort of programs in which Dawson specialized for most of his career are those in which viewer and viewed are at their least remote, where living room and stage set become a single shared space: You don't watch these shows so much as hang out in them. 

He has sometimes been compared to Groucho Marx, whose "You Bet Your Life" he once was briefly set to revive -- but his bearing, in his later years especially, reminded me more of a friendlier, happier W.C. Fields. Respecting the game while not taking it too seriously, maintaining control without superiority, mocking without derision, intelligence without ostentation -- these are the qualities that defined Richard Dawson and keep him fresh in memory.

--Robert Lloyd
twitter.com/LATimesTVLloyd

Image: Richard Dawson hosts "Family Feud" in 1978. Credit: Associated Press

Kathryn Joosten of 'Desperate Housewives' dies at 72

Actress Kathryn Joosten, best known as the cranky neighbor on "Desperate Housewives," died Saturday of lung cancer at her Westlake Village home, her daughter-in-law, Jeremy Joosten, told The Times. She was 72.

Joosten won two Emmy Awards for her portrayal of Mrs. McCluskey, the cranky but lovable senior who kept a close eye on her Wisteria Lane neighbors on "Desperate Housewives." The hit show ended its run on ABC last month with a series finale in which Joosten's character passed away. Her character's battle with cancer was a story line in the show.

She also appeared on NBC's "The West Wing" as Mrs. Landingham, the president's trusted secretary. Over the years, she had roles in a number of other popular shows, including a recurring one on "Dharma & Greg" and guest spots on shows including "Ally McBeal" and "Scrubs."

Last year, she also appeared in a production of Tracy Letts' "Superior Donuts" at the Geffen Playhouse.

"I am a two-time lung cancer survivor," Joosten wrote in a first-person story about the disease for The Times in 2011. "My first was in 2001 and my second was in 2009, two completely different lung cancers, one on each side. I am the only 'celebrity' to be public about my lung cancer.

"So far, I am a cancer survivor, but cancer will be with me for the rest of my life, be it as a nodule, tumor or cell someplace, or in my fears and anxieties. Therefore I've decided that I am 'living with cancer.' "

Active in animal rights causes, she appeared with other celebrities at a 2008 news conference in Los Angeles to ask the city to abandon a project for a $40-million elephant enclosure at the Los Angeles Zoo.

Joosten is survived by her brother, Henry Jay Rausch; two sons, Jonathan and Timothy; and two grandsons. The family said in a statement that it would hold a private service at her home and there would be a memorial service soon.

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Photo: Lily Tomlin, left, and Kathryn Joosten on "Desperate Housewives" in 2009. Credit: Ron Tom / ABC

Bob Henry, TV producer and director, dies at 92

Bob Henry, a veteran TV producer and director best known for his work on Nat King Cole's and Flip Wilson’s variety shows, died Sunday at his home in Laguna Beach. He was 92.

Henry had also served as board president of Laguna Beach’s Pageant of the Masters and the Festival of the Arts, which announced his death.

From the fall of 1956 through 1957, NBC aired “The Nat King Cole Show,” notable for featuring a black host on a nationally televised entertainment program. Henry was a producer, director and writer for the show.

Henry went on to produce and direct “Flip,” winning an Emmy Award in 1971 when the show was named outstanding musical variety series.

A full obituary will follow at latimes.com/obits.

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Photos: Top, Nat King Cole; at right, Flip Wilson as the character Geraldine cracks up guest star Bing Crosby. Credits: King Cole Partners, top, and NBC. 

Davy Jones: When it came to Monkee business, he showed up smiling

This post has been corrected, as detailed below.

Davy Jones, who died Wednesday of a heart attack at the age of 66, was, from 1965 and on and off for the rest of his life, a member of the Monkees, a pop group invented for a television show: "Davy, the little short English one," as bandmate Micky Dolenz described him in one episode of "The Monkees," which ran from 1966 to 1968 on NBC.

Designed to channel the energy of the Beatles film "A Hard Day's Night" into an American sitcom, it was at once a product of old-school show business and an emerging Hollywood counterculture, created by Bob Rafelson, who would direct "Five Easy Pieces," "The King of Marvin Gardens" and the revisionist Monkees movie, "Head" (co-written by Rafelson and Jack Nicholson), and Bert Schneider, who would produce those movies along with "Easy Rider" and "The Last Picture Show." A human cartoon whose main attraction was the self-aware naturalism of its leads, the show was of two worlds, and, to a remarkable extent, was successful in each.

Although their success was undoubtedly an influence, it is too much to class the Monkees with such subsequent whole-cloth pop creations as the Archies, the Banana Splits, Josie & the Pussycats, the Partridge Family and, some would say, the Spice Girls -- though it is clearly the model on which Nickelodeon's successful, and not bad at all, "Big Time Rush" is based. Pop has always had its industrial wing. The band was itself split between, as it were, the raw and the cooked. Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork were Sunset Strip cowboys who came to the project as musicians looking for a break; Jones and Dolenz were actors. Dolenz had already starred in his own TV series, "Circus Boy," and Jones had been in the business since the age of 11; he'd worked on British television before taking over the role of the Artful Dodger in the musical "Oliver!" on the London stage. He coincidentally appeared with its Broadway cast on "The Ed Sullivan Show" the night the Beatles made their American television debut there, in February 1964.

PHOTOS: Davy Jones | 1945-2012

When "The Monkees" went into pre-production, Jones was already signed to Screen Gems, the TV arm of Columbia Pictures, which produced the series, and recording for its record label, Colpix, a multimedia strategy that was not uncommon then and is standard practice now, in the post-Miley Cyrus world of tween television. Still, in the world the Beatles remade, it had become newly important for musicians to write the songs they sang, and to play the instruments on their records, and to be the people they seemed to say they were.

The question of whether the Monkees were a "real" band -- a false question, the history of pop repeatedly shows -- dogged them from the beginning; indeed, it was an issue between the group and their bosses, and within the group itself. (They came to actual blows at times over their meaning and direction; but such disunity is something they share with every band that ever was.) It has been enough to some to keep them out of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and yet to the many more who watched their show, bought their records and, as late as last year, attended their concerts, it is entirely beside the point.

In Beatle terms, Jones was the Paul, the cute one, the one who sang the pretty melodies and let his music-hall roots show; he could dance, as well as sing. ("I Wanna Be Free," "Daydream Believer," "Valleri," "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You," and the Harry Nilsson-penned "Cuddly Toy" were among the songs on which he took the lead.) His Englishness, at a time when pop consciousness was dominated by the Fab Four -- many young American musicians who would have considered themselves authentic to the core strove to sound as if they were just off the boat from Britain -- gave the Monkees a kind of Limey cred.

That he was short -- at 5-foot-3, he had apprenticed as a jockey -- just made him a more comfortable fit for the daydreams of the little girls who bought Tiger Beat and 16 Magazine and pasted his picture on their walls or in their scrapbooks; he was a pre-teen idol, and the series' designated romantic lead. (If in Marx Brothers terms -- the other great influence on "The Monkees" -- this made him Zeppo, he also got his fair share of comedy to play.)

Still, becoming famous as a version of yourself is a hard legacy to escape. As a performer in subsequent years, Jones was often asked to play Jones: Once a Monkee, always a Monkee. Did this bother him? I don't know. But when there was Monkee business to do, he always showed up smiling.

[For the record, 6:50 p.m. Feb. 29: An earlier version of this post incorrectly credited Davy Jones with creating the role of the Artful Dodger on the London stage. Martin Horsey was first to play the part, which Jones later took over.]

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-- Robert Lloyd

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Photo: Davy Jones in 1997. Photo credit: Ann Johansson / For The Times

Davy Jones: Four zany moments, from 'Brady Bunch' to 'SpongeBob'

This post has been corrected. Please see note at bottom for details.

Davy Jones, star of the 1960s TV series "The Monkees," died Wednesday at the age of 66.

The Martin County medical examiner’s office in Florida said it had been notified of his death but would provide no further details; TMZ is reporting that Jones dies of a heart attack and that he passed away at Martin Memorial Hospital in Florida.

A child actor from Manchester, England, Jones snagged a Tony nomination in 1963 as the Artful Dodger in the original production of "Oliver!" Then he etched his autograph in the hearts of American women as one of the madcap Monkees.

PHOTOS: Davy Jones

In 1965 he was cast in the TV musical-comedy series about a zany band inspired by the Beatles. Jones, with his mop top and British accent, was an instant heartthrob. He sang some of the band's hits, including "Daydream Believer," and appeared in the series until it ended in 1968, as well as in "Head," the awesomely psychedelic 1968 Monkees movie (which, believe it or not, was co-produced by Jack Nicholson and included cameos by Frank Zappa and Dennis Hopper).

Here's a snippet of him in the movie:

Jones was so beloved by young women that "The Brady Bunch" created a whole episode around him, with Marcia Brady (president of the Davy Jones Fan Club) attempting to get Jones to appear at her prom.

 

 

In later years he performed in Monkees reunions and released a solo album. His legend carried over to a younger generation when he appeared in the "Davy Jones Locker" episode of "SpongeBob SquarePants."

[For the record, 12:18 p.m., March 29: An earlier version this post mistakenly suggested that Jones sang "I'm A Believer" instead of "Daydream Believer."]

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Photo: Monkees star Davy Jones in 1997. Credit: Ann Johansson

Robert Hegyes, Juan Epstein of 'Welcome Back, Kotter,' dies at 60

This post has been corrected. See note at the bottom for details.

Robert Hegyes, an actor whose character, Juan Epstein, was one of the Sweathogs on the 1970s TV sitcom "Welcome Back, Kotter," died Thursday of an apparent heart attack in New Jersey. He was 60.

Hegyes, of Hungarian and Italian descent, played Juan Luis Pedro Phillipo de Huevos Epstein on "Welcome Back, Kotter," which also starred John Travolta, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs and Ron Palillo as high school students mentored by their teacher, played by Gabe Kaplan. It aired on ABC from 1975 to 1979.

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Hegyes suffered a heart attack at his home in Metuchen, N.J., and was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital, the Star-Ledger newspaper reported.

Hegyes also had a recurring role on "Cagney & Lacey" in the late 1980s.

A full obituary will follow at latimes.com/obits.

[For the Record, 4 p.m. Jan. 26: An earlier version of this post incorrectly said that Robert Hegyes died Tuesday. He died Thursday.]

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Photo: The cast of "Welcome Back, Kotter," clockwise from left: John Travolta, Ron Palillo, Robert Hegyes, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs and Gabe Kaplan. Credit: Warner Bros. Entertainment

 

Harry Morgan, 1915-2011: An appreciation

Harry Morgan, who died Wednesday at age 96, was one of the first people I can remember seeing on television, in an early-'60s situation comedy called "Pete and Gladys," about which I can remember nothing else except that it also starred an actress named Cara Williams, about whom I can remember nothing else, and that it was a spin-off of a show called "December Bride," of which I remember nothing. I would know more of Morgan in years to come, of course, as would everybody who watched television, which is to say, everybody.

In Jack Webb's late-'60s revival of "Dragnet," he played easygoing Officer Bill Gannon, the partner to Webb's rock-hard Sgt. Joe Friday. In "MASH," he was the gruff yet not-always-by-the-book Col. Sherman T. Potter, a role for which he won a best supporting actor Emmy in 1980, and for which he was nominated every year he played it, from 1976 to 1983. In the latter series, he was the still point amid the pandemonium, a flinty corrective both to its silliness and its sentimentality. In the former, he was the subtly comical sidekick to Webb's very straight straight man, a little licking flame of human warmth to animate the overarching deadpan.

Among the most familiar screen faces of the 20th century, Morgan was an American type: the regular guy, younger and older, in his lighter and his darker aspects. To say that he played in a lot of Westerns, crime dramas and war movies before and during his television years, is to say only that he was busy -- extremely busy -- in a time when those were the prisms through which the nation saw itself. His more prestigious pictures included "The Ox-Bow Incident" (1943), "The Big Clock" (1948), "High Noon" (1952), "Inherit the Wind" (1960), and John Wayne's elegiac final film, "The Shootist."

Morgan, who was born Harry Bratsberg and acted for a while under the name Henry Morgan, was small, but tough -- he played varsity football in high school -- and made a sort of Norwegian American counterpart to more darkly ethnic actors like Elia Kazan and John Garfield, who were his classmates and colleagues in the Stanislavski-inspired Group Theater. (He was funnier, too, than many actors schooled in "the method.") He made his Broadway debut with the Group in 1937, in its production of Clifford Odets' boxing drama “Golden Boy,” alongside Garfield, Kazan, Frances Farmer, Karl Malden and Lee J. Cobb.

The supporting actor in the movies, or the TV freelancer, becomes known for a range of roles without being identified with any one of them; in a television series, the part and the actor entwine in such a way that each writes the epitaph for the other. In both "Dragnet" and "MASH," Morgan stepped into a space vacated by other actors -- Joe Friday had worked with different partners through the years, on radio and the big and the small screen. Morgan's Col. Potter was the capable contrasting replacement for McLean Stevenson's whimsical Col. Henry Blake. But Morgan is the one I remember when I think of these series, not just because he came last -- indeed, "Dragnet" has reared its head more than once since his tenure there -- but because of the quiet power and deceptive weight with which he occupied his parts, and the focus that brought small moments alive. He could command your attention while still seeming quite ordinary; that was his particular magic.

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-- Robert Lloyd

twitter.com/LATimesTVLloyd

Photo: Harry Morgan in 1949, in the play "Red Light." Credit: Associated Press

Appreciation: Andy Rooney, 1919-2011

The American humorist Andy Rooney, who last month retired from his longtime seat on the CBS news magazine "60 Minutes," which he would cap each week with an observation about this thing or that -- or more often this thing and that, and then another thing -- died Friday night at the age of 92.

Rooney, whose job was to be publicly himself for a few minutes every Sunday evening, was inescapably different things to different people, and even from essay to essay: On the one hand, a teller of truths, old enough to remember a world that made a little more sense, or wise enough to imagine the world in which we finally might get it right; on the other, a mean old man yelling at some damn kids to get off his lawn. (Cameron Crowe's recent documentary "Pearl Jam Twenty," about the Seattle rock band, replays at length Rooney's less than gracious remarks on the 1994 suicide of Kurt Cobain, and the generation that idolized him.)

PHOTOS: Andy Rooney| 1919 - 2011

Indeed, Rooney was nearly (or almost nearly) a senior citizen when he began his long last act on "60 Minutes" -- 33 years encompassing 1,079 editions of his secular sermonette, "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney." He had already lived a professional lifetime by then, beginning as a correspondent for Stars and Stripes during World War II and entering into television in its infancy, where he would write for both entertainer Arthur Godfrey and newsman Harry Reasoner. These comic and journalistic voices he would later combine in his own work, beginning in the 1960s with the video essays he wrote for Reasoner and then, in the '70s, the self-hosted prime-time specials, including "Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington" and "Mr. Rooney Goes to Work," that first established him as an on-air personality.

There are a lot of people talking on television today, in the precincts where Rooney worked, and many of them are talking without much reflection, wit or attention to the words they use. They deal only in volume: They speak loud and they speak long. As a TV personality, Rooney was always foremost a writer -- there, in his cluttered office-as-set was his typewriter for the world to see -- and even with the multiple digressions that were a hallmark of his style, he did not belabor a point. And he made his points quietly. His language was deceptively elegant, colloquial but precise.

Like his fellow video essayist, the late Charles Kuralt -- another longtime employee of CBS, for what that's worth -- Rooney paid exacting attention to the small and overlooked things of the world: The first of the video specials he wrote for Reasoner was titled "An Essay on Doors." Although he was reflexively called a curmudgeon -- not least because, with his beetling white brows, he looked the way we imagine a curmudgeon would -- he also spoke often of things he loved: elastic bands, dogs, New York weather. Even his complaints more often than not betrayed a general delight with the strangeness of the world, not a desire to be shut of it.

He was, of course, a performer; the person you saw leaning confidentially toward you on television was a Rooney edited and organized -- by Rooney -- for comic effect. (When he was simply serious, by contrast, as when commenting on the Oklahoma City bombing, the Challenger disaster or the death of Osama bin Laden, he was simply himself.) But it was a performance informed by real ideas wrought from years' experience.

That experience now includes the last experience of all: "I hate it. I mean, I'm gonna die," Rooney told Morley Safer, when asked how he liked old age in an interview that accompanied his final "60 Minutes" broadcast, "and that doesn't appeal to me at all." He would have gotten a good piece out of his own passing; it's a shame we won't get to see it.

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-- Robert Lloyd

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Photo: Andy Rooney in 1979. Credit: Los Angeles Times