Cleaning out the Inbox: Non-Sports Passings

  I am far behind on cleaning out the inbox and have many non-sports passings that I have yet to note.

Goodbye to Gavin McLeod at the age of 90.

Known best for his roles as "Murray Slaughter" on the Mary Tyler Moore Show and as "Captain Merril Stubing" on The Love Boat. McLeod was a fixture on American television throughout the 1970s and mid-1980s.

McLeod was a character actor in television and film before getting his big break in 1970 as the caustic newswriter  Murray Slaughter who delighted in slicing Ted Baxter and Sue Ann Nivens.

McLeod actually auditioned for Ed Asner's role of Lou Grant but he felt that it was a better fit in the role Murray, which he landed.

McLeod never seemed to be a leading man type but was just that with the Love Boat because the stories often centered around the guest stars which made McLeod the glue that held the show together rather than the person the show revolved around.

Goodbye to Charles Grodin at the age of 86.

Grodin's career spanned several decades in films with his best-known leading man role in 1972's The Heartbreak Kid and the role of his career as Jonathan "the Duke" Mardukas in 1988's "Midnight Run" with Robert DeNiro.

Midnight Run is one of those classic films that for its genre' is just about the perfect film and for as great as DeNiro is, it's Grodin in the role of his life that carries the film.

I don't think any actor, even those usually superior to Grodin, could have pulled off the role of the Duke better than Grodin and that's about as high a compliment that can be given.

Goodbye to Ned Beatty at the age of 83.

Beatty is remembered by many for his roles in the 1970s films Network, All the President's Men, Superman-The Movie, and the famous scene in Deliverance where Beatty's character is raped in front of his fellow rafters by a demented mountain man.

Beatty transitioned in the 1980s to more comedic roles in films such as Back to School, The Toy, and my favorite role, as chicken kingpin Clyde Torkel in Stroker Ace, another in the many Burt Reynolds headed films that proved entertaining and strong at the box office if not classically written.

Beatty also was nominated for an Emmy in 1979 for his role as a father of a son killed in Vietnam by American Soldiers in a made for TV film entitled Friendly Fire with Carol Burnett, which went against type for Burnett at a time when Vietnam was still a touchy subject for American television.

Goodbye to Arlene Golonka at the age of 85.

Golonka is perhaps best remembered as "Millie" who was the girlfriend of  "Howard Sprague" during the final season of the Andy Griffith Show and transitioned to the love interest of  Ken Berry's "Sam Jones" during the run of the Griffith spinoff "Mayberry RFD".

To me, Golonka is memorable to her voice work as in Debbie in the 1973 Hanna-Barbera cartoon "Speed Buggy", which is been mentioned by me here on several occasions!

Goodbye to Clarence Williams III at the age of 81.

Williams is best known to generations for two different roles-to an older generation, Williams will always be "Linc" from the ABC series "The Mod Squad" and to a later generation Williams is remembered as Prince's father in the somewhat autobiographical "Purple Rain".

Williams found work as a guesting character actor over the final few decades of his career, but would never reach the heights of Mod Squad, which was a show based under three young undercover detectives used in order to relate better to the "groovy kids" of the time in which Williams was almost 30 years old when the series started playing someone closer to twenty.

Goodbye to Charlie Robinson at the age of 75.

Once again, better known as a character actor in recent years Robinson was a key part of two very funny eighties comedies on NBC- Night Court and Buffalo Bill.

Night Court brought Robinson his biggest acclaim as "Mac" Harry Anderson's wise-cracking court reporter, but Buffalo Bill stands out to this day as one of the top comedies that never made it big.

Robinson's "Newdell" as an intimidating makeup man that was the only person in the studio that the bullying star "Bill Bittinger" would back down from was part of a wonderful ensemble cast that I thought was better than Night Court, which was also very good.