Richard Kiel Was Not Lurch and Ted Cassidy Was Not Jaws

There were giants in the earth in those days…

Genesis 6:4

Ted Cassidy, whose role as the cadaverous butler Lurch on the 1960s sitcom “The Addams Family” - much to the chagrin of the 6’ 9” actor - made him a TV icon, detested being mistaken for Richard Kiel, the 7’ 1 ½” actor best known as the steel-toothed assassin “Jaws” in two of the late 1970s James Bond movies starring Roger Moore.

 

Lurch (Ted Cassidy) and Gomez (John Astin) tango on "The Addams Family."

In a 1978 interview, Ted Cassidy grumbled, “There was a point when I was ready to get out of the business because of that, because (Kiel) is not an actor. He does his best, but if that’s acting, I’m a bricklayer.” As fate would have it, Cassidy got out of the business soon enough when he died in January of 1979, following complications from open-heart surgery. He was only 46.

Ted Cassidy’s show business career started in radio. Before that, he played basketball for the Stetson Hatters at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida (averaging 17 points and 10 rebounds) and worked as a lifeguard at Ormond Beach and Daytona Beach. He graduated with a degree in speech and drama, got married in 1956, and moved to Dallas Texas, where he was hired as the midday disc jockey on WFAA-AM. Cassidy was on the air when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas and was the first to interview eyewitnesses. He also appeared on the station’s TV affiliate’s “Dialing for Dollars” commercial breaks in afternoon matinees as an alien called “Creech.” Contacts at the radio station led to an audition for “The Addams Family.”

 

Can you spot Ted Cassidy in this picture of Florida lifeguards?

Before being cast as the eccentric patriarch Gomez Addams, John Astin was originally approached to portray the (then-unnamed) family butler.  Lurch was supposed to be mute, but after Ted Cassidy ad-libbed the catchphrase “You rang?” it stuck, and he was given more dialogue. Cassidy also played the disembodied helping hand, Thing. Thing was usually depicted as a right hand, although Cassidy sometimes used his left hand just to see if anyone noticed.

Just before Halloween in 1965, a song and accompanying dance called “The Lurch” was introduced on the musical variety series “Shindig!” featuring Cassidy himself in character. As Lurch, Cassidy received fan mail from teen girls who wrote he was cuter than The Beatles.

Sherry Jackson, Ted Cassidy in the 1966 "Star Trek" episode "What Are
Little Girls Made Of?"

Cassidy was worried about being typecast as Lurch-like characters if “The Addams Family” went on too long. The series ran for two seasons, yet Cassidy’s career still floundered. During the abovementioned 1978 interview, he carped, “They always make fellows like me the big dumb galoot, the oaf who doesn’t know anything, who trips over himself.” (In Brazil, his character on “The Addams Family” was called “Tropeco,” which translates as “I stumble over.”) Mentioning Richard Kiel’s performance in “The Spy Who Loved Me,” Cassidy griped, “That’s the big, dumb brute character again and I will not be known as that dumb brute.”

“We are apparently idiots, all big men,” Cassidy carped. “You end up holding people while the boss hits them in the face…That kind of thing doesn’t appeal to me at all. I used to think that’s how it was, and I would do it, but I won’t do it anymore. I turn down everything that comes along like that.”

Admittedly, Cassidy seemed to be cast against type as Harvey Logan, the outlaw who challenges Paul Newman’s Butch Cassidy to a knife duel for leadership of the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang in the 1969 box-office hit “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

Ted Cassidy loses the knife duel in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969).

That same year, Ted Cassidy portrayed a hatchet-wielding Apache warrior appropriately named Hachita in “Mackenna’s Gold,” a violent, all-star Hollywood rehash of spaghetti western leftovers starring Gregory Peck, Omar Sharif, and Telly Savalas.

Ted Cassidy (right) as Hachita in "Mackenna's Gold" (1969)

Ted Cassidy made a cameo appearance as Lurch on a 1966 episode of “Batman,” the campy series which featured his “Mackenna’s Gold” costar Julie Newmar – who played Gregory Peck’s fiery and frequently nude Apache lover Hesh-Ke – as TV’s first Catwoman. Coincidentally, the cast of “Mackenna’s Gold” also featured Burgess Meredith, who portrayed archenemy The Penguin in over 20 appearances on “Batman,” as well as Eli Wallach, who played villain Mr. Freeze on two episodes of the series, and Edward G. Robinson, who appeared as himself on “Batman,” personally dissing Andy Warhol, whom Robinson, an avid art collector in real life, despised as an artist. But we digress…

In 1973, Ted Cassidy co-wrote the screenplay for “The Harrad Experiment,” a low-budget drive-in theater curio about the ‘60s sexual revolution on college campuses starring Don Johnson, Bruno Kirby, and Tippi Hedren (Hitchcock’s trademark icy blonde in “The Birds” and “Marnie”), with an early, unbilled appearance by Tippi’s teenaged daughter (and two-time bride of Don Johnson) Melanie Griffith.

Ted Cassidy was the off-screen narrator for the opening credits for the TV series “The Incredible Hulk.” He was also the uncredited, growling voice of Lou Ferrigno as the Hulk until his death, when the dubbing was taken over by Charles Napier, a square-jawed character actor familiar to moviegoers as the lead singer of the country band The Good Ol’ Boys in “The Blues Brothers” (1980) and as the duplicitous Murdock in “Rambo: First Blood Part II” (1985).

Ted Cassidy’s last filmed performance was as Goliath in 1978 on the syndicated TV program “Greatest Heroes of the Bible.” On 1976 and 1977 episodes of “The Six Million Dollar Man” and spin-off “The Bionic Woman,” Cassidy portrayed Bigfoot, a role originated by professional wrestler André the Giant in a 1976 two-part episode of “The Six Million Dollar Man.”

 

(Left) Andre the Giant as Bigfoot with Lee Majors;
(right) Ted Cassidy as Bigfoot with Lindsay Wagner and Lee Majors

André René Rousimoff was born in Grenoble, France, to parents of Bulgarian and Polish lineage. He displayed early signs of gigantism, standing 6’ 3” and weighing 240 pounds by the age of 12. Too ungainly for the local school bus, he was driven to school by family friend and neighbor, Irish expatriate playwright Samuel Beckett, famed for absurdist plays “Waiting for Godot” and “Endgame.”

 

Andre the Giant in Cannes 1967

Dropping out of school after the 8^th grade, Rousimoff eventually moved to Paris at 17 and trained as a professional wrestler. Initially billed as “Géant Ferré,” after a mythical French creature, he was also known as Giant Machine and Monster Eiffel Tower before he joined the World Wide Wrestling Federation (later World Wrestling Federation) in 1973 as André the Giant. In his prime, “The Eighth Wonder of the World” stood 7’ 4” and weighed 520 pounds.

Besides portraying Bigfoot on “The Six Million Dollar Man,” André appeared on the television series “B.J. and the Bear,” “The Fall Guy,” and “The Greatest American Hero.” Uncredited and unrecognizable in a gigantic rubber costume, he played a demonic god in 1984’s “Conan the Destroyer,” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Grace Jones, and Wilt Chamberlain.

André’s most endearing screen performance was as Fezzik, the hulking but sympathetic outlaw in “The Princess Bride,” featuring Cary Elwes and Robin Wright, directed by Rob Reiner. “It’s not my fault I’m the biggest and the strongest,” Fezzik says in his thick Gallic accent. “I don’t even exercise.”

 

Wallace Shawn as Sicilian criminal Vizzini, Mandy Patinkin as Spanish sword-
master Inigo Montoya, and Andre the Giant as Fezzik in "The Princess Bride"

In January of 1993, while in Paris to attend his father’s funeral, André died in his sleep of congestive heart failure. He was 46. William Goldman, author of the original novel The Princess Bride and of the film’s screenplay, wrote that André was one of the gentlest and most generous people he ever knew.

 

Arnold Schwarzennger is dwarfed by his "Conan the Destroyer" costars
Wilt Chamberlain and Andre the Giant.

Besides André the Giant, the squared circle of professional wrestling has provided Hollywood with a number of towering presences. Jorge Gonzalez, the tallest Argentine basketball player, was selected by the Atlanta Hawks in the 1988 NBA Draft, one of the first two Argentine hoopsters drafted into the league. However, the 7’ 6” Gonzalez proved unable to meet the physical demands of the NBA, and that’s when Hawks owner Ted Turner offered him a job as a wrestler in Turner’s World Championship Wrestling (WCW). Gonzalez wrestled in WCW as El Gigante from 1989 to 1992 before joining rival WWF as Giant Gonzalez in 1993.

In the early 1990s, Gonzalez appeared on the TV series “Swamp Thing,” “Thunder in Paradise,” starring wrestler Hulk Hogan and Jack Lemmon’s son Chris Lemmon, and “Baywatch.” In 1994, he had a featured role as a mythical boxer in the made-for-television movie “Hercules in the Underworld,” starring Kevin Sorbo, Tawny Kitaen, and Anthony Quinn as Zeus.

 

Kevin Sorbo faces off with Jorge Gonzalez
on the set of "Hercules in the Underworld."

In 1995, Gonzalez retired from wrestling (and acting) due to serious health issues and returned to his ranch in Argentina. By 2009, he was confined to a wheelchair and used a dialysis machine due to his failing kidneys. Unmarried and childless, the 44-year-old Gonzalez died in September of 2010 from complications from diabetes in his hometown of San Martin, Argentina.

More recently, Robert Maillet, a 7’ Canadian-born Acadian who wrestled in WWF in the late 1990s as Kurrgan (other ring names included Acadian Giant, Giant Kurgan, Goliath El Gigante, and The Interrogator) made a memorable screen debut in 2006 as Uber-Immortal, a rabid berserker in the Persian imperial guard in “300.” He portrayed the Minotaur in 2011’s “Immortals,” the cyclops Polyphemus in 2013’s “Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters,” and the Executioner in 2014’s “Hercules,” featuring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in the title role.

 

Robert Maillet as Uber-Immortal in "300," Dredger in "Sherlock Holmes,"
and the Minotaur in "Immortals"

During a fight scene in “Sherlock Holmes” (2009), Maillet overacted and actually punched Robert Downey Jr., knocking him down and bloodying his nose in the process. Downey later recounted that Maillet was “ten times more upset about it” than he was.

 

Dalip Singh Rana, better known as The Great Khali

Like some others mentioned in the Moviehouse, The Great Khali (7’ 1”), whose professional wrestling career spans from 2000 up to the present day WWE, has acromegaly, a disease of the endocrine system closely associated with gigantism. Born Dalip Singh Rana in India in 1972, he was an officer in the Punjab state police before he started wrestling as Giant Singh. He has appeared in two Bollywood films, four Hollywood movies, including the 2005 remake of “The Longest Yard,” starring Adam Sandler, the 2008 reboot of “Get Smart,” featuring Steve Carrell, and the 2010 comedy “MacGruber,” with Will Forte and Kristen Wiig.

 

The Great Khali towers over his "MacGruber" costars.

Paul Wight, better known as Big Show (previously The Giant) in WWE and WCW, has been featured on the big screen in “Jingle All the Way” (as Huge Santa, appropriately), “The Waterboy” (as Captain Insano), in “MacGruber” (as Brick Hughes) and on the small screen in the series “Thunder in Paradise,” “Royal Pains,” “Burn Notice,” and “Psych.”

In 2010, Wight, credited as Big Show, had the starring role in “Knucklehead,” a forgettable family comedy featuring Dennis Farina, produced by WWE Studios. The 7’ Wight has said he would like to expand his acting career beyond roles based on his size.

Paul Wight, Melora Hardin, Wendie Malick in "Knucklehead" (2010)

Wight underwent surgery on his pituitary gland in the early 1990s that successfully stemmed the progress of acromegaly.

Although he was never a professional wrestler, Buddy Baer, at 6’ 7”, proved to be an imposing opponent as a heavyweight boxer in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The younger brother of World Heavyweight Champion Max Baer (and uncle of Max Baer Jr., best known as Jethro on the TV sitcom “The Beverly Hillbillies”), Buddy was among Ring Magazine’s 100 Greatest Punchers of All-Time. The highlights of Buddy’s boxing career were two attempts to win the heavyweight championship from Joe Louis. Baer, who was knocked out in the first round of the 1942 rematch, recalled, “The only way I could have beat Louis that night was with a baseball bat.”

Buddy Baer as Ursus in "Quo Vadis" (1951)

Buddy Baer retired from boxing to join the U.S. Army in World War II. He later co-owned a Sacramento bar, served as a marshal in the California State Legislature, and appeared in several motion pictures. He was a colossal presence in the 1951 Biblical epic “Quo Vadis” as the gentle Christian giant Ursus, followed by roles as the Giant in the 1952 Abbott and Costello comedy “Jack and the Beanstalk” and as the kindhearted huntsman in “Snow White and the Three Stooges.”

 

Lou Costello, Bud Abbott, and Buddy Baer in "Jack and the Beanstalk" (1952)

On television, Buddy Baer played Atlas on “Adventures of Superman” and had a recurring role on the shortlived, Kirk Douglas-produced series “Tales of the Vikings” (1959-1960). Because of his size, Baer was often cast as the bad guy to face off against such equally towering TV cowboys as James Arness, Clint Walker, and Chuck Connors.

During their careers in the boxing ring, brothers Max (6’ 2 ½”) and Buddy Baer were known as “the professional good guys” and “genial giants.” Max Baer passed away in 1959 at age 50, Buddy Baer was 72 when he died in 1986. In the wake of their passing, Sacramento sports journalist Billy Conlin noted, “When they died, the ‘sweet science’ lost two of the sweetest!”

 

Brothers Max and Buddy Baer

Outside the sports arena, 7’ 7” Pennsylvania native Lock Martin (below) was working as a doorman at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard when he was cast as the gigantic alien robot bodyguard Gort in the original 1951 science-fiction classic “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” Great height did not necessarily equate great strength, as Martin not only had difficulty moving about in the cumbersome robot costume but when scenes required him to bodily life costar Michael Rennie or Patricia Neal, the actors had to be hoisted by wires or a hidden dolly, or replaced by a lightweight dummy.

Born Joseph Lockard Martin Jr., he continued to appear in a few movies, including another 1950s sci-fi cult favorite, “Invaders from Mars,” and the 1952 MGM Esther Williams musical “Million Dollar Mermaid.” Nicknamed “The Gentle Giant,” Martin enjoyed reading to children and hosted a local TV kids’ show devoted to that. Married in 1946, Lock Martin died in 1959 at the age of 42.

 

Lock Martin (Gort), Patricia Neal, Michael Rennie in "The Day the Earth Stood Still"

Atlanta, Georgia, native Henry Mullens was of normal length and weight at birth but began growing rapidly at age nine and changed his name to Henry Hite at age 18. As an adult, he made numerous public appearances for 15 years promoting Corn King, a brand name of Wilson Certified Meats, as the Corn King Giant. He was promoted as “the world’s tallest man” at 8’ 2” (although his actual height was measured at 7’ 6 ¾”). His suits required eight yards of material with 42” long sleeves. He wore custom-made size 22 shoes that cost $90 in pre-inflation 1960s and drove a Volkswagen from the back seat.

 

Your humble editor has a personally
autographed postcard of this picture
of Corn King Giant Henry Hite.

Henry Hite started a vaudeville comedy duo with a friend, Tommy Lowe, and they were later joined by a midget, Stanley Ross. A typical exchange would have Lowe ask Hite, “How did you get so tall?” to which Henry would reply, “I eat what’s right.” Lowe would then ask the diminutive Ross, “How did you get so short?” and Ross responded, “I eat what’s left.” The trio appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

 

Vaudevillians Tommy Lowe,
Stanley Ross, Henry Hite

In 1965, Henry Hite played a hitchhiking alien in “Terror at Halfday,” directed by Bill Rebane, the filmmaker responsible for the Grade-Z chillers “The Giant Spider Invasion” and “The Capture of Bigfoot.” Rebane ran out of money, and Herschell Gordon Lewis, the “Godfather of Gore” who directed “Blood Feast” and “Two Thousand Maniacs!” was brought in to “fix” the production, resulting in what many consider to be Lewis’ least watchable film, “Monster a Go-Go.” “Monster a Go-Go” was deemed by “Mystery Science Theater 3000” to be the worst movie ever featured on the show.

 

Henry Hite in "Monster a Go-Go" (1965)

At 7’ 8 1/3”, Rochester, Minnesota’s own Igor Vovkovinskly is unmistakably “Tallest Man in the U.S.” The Guinness Book of World Records says as much. He wears custom-made size 24 10E shoes. Originally from Ukraine, Igor moved to Rochester at age seven in 1989 (already 6’ tall and weighing 200 pounds) to be treated at Mayo Clinic. His abnormal height was attributed to a tumor pressing on his pituitary gland, resulting in excessive amounts of growth hormone. Surgery successfully removed the tumor, stabilizing his growth.

 

Igor Vovkovisnkly poses with Jason Sudekis on the set of "Hall Pass" (2011).

In 2011, Igor appeared in the comedy “Hall Pass,” starring Owen Wilson and Jason Sudekis, directed by brothers Bobby and Peter Farrelly (“Dumb and Dumber” and “Dumb and Dumber To”). A couple years later, Igor participated in Ukraine’s stage performance at the 58^th annual Eurovision Song Contest 2012.

Thirty years after "The Spy Who Loved Me," Jaws (Richard Kiel) and
James Bond (Roger Moore) reunited to celebrate the unveiling
of Moore's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, October 11, 2007. 

Before breaking into film and television, the 7’ 1 ½” Richard Kiel worked in a variety of jobs: as a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman ("I bet people were happy to see you on the porch," David Letterman told him), a very persuasive cemetery plot salesman, and a nightclub bouncer who rarely had to use force. From 1963 to 1965, he taught math in a Burbank night school. When he was a bouncer, a bartender introduced him to an NBC head censor who hooked Kiel up with the producer of the TV series “Klondike” (a shortlived 1960 program costarring James Coburn), who cast him as a bare-knuckle fighter. Several television and movie roles followed.

In 1962, Richard Kiel was featured in one of the most memorable episodes of “The Twilight Zone,” as a Kanamit, a towering alien whose message of benevolence turns out to be a ruse to corral humans as a food source for his home planet, in “To Serve Man.”

 

Richard Kiel, Susan Collins in "The Twilight Zone"
episode "To Serve Man"

That same year, Kiel starred in “Eegah” as a prehistoric caveman on the rampage in the present-day California desert. Looking back at his roles in low-budget quickies like “Eegah,” “The Phantom Planet,” "House of the Damned," and “The Human Duplicators,” Kiel would say, “I’m not ashamed of those movies,” explaining he learned a great deal about acting from doing them.

 

Richard Kiel in the well-groomed caveman title role of "Eegah" 

In the mid-1960s, Richard Kiel was ideally paired with 3’ 10” actor Michael Dunn’s evil genius Migeulito Loveless on the campy western spy-fi series “The Wild Wild West.”

 

Michael Dunn, Richard Kiel in "The Wild Wild West"

Kiel’s screen breakthrough came in 1974 with the role of a hulking crybaby convict named Samson in the original “The Longest Yard.” Kiel recalled, “That was my first really big A movie where I had a chance to shine. That got me into a TV series called ‘Barbary Coast.’” Kiel had a recurring role as a San Francisco casino bouncer called Moose Moran in “Barbary Coast,” a single-season series inspired by “The Wild Wild West,” starring William Shatner and Doug McClure. Gigs in commercials followed, which led to Kiel’s career-defining role.

Richard Kiel in "The Longest Yard" (1974)

When Richard Kiel was talking to Albert Broccoli, longtime producer of James Bond films, about the character of Jaws, a gigantic juggernaut of an assassin with a mouthful of bone-crushing metal teeth in “The Spy Who Loved Me” (1977), Kiel, not desiring to play another “monster part,” told Broccoli, “Whomever you cast, whether it’s me or somebody else, I think it needs to be an actor because a character who kills people with his teeth could become over the top quite easily. If I were to play the role I’d give him some human characteristics, perseverance, frustration, those kind of things.” In a January 2009 Den of Geek interview, Kiel said, “He liked that because he took making the Bond films very seriously. And I think he felt that I was taking it very seriously and that I would add something to the character.”

Kiel felt "it's a lot more interesting to play a villain as a person who is real. A real-life person who still has a mother or a father, a girlfriend, a dog..."

Jaws was so popular that a last-minute script change had him survive a shark attack in “The Spy Who Loved Me.” At a screening of the movie, Kiel recalled, “when Jaws survived…they all applauded. I thought, ‘I’ve finally made it in acting’…It opened up a lot of doors for me.”

Jaws returned in 1979’s “Moonraker,” only to turn against the villain and aid Bond (Roger Moore). As a sympathetic, even comedic presence, Jaws is even given a petite girlfriend, Dolly, as seemingly mute as he is. At film’s end, as Jaws and Dolly are saved from the destruction of a space station in an escape pod, he opens a bottle of champagne and utters his sole line of dialogue in both films, toasting, “Here’s to us.”

Jaws (Richard Kiel), Dolly (Blanche Ravalec) in "Moonraker"

“I loved the Bond films and was real excited about being in one,” Kiel remembered. “Of course, I had no idea this character would become the pivotal character of my career.” Initially, there were plans of having Jaws marry Dolly in 1981’s “For Your Eyes Only,” but the producers ultimately wanted a more down-to-earth approach to 007 and chose not to bring the characters back.

In a 2013 interview, when Richard Kiel was informed that actor Javier Bardem (above), who portrayed cyber-terrorist Raoul Silva in “Skyfall,” the 23^rd 007 film, said Jaws is his all-time favorite Bond villain, Kiel responded, “I love that actor’s acting. He was so scary in ‘No Country for Old Men.’ He gave the baddie in ‘Skyfall’ a reason and motivation for what he did. You could understand it. I thought that was very clever. He saw his first Bond movie when he was 12 and it was ‘Moonraker.’ He said he loved the movie not because of James Bond but Jaws and that was quite a compliment.”

Edward Fox, Richard Kiel, Harrison Ford, Barbara Bach,
Carl Weathers, Robert Shaw in "Force 10 from Navarone"

Kiel had several offers to cash in on the Jaws character, but he passed on them all, saying, “I want to stay away from things that will typecast me.” He noted, “My best part would probably be Captain Drazak in ‘Force 10 from Navarone.’” Harrison Ford’s first starring role after his breakout performance as Han Solo in “Star Wars” was in the World War II adventure “Force 10 from Navarone” (1978), an ill-advised attempt – directed by Guy Hamilton (the director of four James Bond movies, including “Goldfinger”) - to revive the guys-on-a-mission thrills of 1961’s “The Guns of Navarone.” Of his role as an officer in command of Communist Yugoslav partisans, Kiel noted, “I appear to be a good guy and turn into a really nasty guy.”

Adam Sandler and Richard Kiel on the set of "Happy Gilmore" (1996)

In 1992, Richard Kiel suffered a severe head injury in a car accident, affecting his balance. He subsequently had to walk with a cane to support himself. As Adam Sandler’s boss and friend in the 1996 comedy “Happy Gilmore,” he was often filmed leaning on a person or a cane. Eventually, he relied on a wheelchair or scooter for mobility.

In 1991, Richard Kiel wrote, produced and starred in
the family movie "The Giant of Thunder Mountain,"
costarring Noley Thornton and 9' 6" Bart the Bear.

After Richard Kiel's death in September of 2014, three days before his 75^th birthday, his family posted, in part, on Facebook: “Though most people knew of him through his screen persona, those who were close to him knew what a kind and generous soul he was. His family was the most important thing in his life…It is nice to think that he can, once again, stand tall over us all.”

(Left) Ted Cassidy in "I Dream of Jeannie;
(right) Richard Kiel in "I Dream of Jeannie"

Once, when he was asked the role he would most like to be remembered for playing, Ted Cassidy snapped, “None. None of them! I don’t want to be remembered for any of them because I don’t like any of them. I’m not proud of any of them.”

Richard Kiel has the last word: “If I wanted to be a trial attorney I could have been. If I wanted to be a real estate magnate, I could have been…I’ve had a blessed career and have got to go all over the world.”

"I'm a pussycat with a 5' 1" wife...Somebody once asked
Diane what attracted her to me. And she replied,
'We see eye to eye on so many things.'"