Chuck Would

In the recent spate of notable deaths, it was easy for a name to get lost in the shuffle. First and foremost, undoubtedly, was the passing of former First Lady Barbara Bush, who was also the mother of a U.S. president and of a Florida governor, on April 17, 2018.

Former President Barack Obama called her "the rock of a family dedicated to public service" who lived her life "as an example of the humility and decency that reflects the very best of the American spirit." Former President Bill Clinton praised her for her grit, grace, brains, and beauty, describing her as "fierce and feisty in support of her family and friends, her country and her causes," showing us "what an honest, vibrant, full life looks like."

Harry Anderson, who earned three Emmy Award nominations for his role as Harry Stone, a laid-back municipal court judge and amateur magician in the 1984-1992 series "Night Court," was discovered dead by his wife in their North Carolina home on April 16. The popular sitcom, created by Reinhold Weege, a busy writer for and producer of "Taxi," made primetime stars out of Anderson, John Larroquette, and Richard Moll.

Harry Anderson (rear center) poses with the cast of Night Court:
(left to right) Richard Moll, John Larroquette, Markie Post,
Marsha Warfield, and Charles Robinson.

In the 1990 miniseries "It," based on Stephen King's best-selling
novel, the adult Losers Club was portrayed by (left to right) John
Ritter, Tim Reid, Richard Masur, Annette O'Toole, Harry Anderson,
Richard Thomas, and Dennis Christopher, with Tim Curry as the
killer clown Pennywise.

In the mid-1990s, Harry Anderson was cast as real-life humor columnist Dave Barry in the sitcom "Dave's World," created by Fred Barron ("Caroline in the City"). In 2000, Anderson abandoned Hollywood, declaring, "I don't understand why guys have that Don Knotts syndrome of having to be out there," pursuing roles in middle age. Proclaiming himself "richer than Davey Crockett," he and his wife moved to New Orleans, where they opened a "speakeasy," where Anderson could perform his sleights of hand, and a magic shop. Some time after Hurricane Katrina devastated NOLA, the couple, convinced that the community was "stuck on stupid," relocated to Asheville, North Carolina.

By the time R. Lee Ermey, a former U.S. Marine drill instructor with 14 months of in-country service in Vietnam under his khaki web belt, marched onto the screen in his breakthrough role as foul-mouthed Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in 1987's "Full Metal Jacket," he was already a veteran of three Hollywood movies about Nam. He made his screen debut as, appropriately, a drill sergeant, in 1978's "The Boys in Company C," featuring Andrew Stevens and Craig Wasson, followed by roles as a chopper pilot in Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" and "Purple Hearts," from "The Boys in Company C" director Sidney J. Furie.

"Full Metal Jacket" offered a unique perspective on the whole Vietnam experience, with director Stanley Kubrick, an American expatriate who adopted England as his home after dissatisfaction with working with the Hollywood studio system during "Spartacus" in 1960, shooting South Carolina's Parris Island boot camp scenes and Southeast Asia battlegrounds entirely on British locations.

R. Lee Ermey, who received an honorary promotion from the U.S.
Marine Corps to gunnery sergeant in real life, dresses down recruit
Leonard "Gomer Pyle" Lawrence (Vincent D'Onofrio) in "Full
Metal Jacket": "What is your major malfunction, numbnuts?"

R. Lee Ermey has a ball as the coach with a soft spot for Jack Black
in "Saving Silverman," with Steve Zahn, Neil Diamond, and Amanda
Detmer, with "American Pie's" Jason Biggs as the titular Silverman.

Despite the obvious tendency to portray Sgt. Hulka types in films, R. Lee Ermey, who succumbed to complications from pneumonia on April 15, occasionally got the opportunity to play against type, from surprisingly effective dramatic roles like the suicidal mayor in 1988's "Mississippi Burning" and the grieving father of a murder victim in 1995's "Dead Man Walking," to chilling, horrific turns as the sociopathic sheriff in the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" reboots, to comedic curveballs like the gay football coach in "Saving Silverman."

Filmmaker Miloš Forman was a Czech émigré who came to the U.S. when the Warsaw Pact nations of the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany, and Poland invaded Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1968. His first American film was 1971's "Taking Off," a comedy about an average couple in New York City dealing with a runaway daughter, featuring Lynn Carlin, a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee for John Cassavetes' "Faces" in 1961, and Buck Henry.

In quick succession from 1975 to 1989, Forman directed a string of powerful, successful American-produced pictures, among them "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Hair," "Ragtime," "Amadeus," "Heartburn," "Valmont," "The People vs. Larry Flynt," and "Man on the Moon." He won directing Academy Awards for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Amadeus," while receiving a nomination for "The People vs. Larry Flynt."

Jack Nicholson rallies the troop in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's
Nest": William Redfield, Brad Dourif, Danny DeVito, Will Sampson,
and Delos V. Smith Jr.

"Valmont" (1989), yet another version of the 1782 French novel that
likewise inspired the 1988 movie "Dangerous Liaisons" (with Glenn
Close, John Malkovich, and Michelle Pfeiffer), saw Miloš Forman
directing a cast that includes Meg Tilly, Colin Firth, Annette Bening,
Fairuza Balk, and Henry Thomas.

Mitzi Shore, who co-founded The Comedy Store on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, died of a neurological disorder at age 87 while under hospice care on April 11. She had suffered from Parkinson's disease in her later years. In 1972, Mitzi and husband Sammy Shore opened The Comedy Store in 1972. Upon their 1974 divorce, Mitzi got complete ownership after Sammy figured it would lower his alimony payments. Many noted comedians, among them Robin Williams, Jerry Seinfeld, David Letterman, Jay Leno, Sam Kinison, Garry Shandling, and Jim Carrey, worked for Shore, who initially didn't pay the comics until they picketed in a bitter six-week strike. She ultimately agreed to pay them $15 per set.

Mitzi Shore poses outside the west Hollywood Comedy Store with
comics Jay Leno, Billy Braver, and Ed Bluestone.

Mitzi surrounds herself with Bob Saget, son Pauly Shore, Jim
Carrey, Louie Anderson, (standing) Yakov Smirnoff, Jeff Altman,
and Tim Thomerson.

Mitzi Shore's son, Pauly Shore, made his standup debut at 17 in a Culver City bistro. Pauly, who was mentored by Sam Kinison, got his big break as an MTV VJ, hosting the network's annual spring break broadcasts, before starring in a number of comedy films in the 1990s, including "Encino Man," "Son in Law," and "Bio-Dome."

Brief of stature at 2' 8", Verne Troyer's brief life came to an end on April 21 at age 49. Best known as Mini-Me, the miniature clone of Mike Myers in the "Austin Powers" films, he was working as a telephone customer service assistant when a former president of Little People of America informed him that the makers of John Hughes' 1994 comedy "Baby's Day Out" were looking for a stunt double for the titular infant. That led to further stunt work, as well as roles like a mini-Santa Claus attacking Arnold Schwarzenegger in "Jingle All the Way" and an alien in "Men in Black."

One of the shortest men in the world (as a result of cartilage-hair hypoplasia), Troyer started out life on an Amish farm before his parents left the faith. His parents, he said, "never treated me any different than my other average-sized siblings. I used to have to carry wood, feed the cows and pigs and farm animals."

Much of Troyer's private life was marked by depression, alcoholism, and occasional scandals. He nearly died from alcohol poisoning in 2002 and announced last year he was going to be checking into rehab at a treatment center. Stints on such reality TV programming as "Celebrity Big Brother," "Celebrity Wife Swap," "The Surreal Life," and "The Surreal Life: Fame Games" did little to boost his career or his spirits.

Mini-Me learns proper feline care from Dr. Evil.

Verne Troyer, who dubbed "The Surreal Life" "garbage," poses with
his fellow "Fame Games" contestants: rapper Pepa (Sandra Denton),
Poison lead guitarist C.C. DeVille, porn superstar Ron Jeremy,
Playboy magazine's Andrea Lowell, "Baywatch's" Traci Bingham,
Vanilla Ice ("Ice Ice Baby"), "Webster's" Emmanuel Lewis, and
former wrestler Chyna (who died on April 20, 2016, aged 46, from
an overdose of drugs and alcohol). Not pictured: Brigitte Nielsen.

A statement on Troyer's Facebook page read, "Verne was an extremely caring individual" who "hoped he had made a positive change with the platform he had and worked towards spreading that message everyday." The statement alluded to depression and suicide, encouraging people to be kind to each other because "you never know what kind of battle someone is going through inside."

Amid these passages was a sweet, unassuming presence, an entertainer whose sole desire throughout his life was just that - to entertain. To make people, from children to adults, laugh. Chuck McCann, who died April 8 of congestive heart failure at the age of 83, was a child radio actor, a puppeteer and children's program host, a standup comedian, a stage actor and screen character actor, a voice artist, and, among other talents, a commercial performer. One of Chuck's earliest "show business" memories took place in high school when he convulsed classmates as King Kong, standing on a chair and fighting off paper airplanes.

Chuck McCann was born in Brooklyn. His father was a trombonist, violinist, pianist, and arranger at New York City's famed Roxy Theatre, a grand movie palace that also staged lavish vaudeville-style shows. McCann said, "That's where I think the show business bug bit me, sitting in the pit of the Roxy watching those comedians."

Rootie Kazootie reads to his companion, Gala Poochie Pup.

McCann's maternal grandfather had performed in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. It was Chuck's mother's wish for her son to become a firefighter, but an introduction to children's puppeteer Paul Ashley led to a stint on the kiddie show "The Rootie Kazootie Club" in the early 1950s (pictured above), as well as an apprenticeship under Captain Kangaroo.

Chuck McCann joins Captain Kangaroo,
Dancing Bear, and Mr. Green Jeans.

Along with Captain Kangaroo, Soupy Sales, "Howdy Doody" host Buffalo Bob Smith, and Fran Allison of "Kukla, Fran and Ollie," McCann helped shape loopy, ad libbed local children's programming. Up until the late 1960s, McCann hosted various comedy-variety puppet shows, among them "The Puppet Hotel," "Laurel & Hardy & Chuck," "Let's Have Fun," "The Chuck McCann Show," and "Chuck McCann's Laurel and Hardy Show." He would later host showings of Laurel and Hardy shorts in rain delays during TV broadcasts of New York Yankees games.

During a 114-day newspaper strike in New York City in 1962, Chuck kept his young viewers up to speed by reading the comic strips and voicing the characters on-camera, much as New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia had done on radio during a newspaper strike in the 1940s.

With his cherished Laurel and Hardy puppets,
Chuck McCann appears with "Popeye" cartoon
host "Cap'n Jack" McCarthy, "The Three Stooges
Funhouse" host Officer Joe Bolton, and New York
City's Bozo the Clown (Bill Britten) on WPIX-TV.

At the age of 11, Chuck McCann made a long distance phonecall - with his mother's OK - to Stan Laurel in Santa Monica. It was a little-known fact that Mr. Laurel had a public phone listing, and fans were always amazed that they could converse with him directly. McCann's conversation led to several more over time and to a lifelong friendship with the legendary comedian.

Stan Laurel grabs a smoke while he waits for the phone to ring
in his Santa Monica apartment.

Along with John McCabe, author of the authorized biography Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy, TV personality Orson Bean, cartoonist Al Kilgore, and a gentleman named John Municino, McCann founded, with Stan Laurel's blessing, The Sons of the Desert, the official international fraternal fan club of Laurel and Hardy.

As a mimic, Chuck McCann was well-known for his spot-on impression of Oliver Hardy. On a 1958 episode of "The Gary Moore Show," McCann and Dick Van Dyke, who was equally known for his friendship with Stan Laurel and his ability to impersonate him, played the comedy duo in a sketch about Hoover vacuum cleaner salesmen, Hoover being one of Moore's sponsors.

In 1994, McCann, along with Stan Laurel impersonator Jim MacGeorge (pictured above), attended the dedication of the fabled stairs located in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles that were featured in Laurel and Hardy's Academy Award-winning 1932 short "The Music Box" (pictured below).

McCann befriended Buster Keaton in the latter years of his life. Buster bestowed a signed director's chair on Chuck, along with a silent motion picture camera and one of his pork pie hats. Another Hollywood veteran McCann struck up a friendship with was Mae West. McCann's wife, Betty, was a talent agent for the William Morris Agency, and West was one of her clients. Mae was eager to meet Chuck because she thought he was the spitting image of her longtime mentor-manager, James Timony.

(Top) Mae West dines with James Timony;
(below) Chuck McCann meets Mae West.

In the 1982 made-for-television film "Mae West," starring Ann Jillian in the title role, McCann played W.C. Fields (pictured below) in a cast that featured James Brolin as James Timony (never mind the lack of any physical resemblance, but then again, Brolin was the guy laughably miscast as Clark Gable in the 1976 biopic "Gable and Lombard"), with Piper Laurie and Roddy McDowall.

And then there was Chuck McCann's four-decade friendship with Hugh Hefner and open invitations to the Playboy Mansion in Holmby Hills, Los Angeles. McCann and Paul Ashley were performing a one-act show with their puppets when Chuck was informed that Hugh Hefner was in the audience. McCann offered Hefner and his party the opportunity to watch the show a second time from a backstage vantage. Hugh enjoyed the experience and invited Chuck to the opening of a new club of his in New Jersey.

At the time of their encounter, McCann was also busy promoting his starring role in the 1971 comedy "The Projectionist" and was headed to Chicago for a radio interview when Hef offered a flight there on his private jet, a black DC-9 dubbed "Big Bunny." In a February 2015 podcast, the host, comedian Gilbert Gottfried, asked the 80-year-old McCann if he ever got naked at the Playboy Mansion. With a laugh, McCann exclaimed, "I wouldn't be caught dead naked."

Hugh Hefner poses with Jim MacGeorge and Chuck McCann as
Laurel and Hardy and comedian Avery Schreiber in character as
Billy Gilbert's Professor Theodore von Schwarzenfoffen ("M.D.-
A.D.-D.D.S.-F.L.D.-F.F.F.-and F.!") from "The Music Box."

In 1968, Chuck McCann made his feature film debut as a mentally disabled mute named Spiros Antonapoulos in "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter," featuring Alan Arkin as his friend, John Singer, a deaf-mute silverware engraver. When Spiros' family has him committed to an institution, Singer moves to a small Southern town near the facility to remain close to his friend. At his boarding house, Singer attempts to strike up a relationship with an unhappy, sensitive 16-year-old sophomore, Mick Kelly, played by Sondra Locke in her first movie. He also encounters an angry alcoholic drifter (Stacy Keach, in his screen debut), as well as a black, segregationist preacher (Percy Rodriguez) and his militant daughter (Cicely Tyson). When it is learned that Spiros died in the institution, the story ends tragically. Based on the evocative 1940 novel by Carson McCullers, the film was shot in Selma, Alabama, a couple of years after the noted Civil Rights marches from Selma to Montgomery.

Unable to locate wardrobe large enough to fit Chuck McCann in
"The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter," Warner Bros. costumers put him
in stored suits worn by old-time Hollywood heavyweight Sydney
Greenstreet (Kasper Gutman in "The Maltese Falcon"). 

In 1971, Chuck McCann starred in "The Projectionist," a low-budget comedy-fantasy that has gained cult status. Working in a Midtown Manhattan movie theater, a lonely, nameless schlemiel spots a lovely lady who sparks fantasies that find him as a portly superhero called Captain Flash, repeatedly rescuing her from the evil clutches of the villainous Bat - in reality, the theater's bullying manager who constantly berates and insults his staff of ushers, played effectively in his first motion picture by Rodney Dangerfield.

"The Girl" was played by the beautiful Ina Balin, who captivated John Wayne and Stuart Whitman in 1961's "The Comancheros" and won Jerry Lewis' heart in 1964's "The Patsy." Sadly, Balin, a former cigarette smoker, was hoping for a lung transplant when she succumbed in 1990 to complications of chronic lung disease. She was only 52.

"The Projectionist" was obviously a labor of love for writer-producer-director Harry Hurwitz, who also appeared on-camera as a browbeaten usher who seeks refuge from the wrath of Rodney in the projection booth. One of the most memorable scenes in "The Projectionist" finds Chuck McCann addressing a wall of celebrity 8x10 head shots in the booth and delivering a nonstop patter of dead-on impressions of each celebrity, including Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne, James Stewart, Clark Gable, and, of course, Hardy and Laurel.

McCann's extensive vocal work included the voices for cartoon characters in "Cool McCool," "Duck Tales," "Rescue Rangers," "TaleSpin," "The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh," "G.I. Joe," "Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo,""Garfield and Friends," "The Powerpuff Girls," and "Fantastic Four," as The Thing. He was also the voice of Sonny the Cuckoo Bird who notably ranted, "I'm cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!" in a series of animated ads for the General Mills cereal.

Speaking of commercials, Chuck McCann became a familiar face as the face on the other side of a shared medicine cabinet in a series of popular ads for Right Guard deodorant and antiperspirant, greeting his costar, comedic actor Bill Fiore, with the much-imitated catchphrase, "Hi, guy!" The commercials, which ran through the 1970s, prompted audiences to audibly greet McCann's appearance on-screen in "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" with "Hi, guy!"

Those commercials, McCann told podcast host
Gilbert Gottfried, "bought my house."

Inevitably, the ads ended with Bill Fiore desperately
calling out to his wife: "Mona!"

Groucho Marx joined McCann in one Right Guard ad. A lunch
break from shooting turned into an all-day private screening at
Chuck's nearby office of Marx Brothers films, as Groucho regaled
McCann with a wealth of behind-the-scenes anecdotes. McCann,
in turn, invited Groucho to the Playboy Mansion.

After moving to Los Angeles in the '70s, McCann became a recognized guest on numerous series, from westerns to cop shows to primetime soaps. He had a recurring role as Judge Byron Fudd on the 2000s series "Boston Legal," starring James Spader, Candice Bergen, and William Shatner.

In 1975, Chuck McCann co-created and starred with Bob Denver in "Far Out Space Nuts," a children's series from the kings of kiddie TV, Sid and Marty Kroft ("H.R. Pufnstuf," "The Bugaloos," "Land of the Lost"). It was the third crack at a lasting series for post-"Gilligan's Island" star Denver, after "The Good Guys" and "Dusty's Trail." Just as "Dusty's Trail" reworked the "Gilligan" premise for a sitcom about lost pioneers separated from their wagon train, "Far Out Space Nuts" cast Denver and McCann as castaways in outer space. They portrayed inept maintenance jockeys who accidentally press the "launch" button instead of "lunch" on a spacecraft and embark on a series of misadventures and close encounters with assorted wacky aliens.

McCann recalled, shortly after the series got underway, he was having lunch at a favorite Los Angeles eatery when he spotted John Carradine, venerable character actor and patriarch of the sizable Carradine acting clan, at the bar. The two were already familiar with each other, having appeared together on a 1972 episode of David Frost's talk show. After finding out what Chuck was working on, the 69-year-old actor, who had worked for Hollywood titans Cecil B. DeMille, John Ford, and Al Adamson, straightforwardly asked, "How much does it pay and when do I start?" And that was how John Carradine - Moses' brother Aaron in DeMille's "The Ten Commandments," errant preacher Jim Casy in Ford's "The Grapes of Wrath," and Dracula's butler in Adamson's "Blood of Dracula's Castle" - was cast as the leader of alien creatures made of glass (pictured below) on an episode of "Far Out Space Nuts" called "The Crystallites" (not to be confused with the sugar-free beverage Crystal Light).

McCann's movie appearances were sparse and eclectic at best. He portrayed a theater manager (echoing "The Projectionist"?) in Chevy Chase's breakout motion picture "Foul Play" in 1978, costarring Goldie Hawn. Mel Brooks cast McCann as a studio security guard in 1976's "Silent Movie" (pictured below), followed by supporting roles as a villager in 1993's "Robin Hood: Men in Tights" and as an innkeeper in 1995's "Dracula: Dead and Loving It."

This can only end badly: filmmaker Mel Funn (Mel Brooks), with
sidekicks Marty Eggs (Marty Feldman) and Dom Bell (Dom DeLuise),
attempt to get by studio gate guard Chuck McCann in "Silent Movie." 

"C.H.O.M.P.S." was a 1979 live-action family comedy about a crime-fighting robotic dog with X-ray vision and super strength. The cast featured Valerie Bertinelli, Conrad Bain, and Jim Backus, with Red Buttons and Chuck McCann as bumbling dognappers (pictured below).

In 1992's "Storyville," a dramatic thriller set in a dark and mysterious New Orleans, co-written and directed by Mark Frost, David Lynch's collaborator on"Twin Peaks," McCann landed a substantial supporting role in a juicy cast that included James Spader, Joanne Whalley-Kilmer, Jason Robards, Charlotte Lewis, Piper Laurie, Michael Parks, and Woody Strode.

Chuck McCann sits behind Jason Robards and Joanne Whalley-
Kilmer in "Storyville," a movie described by Roger Ebert as
"a lurid example of the genre of Southern gothic excess."

For every Mel Brooks comedy, A-list drama or low-budget family outing, there were a number of titles best ignored on Chuck McCann's résumé, movies like 1975's "Linda Lovelace for President," an R-rated sex comedy parodying Lovelace's participation in the 1972 hardcore porn flick "Deep Throat" (her campaign slogan is "A Vote for Linda Is a Blow for Democracy"). Made a few years before the star joined the anti-pornography movement as a born-again Christian under her real name, Linda Boreman, the picture featured The Monkees' Mickey Dolenz, Scatman Crothers, Marty Ingels, Art Metrano, and McCann as an inept assassin.

In 1986, McCann joined Chicago Bears linebacker-turned-thespian Dick Butkus in the slobs-vs.-snobs comedy "Hamburger: The Motion Picture," not to be confused with 1984's slobs-vs.-snobs comedy "Hot Dog...The Movie," although the two films shared a producer, while Sandy Hackett, Buddy Hackett's son, appeared in both movies, and "Hamburger" was directed by the scriptwriter of "Hot Dog."

In a 2007 interview, Chuck admitted, "I did everything. I never closed doors. If you look at my career - if I had one - I never think of it as a career, I just look at it as things I love to do. I have just as much fun doing a 30-second commercial as I do making a movie."

McCann teamed up with the multi-talented Tim Conway for the 1978 comedy "They Went That-A-Way & That-A-Way," which Conway also wrote. The two played bumbling lawmen assigned by the governor to pose as convicts at a prison farm to find the out the whereabouts of hidden loot from a 12-year-old robbery. The governor, the only one who knew about the undercover operation, drops dead from a heart attack, leaving the modern-day Laurel and Hardy out on a limb. Mayhem and hilarity ensue.

Dewey and Wallace (Tim Conway and Chuck McCann)
encounter fellow inmate Duke (7' 2" Richard Kiel).

Years earlier, when McCann had relocated from New York to California, he appeared with Tim Conway on what instantaneously became known as the worst show in television history. In 1969, George Schlatter and Ed Friendly, the creators of "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In," wanted to top themselves in a far-out sketch comedy program, with the emphases on sex and political satire in rapid-fire jokes and risqué skits, presented without a laugh track and hosted by a computer. Production executive Digby Wolfe, a writer for "Laugh-In," described it as a "visual, comedic, sensory assault involving animation, videotape, stop-action film, electronic distortion, computer graphics - even people."

At least behind the scenes, the show, to be aired on ABC, held promise. Tim Conway was the guest host for the opening episode. One of the writers was comedian Albert Brooks. The cast included "Laugh-In's" Teresa Graves, folk musician-voice artist-character actor Hamilton Camp, and Chuck McCann.

One affiliate, WEWS-TV in Cleveland, Ohio, abruptly pulled the plug on the program during the first commercial break. WEWS fired off a telegram to network management, declaring, "If your naughty little boys have to write dirty words on the walls, please don't use our walls. 'Turn-On' is turned off." Catching wind of the debacle, western stations in later time zones decided not to air the show at all. Probably the kindest words came from acerbic science fiction-fantasy author and media watchdog Harlan Ellison, who admitted, "It wasn't that it was a bad show, it was that it was an awkward show."

Tim Conway later joked that the program's premiere party that he attended turned out to be its cancellation party.  A little-known aftereffect of the experience was that when ABC was offered "All in the Family" in 1970, the shell-shocked network, still reeling from the "Turn-On" disaster, was leery of the show's edgy humor and a bigoted, foul-mouthed main character and decided to pass on the new sitcom, which was picked up by CBS, eager to urbanize its defunct rural landscape of "The Beverly Hillbillies," "Petticoat Junction," and "Green Acres."

Chuck McCann sidles up to Tim Conway in Beverly Hills in 2013

Chuck McCann continued to perform on occasion with Tim Conway at live events.

In the end, Chuck McCann lived by two mantras: to have as much fun as possible and to keep working to survive.

Chuck McCann embraces his wife of over 40 years, Betty.

In The New York Times obituary, veteran writer Sam Roberts lovingly described McCann as "precocious, irrepressible, and persistent." In a 2007 interview, Chuck said, "You've got to be able to pick yourself up, brush yourself off and do it all over again. Persistence alone is omnipotent, you have to keep hanging in there."

"Say goodnight, Stanley." "Goodnight, Stanley."