I can't believe he's gone. I used to love Three's Company as a kid. I'll miss him very much. http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/obituaries/entertainment-people-ritter.html?hp
a terrible thing. I remember liking those 3's a Company Shows when I was a kid, and I thought 8 Simple Rules was the best of the new shows last season. Really the best show on ABC and right up there with Friends and Scrubs on my own list
I can't claim to be a fan of any of his shows, but I saw him on some long-forgotten variety show once improvising with Robin Williams. Not only could he match Williams (very few performers can) he actually cracked him up a couple of times. Ritter was a talented comic actor, something he didn't get full credit for until recently, and something which is a tremendous accomplishment.
I just watched "Sling Blade" again recently it really bears out the fact that beyond all the 3's Company jive he was a grear actor.
A lot of people don't take the show seriously... but he was on an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in, I believe, the second season. It was called "Ted" and he played the bad guy of the episode... a homicidal robot. He was pretty intense. I'd almost say that seeing him be that evil made it all the more freaky.
He also played JUNIOR's father in "PROBLEM CHILD" 1 & 2, I have fond memories of those two movies. RIP John Ritter...
That Buffy episode "Ted" is actually one of the ones that reeled me into watching the show. Everyone's favorite mini-golf-playing, cookie-making psychotic robot. and one of his lines of dialogue included the word "melarchy"
Ritter did a movie in '92 called "Stay Tuned". He gets sucked into a reality based on TV shows from hell. In a funny twist one of the shows he lands on is mockign Three's Company. He just screams and changes the channel. RIP John.
I liked his comedic style, he had the way of looking like the most straight, un-funniest guy on the screen, but then do/say things in the most normal manner and it turns out to be the funniest things said in the scene... A true talent lost, but perhaps a wakeup call to get checked out more often.
John Ritter was very underrated as an actor. In Three’s Company he had the ability to make TV viewers feel he's a real person, just caught in awkward/funny situations. On top of that, he’s one of the best in physical comedy. He's also been active in UCP telethons for many years. Just a great guy. RIP John!
One of my favorite Ritter projects was the movie Real Men, with Jim Belushi, in which he plays an ordinary whimpy father, whom Belushi (some sort of secret agent) shanghais into helping him meet UFOs to save the world. The other was a TV movie called Hero at Large where he played a struggling actor who gets caught up in the person of a movie superguy he's doing personal appearance as. Oh, and he was the bad guy in Barefoot Executive opposite Kurt Russell.
looks like they're going to keep his show on the air, but play out his death in the plotline instead of recasting the character.
Funny. I actually saw him looking at a private nursery-type school in my neighborhood. Also in Skin Deep. I freely confess that I also watched his spinoff with religious fervor.
I think it would have been better to recast him or cancel the show. This show is so dumb and goofy having the father die would be very strange it wouldn't fit at all within the context.