In Memoriam
Norm, yes, but also so many other roles. Although never a movie where he ate beans.
I know what you’re thinking, but no. It’s not the first place I think of him. Actually, it’s the third; the first place I think of him is the Animaniacs classic bit “Survey Ladies.” There used to be a survey place in my local mall, and my partner and I would whisper to each other about eating beans with George Wendt. The fourth, in fact, is that he used to appear on Late Night With Conan O’Brien at random, and there was this one bit where he was playing Quasimodo and sang the line “But I am deformed” and that has lived in my head since 1996. And now it’s back again. So that’s fun.
What I didn’t know until I started looking things up about him is that one of his seven siblings is a woman named Kathryn Sudeikis, so clearly there’s definite show business running in that family. His mother’s father was Thomas Howard, who smuggled a camera into Sing Sing Prison and took a picture of an execution, so that’s fame of a different sort. Still, he flunked out of Notre Dame—apparently in no small part due to living in an off-campus apartment during the winter and not having transportation—and then got a degree in econ from Rockhurst College.
Not long after college, Wendt returned to Chicago and joined Second City. He met his wife, Bernadette Birkett, there. (She would play the voice of Vera on Cheers.) After Second City, he settled into the kind of career a lot of people have had, at least for a few years. Actually, he kept working that kind of career even while being in the kind of career where you get six consecutive Emmy nominations for the same character, and that’s dedication to the craft. And you figure it’s not because he was hurting for cash, especially after a couple of seasons.
But yes, our prime example is from, the first season of Cheers. Because that show debuted on September 30, 1982. Obviously a Thursday, as those of us who remember Must See TV remember. But on Mondays, M*A*S*H aired, which means that, the week of November 1, you could presumably see him on two different networks, because he was on CBS as a Marine who got a pool ball stuck in his mouth during a Halloween party. The man was busy, is what I’m telling you.
He was, all in all, a hard worker and by all accounts a nice guy. His last credit (aside from one listed as “completed” as of several years ago) is a made-for-USA movie with Jodie Sweetin from last year. But among his odder credits are Cranium Command, which you may remember from a Jenny Nicholson video, Santa Claus multiple times including in Santa Buddies, and Spice World. And, to top it all off, an episode of St. Elsewhere as Norm Peterson, and you know what that means—he’s one of the people who brings Cheers and its assorted spin-offs into the Tommy Westphall Universe. What a legacy.
About the writer
Gillian Nelson
Gillian Nelson is a forty-something bipolar woman living in the Pacific Northwest after growing up in Los Angeles County. She and her boyfriend have one son and one daughter, and she gave a child up for adoption. She fills her days by chasing around her kids, watching a lot of movies, and reading. She particularly enjoys pre-Code films, blaxploitation, and live-action Disney movies of the '60s and '70s. She has a Patreon account.
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Haha, for a second, I read the headline as “I don’t drink that fast” and I was wondering if this was in response to a question about what was different between him and Norm.
No, it’s him talking about improv, actually!
I never had the opportunity, but apparently he was Hell on wheels onstage, too. A couple of the horror communities I’m part of are posting memories of seeing him as the Dean in Re-Animator: The Musical.
Jim Belushi told a story once about getting in a fight with his girlfriend late one night and grabbing some mail that needed to be sent out, just to have a reason to leave the apartment. He walks around for a while, mails the stuff, and thinks to himself “Hey, George and Bernadette live around here. Wonder if they’re up.” He gets to the house around one a.m. and sees a light in the backyard, looks over the fence and there’s George Wendt. Grilling. In shorts, despite it being one a.m., in Chicago, with snow on the ground. According to Belushi, Wendt, evincing zero surprise at someone appearing over his fence at one in the morning, immediately yells at him to come on in, we’re gonna eat soon. So his fondest memory of that particular time in his life was eating barbecued sausages with George Wendt and his wife at four in the morning.