https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/worl...&cvid=193147c52baa409abac079e4623cd407&ei=122
George Wendt, the actor, who has died aged 76, was a vital contributor to the immense popularity of the US sitcom Cheers in his role as the loveable barfly Norm Peterson.
The roly-poly Norm, as Robert Hanks noted in The Daily Telegraph, “was the hero of Cheers – not the central character, but the hero”. For 11 years, while the staff and other patrons of the Cheers basement bar fell in and out of love and exercised their neuroses around him, Norm steadfastly devoted himself to the consumption of beer and pretzels, and to the deadpan delivery of the show’s best quips.
Although Norm’s lines in the script for the pilot episode of Cheers were confined to a single word – a demand for “Beer!” – the part was expanded after Wendt was cast. Nominally an accountant (in later series he becomes a painter-decorator), Norm found his real purpose in life in savouring the camaraderie at Boston’s friendliest bar; he was invariably greeted by a raucous cry of “NORM!” on arrival, and the affection in which the character was held by his fellow drinkers came to be shared by viewers.
The programme’s best-loved joke formula saw Norm provide a sardonic response to the greeting offered by bartender Sam Malone (Ted Danson) or one of his colleagues; viewers eagerly anticipated exchanges such as “What’s shaking, Norm?” “All four cheeks and a couple of chins”, or “Whatcha up to, Norm?” “My ideal weight if I were 11ft tall.”
Norm was also something of a philosopher. “Bars can be very sad places. Some people spend their whole lives in bars. Just yesterday, some guy sat right here next to me for 11 hours.”
Above all, the Cheers bar was Norm’s indispensable refuge from his wife Vera (“Hey, Norm, there’s a cold one waiting for you.” “I know – if she calls, I’m not here”). Vera was never seen in the show, although she was occasionally heard off-screen, her voice provided by Wendt’s real-life wife, Bernadette Birkett.
Wendt appeared in all 269 episodes of Cheers, from the pilot in 1982 to the finale in 1993, which was watched by nearly 40 per cent of the US population. (In Britain it was a fixture on Channel Four.) He also made guest appearances as Norm in numerous other programmes including St Elsewhere, The Simpsons, Family Guy and the Cheers spin-off Frasier.
Although he enjoyed a varied career in film, theatre and television, he accepted that Norm was his defining role, although he confessed to the Telegraph in 1998 that “at the risk of being a bit of a bore”, he always answered no when people in the street asked him if he was Norm. “They say, are you sure? And I say, I played him on TV. I figure if I don’t keep it straight nobody will.”
George Robert Wendt was born in Chicago on October 17 1948, one of nine children of George Wendt Sr, a US Navy officer and real estate agent, and his wife Loretta, née Howard. George Wendt’s sister Kathryn is the mother of the Ted Lasso star Jason Sudeikis.
After poor grades forced George to leave the University of Notre Dame in Illinois, he knuckled down and secured a BA in economics from Jesuit Rockhurst College in Kansas City.
He returned to Chicago and applied to become a performer at Second City, a theatre specialising in satirical comedy shows: “On my first day I was handed a broom and, with the words, ‘Welcome to the world of theatre’, was told to sweep out the auditorium. Which is pretty much all I did in those first months.”
Eventually he graduated to taking lead roles in their productions. He married Bernadette Birkett, a fellow performer at the club, in 1978.
In 1980 he went to Los Angeles to take part in a pilot for a Second City television comedy show and decided to stay. He played small roles in M*A*S*H, Taxi, Soap and Hart to Hart before being cast in Cheers. Following the success of that programme he was invited to make frequent appearances on Saturday Night Live, once co-hosting, somewhat improbably, with Francis Ford Coppola.
Although there was some talk of a Norm spin-off, it was Kelsey Grammer, as Norm’s fellow drinker Frasier, who found post-Cheers glory. Wendt’s own attempt to become a sitcom leading man, as a garage mechanic in The George Wendt Show (CBS, 1995), was cancelled after eight episodes (“It didn’t work very well. So I kind of wish they’d called it something else”).
He moved to London in 1989 to play the eponymous layabout in the BBC TV dramatisation of Ivan Goncharov’s novel Oblomov, a role he later reprised on stage in Moscow, and appeared in early episodes of the Channel Four improvisational comedy series Whose Line Is It Anyway?
In 1998 he appeared alongside Stacy Keach in Yasmina Reza’s Art in the West End, and played Tweedledee to Robbie Coltrane’s Tweedledum in a Channel Four version of Alice in Wonderland (1999).
Wendt appeared in dozens of films, including Fletch, Wild About Harry and Spice World: The Movie. On television he guest-starred in Columbo, Seinfeld and Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
On stage he played Edna Turnblad in Hairspray on Broadway in 2007 and Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman in Ontario in 2017. In 2023 he sang, disguised as a moose, in The Masked Singer.
He published a book about beer, Drinking with George, in 2010.
George Wendt’s wife survives him with their daughter and two sons.
George Wendt, born October 17 1948, died May 20 2025
George Wendt, the actor, who has died aged 76, was a vital contributor to the immense popularity of the US sitcom Cheers in his role as the loveable barfly Norm Peterson.
The roly-poly Norm, as Robert Hanks noted in The Daily Telegraph, “was the hero of Cheers – not the central character, but the hero”. For 11 years, while the staff and other patrons of the Cheers basement bar fell in and out of love and exercised their neuroses around him, Norm steadfastly devoted himself to the consumption of beer and pretzels, and to the deadpan delivery of the show’s best quips.
Although Norm’s lines in the script for the pilot episode of Cheers were confined to a single word – a demand for “Beer!” – the part was expanded after Wendt was cast. Nominally an accountant (in later series he becomes a painter-decorator), Norm found his real purpose in life in savouring the camaraderie at Boston’s friendliest bar; he was invariably greeted by a raucous cry of “NORM!” on arrival, and the affection in which the character was held by his fellow drinkers came to be shared by viewers.
The programme’s best-loved joke formula saw Norm provide a sardonic response to the greeting offered by bartender Sam Malone (Ted Danson) or one of his colleagues; viewers eagerly anticipated exchanges such as “What’s shaking, Norm?” “All four cheeks and a couple of chins”, or “Whatcha up to, Norm?” “My ideal weight if I were 11ft tall.”
Norm was also something of a philosopher. “Bars can be very sad places. Some people spend their whole lives in bars. Just yesterday, some guy sat right here next to me for 11 hours.”
Above all, the Cheers bar was Norm’s indispensable refuge from his wife Vera (“Hey, Norm, there’s a cold one waiting for you.” “I know – if she calls, I’m not here”). Vera was never seen in the show, although she was occasionally heard off-screen, her voice provided by Wendt’s real-life wife, Bernadette Birkett.
Wendt appeared in all 269 episodes of Cheers, from the pilot in 1982 to the finale in 1993, which was watched by nearly 40 per cent of the US population. (In Britain it was a fixture on Channel Four.) He also made guest appearances as Norm in numerous other programmes including St Elsewhere, The Simpsons, Family Guy and the Cheers spin-off Frasier.
Although he enjoyed a varied career in film, theatre and television, he accepted that Norm was his defining role, although he confessed to the Telegraph in 1998 that “at the risk of being a bit of a bore”, he always answered no when people in the street asked him if he was Norm. “They say, are you sure? And I say, I played him on TV. I figure if I don’t keep it straight nobody will.”
George Robert Wendt was born in Chicago on October 17 1948, one of nine children of George Wendt Sr, a US Navy officer and real estate agent, and his wife Loretta, née Howard. George Wendt’s sister Kathryn is the mother of the Ted Lasso star Jason Sudeikis.
After poor grades forced George to leave the University of Notre Dame in Illinois, he knuckled down and secured a BA in economics from Jesuit Rockhurst College in Kansas City.
He returned to Chicago and applied to become a performer at Second City, a theatre specialising in satirical comedy shows: “On my first day I was handed a broom and, with the words, ‘Welcome to the world of theatre’, was told to sweep out the auditorium. Which is pretty much all I did in those first months.”
Eventually he graduated to taking lead roles in their productions. He married Bernadette Birkett, a fellow performer at the club, in 1978.
In 1980 he went to Los Angeles to take part in a pilot for a Second City television comedy show and decided to stay. He played small roles in M*A*S*H, Taxi, Soap and Hart to Hart before being cast in Cheers. Following the success of that programme he was invited to make frequent appearances on Saturday Night Live, once co-hosting, somewhat improbably, with Francis Ford Coppola.
Although there was some talk of a Norm spin-off, it was Kelsey Grammer, as Norm’s fellow drinker Frasier, who found post-Cheers glory. Wendt’s own attempt to become a sitcom leading man, as a garage mechanic in The George Wendt Show (CBS, 1995), was cancelled after eight episodes (“It didn’t work very well. So I kind of wish they’d called it something else”).
He moved to London in 1989 to play the eponymous layabout in the BBC TV dramatisation of Ivan Goncharov’s novel Oblomov, a role he later reprised on stage in Moscow, and appeared in early episodes of the Channel Four improvisational comedy series Whose Line Is It Anyway?
In 1998 he appeared alongside Stacy Keach in Yasmina Reza’s Art in the West End, and played Tweedledee to Robbie Coltrane’s Tweedledum in a Channel Four version of Alice in Wonderland (1999).
Wendt appeared in dozens of films, including Fletch, Wild About Harry and Spice World: The Movie. On television he guest-starred in Columbo, Seinfeld and Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
On stage he played Edna Turnblad in Hairspray on Broadway in 2007 and Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman in Ontario in 2017. In 2023 he sang, disguised as a moose, in The Masked Singer.
He published a book about beer, Drinking with George, in 2010.
George Wendt’s wife survives him with their daughter and two sons.
George Wendt, born October 17 1948, died May 20 2025
