Everyone Wanted to Sit Next to George Wendt at ‘Cheers’
“It’s a dog-eat-dog world, Sammy, and I’m wearing Milk-Bone underwear.”
George Wendt, best known as Norm, the master of the hangdog lament with elbows propped on the Cheers bar rail, ed away this morning at the age of 76. He earned six consecutive Emmy nominations for the role, one of the classic comedy’s anchors from its first episode to its last. It was a significant step up from his first job in show business, sweeping the floors at Second City, where he eventually became a member of the improvisational repertory company.
Wendt ed Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson on the Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast last summer and reminisced about trying out for the iconic sitcom. He almost didn’t get to audition since he was already committed to another comedy over at CBS when the opportunity came knocking.
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“They want you to come in anyway,” his agents told him. “It’s really small, though.”
“How small?”
“It’s really just one line.”
Wendt agreed to stop by anyway, only to find out that the line was one word. Actually, it was one syllable. “The bit was Shelley (Long) was going to go, ‘Hi, I’m Diane, I’ll be your waitress. Well, I’m not really a waitress. I’m an academic.’ And she goes into a page-long recap of her (resume), as she did. And then she goes, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I should be taking your order. What can I get you?’”
“And I go, ‘Beer.’”
With that syllable, a sitcom icon was born. It didn’t hurt that Wendt’s other comedy obligation, Making the Grade, got canceled, leaving him free to do Cheers. He never won one of those Emmy Awards, but he earned a legion of fans anyway. “I don’t exactly put a pound of putty on my nose and walk around with a limp like I’m Sir Alec Guinness,” Wendt once told the Chicago Tribune. “I get great jokes, and I deliver them sort of well.”
Wendt went on to become a semi-regular on Saturday Night Live, hosting the show and making regular appearances in the 1990s as Superfan Bob Swerski, teaming with Chris Farley and Robert Smigel to sing the praises of Coach Ditka and Da Bears. The role came naturally to Wendt, a Chicago native and lifelong fan of its sports teams. It was a nice retirement package as Wendt would reprise the character for several television commercials over the years.
But Wendt will be forever ed as Norm, the guy you spend hours with at the bar as you solve the world’s problems over a cold one (or three). It’s hard to imagine Wendt ever walking into a tavern or restaurant in his life without its patrons shouting “Norm!” in unison. As comedy legacies go, it’s a sweet one. After Cheers, Wendt never had to buy a beer for the rest of his life.
