George Wendt passed away in his sleep earlier today.  He was 76 years old.

If you’re old enough to have watched Cheers when it originally aired or to have caught it in reruns, George Wendt will always be Norm Peterson, the beer-drinking accountant who spent all of his time at the show’s titular bar.  One of the show’s trademarks was that, whenever he entered the bar, everyone greeted him by shouting, “Norm!”  “How’s the world treating you?” a bartender would ask.  “It’s a dog eat world and I’m wearing milkbone underwear,” Norm once replied.

(One of my favorite joke from the series was when Norm went into a steakhouse and everyone inside was heard to yell, “Norm!” as the door closed behind him.)

If we’re going to be really honest, Norm was probably a high-functioning alcoholic and terrible husband.  (Wife Vera was often-mentioned but never seen.)  Wendt was so likable in the role and was so good at delivering those one-liners that it didn’t matter.  Watching the show, you never wondered why Norm was in the bar.  You were just glad he was.

George Wendt was also an accomplished stage actor.  (I saw him on stage when he was co-starring with Richard Thomas in 12 Angry Men.)  He appeared in several movies, usually playing the comedic sidekick or the hero’s best friend.  His film roles often didn’t ask him to do much other than be likable but one exception was his performance in 1991’s Guilty By Suspicion.

Guilty By Suspicion is a film about the McCarthy era, starring Robert De Niro as film director David Merrill, who is threatened with being blacklisted unless he names four of his colleagues as being communists.  George Wendt plays screenwriter Bunny Baxter, a childhood friend of David’s who attended a few communist rallies when he was younger, failed to mention it to the FBI, and who is now being investigated as a subversive.  The studio argues that David should name Baxter because his name is already out there.  When David refuses, he finds himself blacklisted and unable to make a living.  Bunny Baxter, meanwhile, is offered a similar deal.  Baxter can save his own career but only if he names David as a communist.  Unlike David, Baxter considers betraying his friend because it’s the only way that he can ever hope to work again.  “Your dead anyway,” Baxter says to David.

Guilty By Suspicion suffers from Irwin Winkler’s plodding direction but De Niro gives a good performance, as does Martin Scorsese who is cast as a director based on Joseph Losey.  The film is full of actors who would later become better-known, like Chris Cooper, Tom Sizemore, and Annette Bening.  Wendt, however, gives the film’s best performance as the screenwriter who is torn between protecting his career and maintaining his integrity.  The scene where he asks permission to name Merrill as a communist is powerful and it shows how good an actor George Wendt could be.  Bunny Baxter is asking his best friend to allow himself to be stabbed in the back.  Baxter is that desperate.  That he’s played by George Wendt, an actor who was everyone’s favorite likable barfly in the 80s, makes the scene all the more powerful.

George Wendt, RIP.  Thanks for the memories.