George Wendt, the actor and comedian best known for playing Norm Peterson on the classic sitcom Cheers, died Tuesday, May 20. He was 76.
A rep for Wendt confirmed his death to Rolling Stone. An exact cause of death was not given, though the rep said Wendt “died peacefully in his sleep while at home.”
The rep’s statement continued: “George was a doting family man, a well-loved friend and confidant to all of those lucky enough to have known him. He will be missed forever. The family has requested privacy during this time.”
Emerging from the Second City comedy scene in his hometown of Chicago, Wendt was a prolific comic actor who racked up hundreds of credits in films, TV shows, and even a few music videos. But his most memorable performance was as Norm Peterson — real full name Hilary Norm Peterson — on Cheers, a role for which he earned six straight Emmy nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series between 1984 and 1989.
Wendt played Norm as the ultimate regular, always worthy of the enthusiastic greeting — “Norm!” — he garnered upon entering the titular bar (despite never fully settling his bar tab). Wendt would often get to punctuate these arrivals with a one-liner about Norm’s day, or his desire for a beer, always delivered with dry, weary perfection: “It’s a dog eat dog world and I’m wearing milkbone underpants,” for example, or: “What’s the story, Norm?” “Boy meets beer. Boy drinks beer. Boy meets another beer.”
Wendt also made a string of memorable cameos on Saturday Night Live during the Nineties, playing Bob Swerski, a member of the group of Chicago sports superfans that also included Chris Farley, Mike Myers, and Robert Smigel (and briefly Joe Mantegna). He also appeared in movies like Fletch, Airplane II: The Sequel, and Spice World, and popped up on TV shows like Portlandia, Family Guy (where he reprised his role as Norm), and The Goldbergs.
Wendt was born and raised in Chicago, and went on to attend a Jesuit boarding high school in Wisconsin before enrolling at Notre Dame University. He never graduated, dropping out after his junior year with a 0.0 GPA he chalked up to difficulties stemming from his decision to live off-campus, and with no car to get him to class during winter.
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He eventually earned a bachelor’s degree in economics at Rockhurst College in Kansas City, then spent a few years traveling the world and soul-searching. As Wendt told The Kansas City Star in 2016, “One thing I did learn at Rockhurst was Karl Marx’s theory of alienation, and I didn’t want to be alienated from myself and I was determined to do something with my life that I enjoyed and felt right to me. I remember going to see Second City [in Chicago] when I was in college. It looked for all the world like a bunch of young men and women goofing off onstage, and I was pretty sure they got paid. So I thought, wow, if I could do that.”
Wendt joined Second City in the mid-Seventies, and spent the rest of the decade there honing his chops, often performing as many as eight shows a week — even though he was never a huge fan of improv comedy. “I like nit to jumping out of an airplane,” he told the Chicago Tribune, in 1988. “The apprehension is pure dread. I mean, once you’re actually doing it you’re going, ‘Wow, this is great!’ But naw, I don’t miss improvising that much.”
It was also at Second City that Wendt met his future wife, Bernadette Birkett, with the couple marrying in 1978. They would go on to have three children together. Birkett would also later provide the voice of Norm’s omnipresent, but never seen wife Vera, on Cheers.
In the early Eighties, Wendt began to earn his first film and TV roles, including credits on hit sitcoms like Taxi and M*A*S*H. He didn’t have to wait long for his breakthrough: He was cast as Norm on Cheers in 1982 and would go on to appear in all 275 episodes of the series, which aired until 1993. (The only other cast members with perfect attendance on the series were Ted Danson and Rhea Perlman.)
In a 1985 Washington Post story, Cheers co-creator Les Charles praised Wendt’s uniquely, and hilariously, blasé style of comedy: “Some guys throw away lines, he throws away his whole performance,” Charles said. Wendt’s co-star John Ratzenberger, who played mailman Cliff Clavin, added that Wendt makes “good comedy look so effortless. He just knows what’s right.”
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From Rolling Stone US
