Jonathan Southworth "John" Ritter (17 September 1948 - 11 September 2003) was an American actor. He is best known as the male lead in the ABC sitcom Three's Company. He was the voice of Inspector Gil in Fish Police.
Biography[]
The son of legendary country singer/actor Tex Ritter and his wife, Dorothy Fay, who was also an actress, John Ritter started out his life as Jonathan Southworth Ritter, born in Burbank, California. After his father married Dorothy Fay Southworth in 1941, the couple had their first child, Tom Ritter, who had been diagnosed with cerebral palsy and became a lawyer, but John was destined to follow in his parents' footsteps. He was enrolled at Hollywood High School, where he was a student body president.
Ritter's acting debut was in an episode of Hawaii Five-O (1968), playing various roles. In Dan August (1970), he played a campus revolutionary, The next year, he appeared as the Rev. Matthew Fordwick in The Waltons (1971). His guest-starring spot was so popular that he was offered a recurring role in the show. Instead, he made more guest appearances in Medical Center (1969), M*A*S*H (1972), The Bob Newhart Show (1972), The Streets of San Francisco (1972), Kojak (1973) and, once again, as a preacher in The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970) and Rhoda (1974), among many others. While working on The Waltons, he received word that his legendary father had passed away, just a day after New Year's Day 1974.
In late 1975, ABC picked up the rights for a new series based on a British sitcom, Man About the House (1973), and Ritter beat out fifty other actors, including a young Billy Crystal, to get a major role. The first pilot was discarded, and to improve it, Joyce DeWitt, an unknown actress, played the role of Janet Wood, along with Suze Lanier-Bramlett as the dumb blonde, Chrissy Snow. Unlike the first pilot, it did better, but the producers still needed a change and Suzanne Somers arrived at the very last minute to play "Chrissy". The series, Three's Company (1976), was born. When it debuted as a mid-season replacement, it became a ratings hit focused mainly on his character Jack Tripper, an aspiring chef who lived in an apartment with two attractive women while pretending to be gay.
In 2000, Ritter provided the voice of the titular protagonist in the PBS Kids animated series Clifford the Big Red Dog, based on the best-selling children's book series of the same name by the author Norman Bridwell. He also reprised this role in the Warner Bros. Pictures animated film adaptation Clifford's Really Big Movie, posthumously released in 2004.
Ritter died six days before his 55th birthday in the same hospital in which he was born, the Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California. He was a brilliant comedian and a passionate actor, who wanted to make everybody laugh.
External Links[]
- John Ritter at the Internet Movie Database