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News RIP Harry Anderson (1952-2018)

Aragorn

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Harry Anderson of Night Court, Cheers, Dave's World and It fame passed away Monday at the age of 65. :(

Here's a link to the full Hollywood Reporter story.

Night Court actor Harry Anderson died Monday morning in Asheville, N.C., Asheville Police Department confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. He was 65.

"This morning at 6:41 a.m. the Asheville Police Department responded to the home of actor Harry Anderson where he was found deceased," Asheville PD's Public Affairs officer Christina Hallingse told THR. "No foul play is suspected."
 
I was a fully grown adult in my late twenties when an older friend recommended Night Court to me. It became one of my all-time favorite sitcoms. And, as I heard it, Anderson put a lot of his own personality into Harry Stone.

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This is one that really hurts me. I just bought the 3 seasons of Night Court on DVD about a month ago. I have not got through them all yet. It took a long time for the whole series to get released. The rest are only available through Warner Archive, through online sites.

There is so much 80s nostalgia but it's rare you hear about sitcoms. Night Court was one of the greats. I just told my Mom I remember my Grandma watched it when we visited her during the 1980/. I watched most of the show in reruns late 90s after High School.

But it and Harry was someone I always knew. The Wonderful World of Disney did two sequels to the Absent Minded Professor with him playing a new character who discovered the old Flubber formula from the previous movies. Harry and John Ritter hosted the grand opening tv special for Disney MGM Studios. They also appeared together in the original miniseries adaptation of IT.
 
I was never a big Night Court fan, but I always watched it because it was on between Cheers and Hill Street Blues or LA Law. But I was a fan of Anderson's from his appearances as a magician on Carson, Letterman and SNL. He said he got Night Court because an NBC executive saw him on Cheers and thought he was an actor playing a con-man, but didn't know he was basically just doing stuff from his stage act and didn't think of himself as qualified as an actor. A hugely talented and always entertaining guy, gone way too soon.
 
R.I.P. Harry. You were awesome, and Night Court was an awesome show, even if it did end up jumping the shark like many '80's sitcoms.

This is one that really hurts me. I just bought the 3 seasons of Night Court on DVD about a month ago. I have not got through them all yet. It took a long time for the whole series to get released. The rest are only available through Warner Archive, through online sites.

Warner Bros seriously annoys me. First they take most of their stuff of of Netflix streaming, then they decide that if someone wants to buy seasons of one of their most popular shows, someone has to literally take blank DVDs and burn the episodes onto them, then make the packaging, etc., all on demand. Why? Why not just sell them normally like everyone else on Earth does?

Hopefully with Anderson's passing someone at WB will be smart enough to decide to make a complete season set that you can actually, God forbid, buy in a store.
 
Damn. Out of all the shows on the Thursday night Must See TV lineup, Night Court was the one I probably liked best growing up.
Always tipped just this side of the absurd, yet they could also do serious as well, and Harry was the glue that held it together.
As an aside, Harry lived up here in the Seattle area for several years when he was filming the Dave Barry sitcom for CBS and he would commute to L.A. every week. An old coworker of mine was a neighbor of his and said on the weekends he would perform magic tricks for the kids in the neighborhood.
 
RIP to the "top Judge":

Harry: Cleaver, you may be younger. You may be faster. You may even be smarter. But you will NEVER, EVER, be crazier, [pulls out an awl to puncture the balloon he's trapped him with and gets an absolutely crazed look on his face] ... than me.
 
This is one that really hurts me. I just bought the 3 seasons of Night Court on DVD about a month ago. I have not got through them all yet. It took a long time for the whole series to get released. The rest are only available through Warner Archive, through online sites.

There is so much 80s nostalgia but it's rare you hear about sitcoms. Night Court was one of the greats. I just told my Mom I remember my Grandma watched it when we visited her during the 1980/. I watched most of the show in reruns late 90s after High School.

But it and Harry was someone I always knew. The Wonderful World of Disney did two sequels to the Absent Minded Professor with him playing a new character who discovered the old Flubber formula from the previous movies. Harry and John Ritter hosted the grand opening tv special for Disney MGM Studios. They also appeared together in the original miniseries adaptation of IT.
I think Walmart has the series. I'll have to double check though to see if it's the entire one. I have the first three as well, season wise. I want to get the rest when I can.

It's not a perfect series, but it's one that I'll never forget. They were truly an ensemble cast and they made the show what it was: at times funny, at times sad, but all heart.
 
Letterman video archivist Don Giller put up a compilation of Anderson on "Late Night," including pre-Night Court appearances. Really enjoyable.

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Markie Post about Harry Anderson:

(copying and pasting it since it shows up as a block of text via instagram)

markiepost1Memories of Harry:

I was almost three months pregnant and was at rehearsal for NightCourt when I knew something was wrong with me. I could feel that I was bleeding and was panicking inside. I whispered to Harry, who immediately picked my up off the ground, ran to his car which was parked right outside and drove me to the nearest hospital. He didn’t say a word to anyone, just ran out of rehearsal with me in his arms. Seven months later, my daughter Kate @armstrongross was born and Harry sent her a carousel horse. Once he gave me chattering teeth for my birthday. He was equal parts hero and clown.

He used to say “Never attribute to malice what can be easily explained by ignorance”. He used to say: “Show business is a series of surrenders. The writers surrender to the actors, the actors surrender to the director, the director to the editor and on and on until the final surrender is to our audience where we hope they like us”. He used to say: “oh, I get it, that was a JOKE! Just not the funny kind.” Harry and I would get into insult wars. We would try to cut each other down to the tiniest increments. He would call me an infant, I would call him a fetus, he would call me a blastocyst, I would call him a zygote.

Harry was dyslexic, so he would come to the first day of rehearsal table read with his part totally memorized. He taught me how to get sawed in half, he turned me on to Apple computers, he gave my kids dollar bills that had been shrunken in his own laundering process. He was funny, scathing and sincere.

Elizabeth, Eva, Dashiell and Leslie my heart is broken for you. John, Charlie, Marsha and Richard, we were blessed to have known him, it was Magic Time in my life.

Rest In Peace, zygote, I feel your absence in this world.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BhrzEYmDTUTEv_6OUsa9sy7VwzAauD3cR6Flv40/

He was truly a good egg.
 
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Walmart is selling seasons 1,2,3 of Night Court in a bundle. I know I work at one. It's exactly what WB previously sold as individual releases. From what I know of Warner Archive film releases they work independently from Warner Home Video which are store releases. Nothing is preventing WHV from releasing the whole series but this was just a quick rerelease of what they previously had done. I think it's been in stories about a month or two.

Hopefully a complete series will come of this tragic news. It's strange the studios like grouping seasons for series they have not even completed yet. There is a set for Happy Days season 1-6 because the last 4 have never been released.

Harry's adult daughter said on Twitter it was a complete surprise. He died in his sleep, laying next to his wife and their dogs. There are many worse ways to go.
 
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