Who's John Ritter?

The late John Ritter's entry from IMDb is HERE
He appeared in a lot of things, some of which I remembered, most of which I'd never heard of...but he certainly had a large body of work.
His IMDb bio is HERE ...I didn't realise until I just read it that he was the son of Country singer Tex Ritter...live and learn...live and learn
 
OH MY GOSH.....you dont know JOhn Ritter?!"?!?!?!!?!?!!?!

OK...sit down while i take you through a tour of the excellence of Mr. John Ritter, comic actor Exraordinnaire.

The first piece of Work to come to my attention of the Fabu Mr Ritter, was the deliciously funny, Three's company. Back in the Days when Two Girls and a Guy could live together in perfect harmony and have sexual comedy, such as walking into the bathroom, while the still gorgeous Chrissy, played by Suzanne Somers(the typical Dumb Blonde) stood with nothing but a Loofah, Haircap and smile, to hide her.....assets. Mix to that crazy pair the often uptight BUT always funny and delectable Janet(Joyce DeWitt) the show was often funny, always had heart and Had some great Landlords...The Ropers.
The Show was based on the BritCom also called Three's Company, and followed the same concept.
Being i was a child, living in the UK i didnt get to see this show when it was released, though i finally got to see it in 1989, when Channel 3 decided to re-run it.
The Following year, Mr Ritter had phenominal success at the Cinema GLOBALLY, with the wonderful movie, Problem Child.
The Basic premise, 'lil' Ben Healy and the Missus decide to adopt a child. They pick a sweet young urchin to haver sccess before the final decision is made. This child quickly turns into the Devil incarnate, with HILARIOUS consequences....Look out Bart Simpson, theres competition in town.....
John at his peak decided next a role that was different from his decidely comic parts should be his next venture. So he took on the Role of another Ben. This time its Ben Hanscomb in one of the best Stephen King adaptations to date....It.
With a few straight to Vid releases and a funny sequel to Problem child under his belt, Ritter made another marvellous film.
Stay Tuned of 1992 was a funny take on the TV shows that were at the core of many problems in society. Play Roy Knable, a man so obsessed with TV that he doesnt know he is losing his family, his wife played by the electric Pam Dawber(NaNu NaNu anyone) and his career, purchases Satellite TV. During his final argument with the Missus, the pair are sucked into the demonic world of Satellite TV with comically wonderful Takes on TV(Duanes Underworld or Saturday Night Dead anyone), The 'CEO' of HVTV is Spike, a devil like Demon, played by the ever wonderful Jeffery Jones.

After that came a veritable onslaught of TV and Made for TV movies, including the magnificent part of Ted In Buffy the Vampire Slayer. More recently he played a Sherriff in The Bride of Chucky, a movie sequel in the Childsplay Franchise.
His final role was that of Paul Hennesy, father in the Hit comedy, 8 Simple Rules.
This he died on September 11th 2003 of a heart attack....the worlds of comedy and Horror/comedy lost a great actor that and missed by all.

(hope that helps a bit....this is selected info on my fave parts of his career....all words by DDLM)
 
M
Mulder22
nice post. I am a big John Ritter Fan
LMAO, ProphecyGirl! It's not like Three's Company isn't on Nick at Nite! What are they thinking? Crazy!
 
Dia DeLa Muerte said:
OH MY GOSH.....you dont know JOhn Ritter?!"?!?!?!!?!?!!?!

OK...sit down while i take you through a tour of the excellence of Mr. John Ritter, comic actor Exraordinnaire.

The first piece of Work to come to my attention of the Fabu Mr Ritter, was the deliciously funny, Three's company. Back in the Days when Two Girls and a Guy could live together in perfect harmony and have sexual comedy, such as walking into the bathroom, while the still gorgeous Chrissy, played by Suzanne Somers(the typical Dumb Blonde) stood with nothing but a Loofah, Haircap and smile, to hide her.....assets. Mix to that crazy pair the often uptight BUT always funny and delectable Janet(Joyce DeWitt) the show was often funny, always had heart and Had some great Landlords...The Ropers.
The Show was based on the BritCom also called Three's Company, and followed the same concept.
Being i was a child, living in the UK i didnt get to see this show when it was released, though i finally got to see it in 1989, when Channel 3 decided to re-run it.
The Following year, Mr Ritter had phenominal success at the Cinema GLOBALLY, with the wonderful movie, Problem Child.
The Basic premise, 'lil' Ben Healy and the Missus decide to adopt a child. They pick a sweet young urchin to haver sccess before the final decision is made. This child quickly turns into the Devil incarnate, with HILARIOUS consequences....Look out Bart Simpson, theres competition in town.....
John at his peak decided next a role that was different from his decidely comic parts should be his next venture. So he took on the Role of another Ben. This time its Ben Hanscomb in one of the best Stephen King adaptations to date....It.
With a few straight to Vid releases and a funny sequel to Problem child under his belt, Ritter made another marvellous film.
Stay Tuned of 1992 was a funny take on the TV shows that were at the core of many problems in society. Play Roy Knable, a man so obsessed with TV that he doesnt know he is losing his family, his wife played by the electric Pam Dawber(NaNu NaNu anyone) and his career, purchases Satellite TV. During his final argument with the Missus, the pair are sucked into the demonic world of Satellite TV with comically wonderful Takes on TV(Duanes Underworld or Saturday Night Dead anyone), The 'CEO' of HVTV is Spike, a devil like Demon, played by the ever wonderful Jeffery Jones.

After that came a veritable onslaught of TV and Made for TV movies, including the magnificent part of Ted In Buffy the Vampire Slayer. More recently he played a Sherriff in The Bride of Chucky, a movie sequel in the Childsplay Franchise.
His final role was that of Paul Hennesy, father in the Hit comedy, 8 Simple Rules.
This he died on September 11th 2003 of a heart attack....the worlds of comedy and Horror/comedy lost a great actor that and missed by all.

(hope that helps a bit....this is selected info on my fave parts of his career....all words by DDLM)
Click to expand...

Wow, he was quite famous then.

I still hav'nt heard of any of the things you mentioned but from what I can gather he was rather famous then.
 
Being from the UK myself the only biggish films I can recall were the Problem Child ones and I was just a kid back then. So I guess if you are of a certain age in the UK you might not have heard of these films as unless they are huge success they don't tend to get much airplay.

I know thats where I remembered him from and when I knew he was in 8 Simple Rules I watched that purely for him.
 
Oh he never achieved the moniker of 'A' lister, infact whats sort of ironic is the fact that 8 Simple rules possibly would have gotten him that which he shyed away from.
But i honestly urge anyone to visit all his movies, Comedy and Horror.
I know that It would be loved by you all, Bride of Chucky....limited taste, BUT in the TV concious society Stay Tuned is a must.....PURE hilarity.
 
Stay Tuned is the movie where he gets sucked into the television and he goes thru all the channels with his wife?I love that movie!I've been trying to find out the name of that movie for the longest.Thanks DDLM😀
 
I too, was astonished to find someone didn't know who John Ritter was but the question had already been answered several times by the time I came to the thread. However, I'm embarassed, ney, ASHAMED, to say that I'd forgotten myself, his role as the department store manager who hires Billy Bob Thornton and his"elf" in Bad Santa. I only remebered when I was talking about the movie at work today.

He is hysterically funny in this, especially in the scene where he's talking to the store detective/security guy in his office about Billy Bob's "sexual proclivities". If you watch the out-takes on the DVD extras this scene is even funnier. His facial expressions and delivery are truly comedy gold!

If you haven't seen Bad Santa then RUN down to your video store NOW and hire it. Though I must warn all children that the movie contains frequent strong coarse language, sex scenes, sexual refences, drug use, violence, and adult themes. Yay!

John Ritter was a genius of physical comedy and will be sorely missed.
 
S
StuckinTraffic
Sad about John Ritter's passing ;( but EXCELLENT post!
I know we've all established who he is by now but I just want to add a comment because I was a really big fan and was so sad on the day he died. Growing up I loved John in the Problem Child movies and I liked him on this made for tv movie called The Colony. If you guys haven't seen The Colony I recommend it because it's pretty cool. He's most famous in the United States for being in Three's Company. That show is so funny! I also love the movie Sling Blade and he has a role in that as a gay store owner.
 
S
StuckinTraffic
I was sad the day he died, too. And to have it happen so suddenly like that....it was a shock!
I didn't know until he died how big he was in the US (mostly). I guess he's sort of like Robbie Williams. (All American will now go like "who?"... it's arguably Europe's biggest superstar.) Anyhow, I really like 8 Simple Rules... I'm currently in the process of watching all episodes from the start.
 
In Low Rats defense, just because the guy was incredibly famous in his field doesn't automatically mean that everyone should know who he was. For example, just because someone happens to be a Buffy fan doesn't mean that they watch a lot of television and therefore may not have seen him in anything else. I'm also a big fan of Ritter and it was a great shame that he died so young but it's not fair to make somebody seem stupid just because they haven't heard of somebody who you know to be very famous.

I mean, being a massive rock music fan, i was incredibly saddened when the news broke that Layne Staley had died. He was an incredibly talented singer and very respected in his field. However, i would imagine that a lot of you non-music fans, and even some of you that consider yourselves to be casual fans of rock, may not know who he is. Some celebs are more famous to some people than they are to others. That is just the way it is.
 
He also played the voice of Clifford the Big Red Dog. 🙂

I thought he was great on "Ted". Used to watch Three's Company too. I was shocked when he died. It was so sudden.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom