George Wendt, who bellied up to the bar to portray the beer-quaffing everyman Norm Peterson for all 11 seasons of the fabled NBC sitcom Cheers, has died. He was 76.
Wendt died peacefully in his sleep at home, his family confirmed early Tuesday morning.
“George was a doting family man, a well-loved friend and confidant to all of those lucky enough to have known him,” a rep for Wendt said in a statement. “He will be missed forever. The family has requested privacy during this time.”
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Born in Chicago and raised on the South Side, Wendt got his start in the 1970s with Second City, the famed improvisational comedy troupe that was based in his hometown.
Later, he popped up on Saturday Night Live as Bob Swerski, one of the “superfans” who gathered at Coach Mike Ditka’s restaurant in the Windy City to watch “Da Bears.”
Wendt appeared in movies including Dreamscape (1984), House (1985), Fletch (1985), Gung Ho (1986), Plains Clothes (1987), Never Say Die (1988), Guilty by Suspicion (1991), Forever Young (1992) and Spice World (1997).
He also played the grumpy father of a son (Macaulay Culkin) who likes his music loud in Michael Jackson’s 1991 “Black or White” music video, directed by Jon Landis.
Survivors include his nephew Jason Sudeikis, the only son of one of his six sisters.
Wendt’s guy-next-door persona and easy delivery won him appreciation from fans and castmates as he played the lovable lug Norm, an accountant by trade, on every installment of Cheers during its 1982-93 run. (Ted Danson and Rhea Perlman were the only other actors not to miss an episode.)
He received Emmy nominations for outstanding supporting actor in a comedy series for six consecutive years (1984-89, from the second season to the seventh, but lost out to Pat Harrington Jr. of One Day at a Time in 1984, to John Larroquette of Night Court from 1985-88 and to castmate Woody Harrelson in 1989.
The portly, curly-haired Wendt was self-deprecating about his well-honed delivery, contending that the toughest part of his job was drinking the “beer,” a warm, flat, non-alcoholic concoction that was layered with a pinch of salt in every mug to create a TV head.
“There I was slamming those down for a whole day. It not only tastes disgusting, I was afraid of keeling over from high blood pressure,” he told The Washington Post in 1985. “Then I got the knack. I didn’t have to put all those brews away. It only mattered when the camera was pointing my way. It took a couple of years, but now I watch the camera. That’s how I make my money. That’s acting.”
One of nine kids, George Robert Wendt Jr. was born on Oct. 17, 1948. His father owned a real estate agency that his dad had founded, and his mother, Loretta, was a housewife and longtime volunteer and fund-raiser for Little Company of Mary Hospital.
Wendt’s maternal grandfather was photographer Tom Howard, who disguised himself as a priest to clandestinely snap one of the most infamous tabloid shots of all time — a picture of murderer Ruth Snyder in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in 1928 just as the switch was thrown. The photo appeared on the front page of the New York Daily News.
Wendt attended Campion High School, a Jesuit boarding school for boys in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, and then Notre Dame — until he was expelled with a 0.0 GPA as a junior.
“I basically quit and didn’t inform the university,” he told The Kansas City Star in 2016. “I’d moved off campus my junior year, and I didn’t think it through. I didn’t have a car. It was cold. I never went to class.”
Wendt worked for his dad, excelling in “getting coffee for the secretaries,” before earning a B.A. in economics in 1971 from another Jesuit school, Rockhurst College in Kansas City, Missouri. But then he hung out in Europe for the better part of three years.
Back home, Wendt thought he’d try to become a comedic actor. He attended several workshops and made it to Second City’s touring company and then, in 1975, the resident company. He was demoted after a year but eventually was called back up.
“I did mostly slice-of-life things,” he told the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner in 1983. “You make it sound real. If people stop believing you, you’re just telling jokes. That’s the way I do Norm. I don’t try to punch it up or joke it up.”
After six years of Second City, Wendt worked in the 1980 films My Bodyguard and Somewhere in Time and played an exterminator on a 1981 episode of Taxi that was written by Glen and Les Charles and directed by James Burrows — the three soon-to-be creators of Cheers.
At his Cheers audition, Wendt said he “needed to look like a guy who wanted to have another beer,” he told Chicago magazine in 2021, then spoke just one word in the pilot — “beer,” of course. (His character then was named George; John Ratzenberger, who would play fellow barfly Cliff Clavin on the sitcom, read for the part before Wendt got it.)
Later on the show, Norm became a house painter, an interior decorator and — dreams do come true! — a beer taster at a brewery.
When Cheers ended its run, NBC considered a spinoff featuring Wendt and Ratzenberger as bar buddies, but the show never materialized. Instead, he starred for CBS in 1995 in The George Wendt Show, playing the co-owner of a Wisconsin garage and co-host of a call-in radio show about car repair, but the comedy lasted just six episodes.
Wendt showed up as Norm over the years on St. Elsewhere, Wings, The Simpsons, Family Guy, Frasier and The Tortellis and as himself on Seinfeld and The Larry Sanders Show.
He also had recurring roles on The Naked Truth and Sabrina the Teenage Witch and guest-starred on other series like Alice, Soap, Hart to Hart, Danson’s Becker, Hot in Cleveland, Columbo, Harry’s Law, Fresh Off the Boat and The Goldbergs.
Wendt made his Broadway debut in Art in 1998, and in 2007-08, he sang and danced as Edna Turnblad in Hairspray in the role originated by Harvey Fierstein.
Survivors include his wife, actress Bernadette Birkett, whom he married in July 1978 — they met at Second City, and she was the unseen, offscreen voice of Norm’s wife, Vera, on Cheers — his children, Hilary, Joe and Daniel; and his stepchildren, Joshua and Andrew.
In what is hardly a surprise, Wendt starred in beer commercials for Miller Lite and Meister Brau — he said fans of Cheers yelled “Norm!” at him, just like on the show, and frequently bought him a round — and co-wrote a 2009 book, Drinking With George: A Barstool Professional’s Guide to Beer.
“I’m a simple man, I don’t ask for much. Give me a nice comfortable chair, a cool breeze, a ballgame on the radio and an ice-cold beer, and I couldn’t be happier,” he wrote to open the book.
“Truth be told, if it came down to it, I could live without the chair. A cool breeze is nice, but it isn’t exactly mandatory for a good time. And there are plenty of times when I don’t have access to a ballgame.
“But a world without beer? I don’t know if that’s the kind of world I want to live in.”
