From: bigmongo1963@biteme.com   
      
   https://apnews.com/article/george-wendt-   
   dies-55681263ea8b5bddaf1c89e8e9ba8cb1   
      
   George Wendt, who played a beloved barfly on ‘Cheers’ and found another   
   home onstage, dies at 76   
      
   By  MARK KENNEDY   
   Updated 4:40 PM EDT, May 20, 2025   
      
   NEW YORK (AP) — George Wendt, an actor with an Everyman charm who played   
   the affable, beer-loving barfly Norm on the hit 1980s TV comedy “Cheers”   
   and later crafted a stage career that took him to Broadway in “Art,”   
   “Hairspray” and “Elf,” has died. He was 76.   
      
   Wendt’s family said he died early Tuesday morning, peacefully in his sleep   
   while at home, according to the publicity firm The Agency Group.   
      
   “George was a doting family man, a well-loved friend and confidant to all   
   of those lucky enough to have known him,” the family said in a statement.   
   “He will be missed forever.” The family has requested privacy during this   
   time.   
      
   Despite a long career of roles onstage and on TV, it was as gentle and   
   henpecked Norm Peterson on “Cheers” that he was most associated, earning   
   six straight Emmy Award nominations for best supporting actor in a comedy   
   series from 1984-89.   
      
   The series was centered on lovable losers in a Boston bar and starred Ted   
   Danson, Shelley Long, Rhea Perlman, Kelsey Grammer, John Ratzenberger,   
   Kirstie Alley and Woody Harrelson. It would spin off another megahit in   
   “Frasier” and was nominated for an astounding 117 Emmy Awards, winning 28   
   of them.   
      
   Wendt, who spent six years in Chicago’s renowned Second City improv troupe   
   before sitting on a barstool at the place where everybody knows your name,   
   didn’t have high hopes when he auditioned for “Cheers.”   
      
   “My agent said, ‘It’s a small role, honey. It’s one line. Actually,   
   it’s   
   one word.’ The word was ‘beer.’ I was having a hard time believing I was   
   right for the role of ‘the guy who looked like he wanted a beer.’ So I   
   went in, and they said, ‘It’s too small a role. Why don’t you read this   
   other one?’ And it was a guy who never left the bar,” Wendt told GQ in an   
   oral history of “Cheers.”   
      
   ‘Where everyone knows your name’   
   “Cheers” premiered on Sept. 30, 1982, and spent the first season with low   
   ratings. NBC president Brandon Tartikoff championed the show, and it was   
   nominated for an Emmy for best comedy series in its first season. Some 80   
   million people would tune in to watch its series finale 11 years later.   
      
   Wendt became a fan favorite in and outside the bar — his entrances were   
   cheered with a warm “Norm!” — and his wisecracks always landed.   
   “How’s a   
   beer sound, Norm?” he would be asked by the bartender. “I dunno. I usually   
   finish them before they get a word in,” he’d respond.   
      
   While the beer the cast drank on set was nonalcoholic, Wendt and other   
   “Cheers” cast members have admitted they were tipsy on May 20, 1993, when   
   they watched the show’s final episode then appeared together on “The   
   Tonight Show” in a live broadcast from the Bull and Finch Pub in Boston,   
   the bar that inspired the series.   
      
   ″We had been drinking heavily for two hours but nobody thought to feed   
   us,” Wendt told the Beaver County Times of Pennsylvania in 2009. “We were   
   nowhere near as cute as we thought we were.”   
      
   After “Cheers,” Wendt starred in his own short-lived sitcom “The George   
   Wendt Show” — “too bad he had to step out of Norm and down so far from   
   that corner stool for his debut stanza,” sniffed Variety — and had guest   
   spots on TV shows like “The Ghost Whisperer,” “Harry’s Law” and   
   “Portlandia.” He was part of a brotherhood of Chicago Everymen who   
   gathered over sausage and beers and adored “Da Bears” on “Saturday Night   
   Live.”   
      
   Second career on stage   
   But he found steady work onstage: Wendt slipped on Edna Turnblad’s   
   housecoat in Broadway’s “Hairspray” beginning in 2007, and was in the   
   Tony   
   Award-winning play “Art” in New York and London.   
      
   He starred in the national tour of “12 Angry Men” and appeared in a   
   production of David Mamet’s “Lakeboat.” He also starred in regional   
   productions of “Death of a Salesman,” “The Odd Couple,” “Never Too   
   Late”   
   and “Funnyman.”   
      
   “A, it’s by far the most fun, but B, I seem to have been kicked out of   
   television,” Wendt told the Kansas City Star in 2011. “I overstayed my   
   welcome. But theater suits me.”   
      
   Wendt had an affinity for playing Santa Claus, donning the famous red   
   outfit in the stage musical “Elf” on Broadway in 2017, the TV movie   
   “Santa   
   Baby” with Jenny McCarthy in 2006 and in the doggie Disney video “Santa   
   Buddies” in 2009. He also played Father Christmas for TV specials by Larry   
   the Cable Guy and Stephen Colbert.   
      
   “I think it just proves that if you stay fat enough and get old enough,   
   the offers start rolling in,” the actor joked to the AP in his Broadway   
   dressing room.   
      
   Born in Chicago, Wendt attended Campion High School, a Catholic boarding   
   school in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, and then Notre Dame, where he   
   rarely went to class and was kicked out. He transferred to Rockhurst   
   University in Kansas City and graduated, after majoring in economics.   
      
   He found a home at Second City in both the touring company and the   
   mainstage.   
      
   “I think comedy is my long suit, for sure. My approach to comedy is   
   usually not full-bore clownish,” he told the AP. “If you’re trying to   
   showboat or step outside, it doesn’t always work. There are certain   
   performers who almost specialize in doing that, and they do it really   
   well. But that’s not my approach.”   
      
   Cheers for beer   
   He had a lifelong association with beer. He had his first taste as an 8-   
   year-old and got drunk at 16, at the World’s Fair in New York.   
      
   His beer knowledge was poured into the book ″Drinking With George: A   
   Barstool Professional’s Guide to Beer,” co-written with Jonathan   
   Grotenstein. One line: “Will Rogers once said he never met a man he didn’t   
   like. I feel the same about beer.”   
      
   Part autobiography, part beer drinker’s guide, the book had Wendt’s   
   conversational tone and lists, such as “Five Good Bar Bets,” ″77 Toasts   
   from Around the World” and ”(More Than) 100 Ways to Say That You’re   
   Drunk,” which alphabetically lists 126 synonyms from “annihilated”   
   through   
   “zozzled.”   
      
   He is survived by his wife, Second City alum Bernadette Birkett, who   
   voiced Norm’s never-seen not-so better half, Vera, on “Cheers.”   
      
   “From his early days with The Second City to his iconic role as Norm on   
      
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