In Remembrance: Charles Rocket

     Charles Rocket, the comic actor who appeared in such films as Dumb And Dumber (1994) and Dances With Wolves (1990) and who was fired from television’s Saturday Night Live in 1981 for inadvertently swearing on air, has passed away in Canterbury, Connecticut on October 7, 2005. He was 56.

     Born Charles Calervie on August 24, 1949 on Bangor, Maine, Rocket graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1973. He was influential in the Providence, RI art and performance scene, where he made several short films and fronted the local band the Fabulous Motels. Following a part-time job as a news reporter in Providence, he worked as a local news anchor Colorado Springs, Colorado and Nashville, Tennessee.

     Rocket joined Saturday Night Live at the start of its 1980-81 season - the show’s first year without any of its original cast – after he had unsuccessfully pitched a comedy series to NBC network executives. Rocket’s profanity incident happened at the end of February 1981 episode which was parodying the popular night time soap Dallas’s popular storyline “Who Shot JR?” with “Who Shot Charles Rocket?”. As the show was running undertime, Rocket and that week’s guest host, Dallas star Charlene Tilton, were forced to improvise a discussion about what it was like to get shot, at which point Rocket made his infamous slip. He was fired from the show a few weeks later, following numerous viewer complaints.

     Rocket made his first film appear in the 1985 comedy Fraternity Vacation. Rocket appeared in many comedies through the 80s and 90s, often as the nominal antagonist in such films as How I Got Into College (1989) and Dumb And Dumber. Other comedies he appeared in include Earth Girls Are Easy, Honeymoon Academy (1990), Hocus Pocus (1993), Wagons East (1994) and Father’s Day (1997). Rocket would also land the occasional dramatic role in such films as Dances With Wolves, director Robert Altman’s Short Cuts (1993) and Murder At 1600 (1997). He also contributed voice work to the animated science-fiction adventure Titan A.E. (2000).

     Despite his Saturday Night Live slipup, Rocket still made several television appearances. He starred in the short-lived series Murphy’s Law, Tequila And Bonetti and Flying Blind as well as the 1993 mini-series Wild Palms. He had a reoccurring role on romantic detective comedy Moonlighting as Bruce Willis’ con-man brother and appeared several times as a villainous television network executive on the science-fiction satire Max Headroom. He also had a recurring role on Touched By An Angel. Rocket also guest-starred on such shows as thirtysomething, Doctor, Doctor (which starred former Max Headroom colleague Matt Frewer), Quantum Leap and The X-Files. He reunited with Moonlighting co-star Cybil Shepard on two episodes of her sitcom Cybil. He also contributed voices to such cartoons as Men In Black: The Series, Batman Beyond and Static Shock as well as a few video games.

     Rocket’s last film was the 2003 crime drama Shade with Sylvester Stallone.