In Remembrance: John Ritter 

     John Ritter, the Emmy award winning comic actor best known for his staring role on television’s Three Company, has passed away on September 11, 2003 of a previously undetected heart ailment. He was 54.

     Ritter was the youngest son of country singer and actor Tex Ritter and actress Dorothy Fay. Born on Sept 17, 1948 in Burbank, California, Ritter was raised in Hollywood surrounded by many of his father’s showbusiness friends. He graduated from Hollywood High School, where he was student body president. He graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in drama.

     His first film role was a bit part in the 1971 Disney flick The Barefoot Executive. He appeared in a small handful of films and in small roles on television until he landed a recurring role on the series The Waltons playing Rev. Matthew Fordwick from 1973 to 1976. In 1977, he landed the role of Jack Tripper on the sitcom Three’s Company, an American remake of the British Broadcasting Company’s sex farce comedy series Man About The House. Although it received a lambasting from critics, the show was a ratings hit and ran for seven years. He would carry the character over to the single season spin-off series Three’s A Crowd.

     The burst of popularity from his work on Three’s Company allowed Ritter to land a variety of comedic film roles including the President of the United States in Americathon (1979), a superhero in Hero at Large (1980) and Satan in Wholly Moses (1980).

     Through the 1980s Ritter continued to act in small films, made for television movies and in the TV series Hooperman. At the end of the decade He scored a minor hit with the Blake Edwards comedy Skin Deep (1989) and followed it up with the family comedy Problem Child (1990) and its sequel Problem Child 2(1991).

     He continued through the 1990s playing a variety of roles in both feature films and made for television movies. In 1996, he won critical acclaim for his portrayal of a gay man in the south in Billy Bob Thorton’s Sling Blade.

     Recently, he had begun to concentrate more on television work. In 1990, he gave voice to PBS’s animated children’s show Clifford, The Big Red Dog. He also had a recurring role on the drama Felicity from 2000 to 2002. Last year, his new sitcom 8 Simple Rules For Dating My Teenage Daughter became one of the few new hit shows for network ABC.

     Ritter had also appeared in 2002’s Tadpole, an independent film that met with much acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival. He also completed work on the dark comedy Bad Santa with Billy Bob Thornton, which should be released later this year.