I didn't know John Ritter personally. I never met him. The closest I came to meeting him was when my family visited San Francisco in 1980.
Then why was I so saddened this morning at the news of his death? I guess he just seemed like a genuinely good guy, and he was simply far too young to die. Nobody saw it coming, either. One minute he's fine, the next his aorta bursts and he bleeds to death internally. It's a rare condition, but not rare enough.
Like most people of television watching age in the late 1970's I was glued to the set (and Suzanne Somers' breasts) when Three's Company was on. He was what made that show great. He teemed with both charm and phenomenal comic timing, and his gift for physical comedy was the icing on the cake. The next thing I recall seeing him in was Stephen King's It, which should have been spelled with an "sh" at the beginning. The ending of that movie completely torpedoed what had been truly suspenseful and gripping, but that's beside the point. He was good in it, and it seemed a shame that he wasn't on TV on a regular basis anymore.
That changed in the 90's with his sitcom whose name escapes my at the moment. That ran for a few years, then got cancelled. Finally last year his new sitcom, 8 Simple rules... turned out to be a surprise hit. And just about a month ago VH1 showed a movie dramatizing the Three's Company years, which portrayed Ritter as a genuinely good guy.
Just when things were going well and his career was on a strong upswing, his body fails him. He collapsed and died right on the set. I cannot imagine how shocking and devastating that must have been for those folks who were there. My only hope is that no cameras were rolling at the time, so we won't have pirated copies of his death floating around the 'net for all eternity.
This is only the third time I actually felt sorrow at the death of a celebrity. Sam Kinison was the first. His years of stellar appearances on Howard Stern's radio show endeared him to me, for some reason.
The worst one, however, was Phil Hartman in 1998. Man, that put me in a funk for a couple of days. Phil (as I like to call him) is more or less my idol. He began performing a bit later in life than most - at age 30 - and quickly went from performing with The Groundlings in L.A. to writing for Pee Wee Herman to writing and performing on Saturday Night Live. His talent also earned him a fairly steady gig on The Simpsons, where he voiced two of the shows most memorable characters: attourney Lionel Hutz and actor Troy McClure.
As one who always wanted to do cartoon voices, I found Phil Hartman to be a real inspiration. When I found out he had been killed, I felt somehow deflated.
In a way, I feel similarly with the death of John Ritter. Just when things were finally going his way once more, he lost absolutely everything. He deserved better
I have nothing but sympathy for those who knew and loved him. Again, he seemed to be a good guy, and to date I have neither read nor heard accounts to the contrary. He left us far too soon. It would have been great - and probably a lot of fun - to watch him age.