Max Wright, who played the dad on "ALF", passed away late last month. :-(
Always liked him. In one of my personal favorite comedies, "Norm" (starring Norm Macdonald), he played norm's cranky boss who Norm would pester and torment because it drove the boss crazy. There's a scene in an episode, titled "The Norm Law", where they are in court and the boss is trying to get a law passed impacting Norm and it results in one of the funniest scenes of any comedy series I have ever seen.*
MacDonald must have liked him, 'cause he stuck with him, even inviting him back for a failed sketch comedy pilot, which was Wright's final acting gig (2005).
LAST EMBRACE was a 1979 thriller in which a CIA agent (Roy Scheider), who has seen his wife assassinated, believes that he is to be next. Max Wright and Mandy Patinkin had bit parts as commuters in the film.
Roy Scheider, Max Wright, and Mandy Patinkin in LAST EMBRACE
Jonathan Demme directed the film. Miklos Rozsa's score was most recently released by Intrada in 2009.
ALL THAT JAZZ was Max Wright's second film with Roy Scheider. The film follows "Joe Gideon" (Scheider), a successful, workaholic director-choreographer, who divides his time between two productions in New York City. After auditioning dancers for an upcoming Broadway musical titled, NY/LA, he rushes to supervise the editing of The Stand Up, his feature film about a comic played by the actor "Davis Newman" (Cliff Gorman). In the editing room, film producer "Joshua Penn" (Max Wright) panics that The Stand Up is over budget by $2.2 million, but Joe pacifies Josh by showing him how much the opening monologue has improved.
Bob Fosse directed the 1979 film, which was loosely based on incidents from his life. Ralph Burns arranged and conducted the vocal music for the film and provided the uncredited underscore, some of which appeared on the Casablanca Records soundtrack LP. The album's CD releases have all been outside the U.S., from Casablanca and Spectrum Records.
The Institute for Advanced Concepts is a group of five powerful scientists led by “Dr. Carl Becker” (Austin Pendleton). They are so brilliant that they have secured unfathomable government contracts to give them unlimited resources. “Leon Hundertwasser” (Max Wright) changes Nielsen ratings. “Eric Van Dongen” (Wallace Shawn) is trying to cross breed humanity with cockroaches. Then they read that over 60% of Americans believe in extra-terrestrials. They decide to hypnotize “Prof. Simon Mendelssohn” (Alan Arkin) with the help of “Dr. Cynthia Malloy” (Madeline Kahn) into thinking that he was an alien at birth and then abandoned. “Lisa” (Judy Graubart, in her theatrical film debut) is the girlfriend and assistant of SIMON.
The picture marked the theatrical directorial debut of Marshall Brickman, best known for his writing collaboration with Woody Allen. Stanley Silverman provided the unreleased score. SIMON took in $6.3 million at the box office.
REDS followed radical American journalist John Reed (Warren Beatty) as be becomes involved with the Communist revolution in Russia, and hopes to bring its spirit and idealism to the United States. Max Wright played Floyd Dell in the film. Dell became a leader of the pre-WWI bohemian community in Greenwich Village and managing editor of Max Eastman's radical magazine The Masses.
Warren Beatty directed and co-wrote the 1981 film. Dave Grusin and Stephen Sondheim collaborated on the film’s score, which was released on a Columbia LP. The LP was re-issued on CD by Razor & Tie in 1999.
Max Wright co-starred in his first network television show with “Buffalo Bill”, a sitcom that featured the misadventures of an egotistical talk show host, played by Dabney Coleman, and his staff (including Geena Davis and Joanna Cassidy) at WBFL-TV, a small TV station in Buffalo, New York. Max Wright played “Karl Shub,” WBFL's station manager.
NBC debuted “Buffalo Bill” on June 1, 1983, as a summer replacement series for “Family Ties.” The show aired 12 episodes through August 17, 1983. It performed well enough to be kept in reserve as a mid-season replacement show for the 1983-84 season. “Buffalo Bill” returned to the air on December 22, 1983 to fill a hole in NBC’s schedule when it moved the failing sitcom “We Got It Made” to another night. That show had faltered against CBS’s popular detective series “Simon and Simon” (the #5 rated show for the season). However, “Buffalo Bill” did not do any better against the competition (ranking #72 in the Nielsen’s) and was cancelled at the end of the season after airing another 14 episodes.
The cast of “Buffalo Bill” (clockwise from upper left): Geena Davis, Dabney Coleman, Max Wright, Joanna Cassidy, and John Fiedler
Max Wright’s second television series was “Misfits of Science”. It was the adventures of a team of misfit superheroes who fight crime for the Humanidyne Institute, a scientific think tank. The cast included:
Dean Paul Martin as Dr. Billy Hayes, the non-super-powered leader of the team.
Kevin Peter Hall as Dr. Elvin "El" Lincoln, Billy's colleague and close friend. He is a towering man who has the ability to shrink for minutes at a time.
Mark Thomas Miller as Johnny "Johnny B" Bukowski, a rock-and-roll musician who was electrocuted on stage, thus giving him formidable electrical powers.
Courteney Cox as Gloria Dinallo, a troubled telekinetic teen, who was in trouble with the law in her past.
Jennifer Holmes as Jane Miller, Gloria's probation officer.
Max Wright as Dick Stetmeyer, the uptight director of the Humanidyne Institute.
NBC debuted the one-hour show on Friday, 4 October 1985, at 9 PM. Unfortunately, the show was up against, and got killed in the ratings by, CBS’s “Dallas,” the #6 rated show for the year. At midseason, “Misfits of Science” was moved an hour earlier in NBC’s schedule, switching places with “Knight Rider,” which the network hoped would fare better against “Dallas.” It was not to be however, and both series were cancelled at the end of the season. “Misfits of Science” produced only 16 episodes.
Max Wright’s third television series, and the one for which he is best known, was “ALF”. The title character is “Gordon Shumway,” a sarcastic, friendly extraterrestrial nicknamed ALF (an acronym for Alien Life Form). ALF is from the planet Melmac. He follows an amateur radio signal to Earth and crash-lands in the garage of the suburban middle-class Tanner family. Unsure what to do, the Tanners take ALF into their home and hide him from the Alien Task Force (a part of the U.S. military that specializes in aliens) and their nosy neighbors “Trevor and Raquel Ochmonek” (John La Motta and Liz Sheridan), until he can repair his spacecraft.
The series stars Max Wright as father “Willie Tanner”, Anne Schedeen as mother “Kate Tanner,” and Andrea Elson and Benji Gregory as their children, “Lynn” and “Brian Tanner.” ALF was performed by puppeteer Paul Fusco, who co-created the show with Tom Patchett. In Season 4, the Tanners had another child, “Eric” (Charles Nickerson).
The cast of ALF (l. to r): Benji Gregory, Andrea Elson, ALF, Anne Schedeen, Charles Nickerson, and Max Wright
NBC premiered the show on Monday, 22 September 1986 at 8 PM. The half-hour sitcom was opposite another sitcom, “Kate & Allie” on CBS and the action show “MacGyver” on ABC. The two sitcoms split most of the audience, with “Kate & Allie” coming in as the #19 most-watched show of the season and “ALF” getting into the top 30 shows in the #28 position.
ALF, Max Wright, and Anne Schedeen
In its second season (1987-88), “Kate & Allie” dropped out of the top 30 shows, and “ALF” moved up to the #10 position (tied with “The Wonder Years”). Against all of the same competition in season 3 (1988-89) “ALF” dropped slightly to the #15 slot (tied with “Monday Night Football”).
ALF and Max Wright
“ALF” faced new competition in its fourth season (1989-90). CBS replaced “Kate & Allie” with “Major Dad,” a sitcom starring Gerald McRaney. And the new Fox network expanded its programing to a third night on Mondays, and placed one of its biggest hit shows, “21 Jump Street,” up against “ALF”. Along with ABC’s “MacGyver”, all of these shows split up the audience, and none of them made it into the top 30 shows for the year. Even though “ALF” was still in the #39 position, NBC decided to cancel the show.
ALF and Max Wright
Due to the inherent nature of producing a show featuring hand-operated puppets (à la Jim Henson's “The Muppet Show”), “ALF” was technically difficult and demanding on series creator Fusco as well as its four lead actors. All confirmed during a 2000 People magazine interview that there were high levels of tension on the set. Max Wright stated that he despised supporting a technically demanding inanimate object that received most of the good lines of dialogue. He admitted to being "hugely eager to have ALF over with."
Max Wright
Artie Lange, who later worked with Wright on “The Norm Show,” told of a time when Wright had become "crazed" and attacked ALF, screaming "Put us all on sticks. We're all puppets!" Producers had to pull Wright off the puppet. Wright was famous for screaming out "Curse you Hussein!" to the cast and crew, comparing conditions on the set to Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Max Wright, ALF, and Andrea Elson
Anne Schedeen stated that on the last night of taping, "there was one take and Max walked off the set, went to his dressing room, got his bags, went to his car and disappeared... There were no goodbyes." Schedeen herself said "there was no joy on the set...it was a technical nightmare – extremely slow, hot and tedious... A 30-minute show took 20, 25 hours to shoot."
Benji Gregory and Max Wright
While fond of her on-screen children, Schedeen said some adults had "difficult personalities. The whole thing was a big dysfunctional family." Schedeen added, "It's astonishing that ‘ALF’ really was wonderful and that word never got out what a mess our set really was." Andrea Elson, who suffered from bulimia during the second season of shooting, stated, "If ‘ALF’ had gone one more year, everybody would have lost it." Max Wright did later concede, though, that "It doesn't matter what I felt or what the days were like, ‘ALF’ brought people a lot of joy."
Max wright appeared in another short-lived television series in 1993. “Dudley” was a sitcom starring Dudley Moore (in his episodic TV debut) and Joanna Cassidy. The series focused on the "forced" cohabitation between “Dudley Bristol” (Moore), a mature divorced cabaret pianist, and his 14-year-old son “Fred” (Harley Cross). Max Wright played “Paul.” The series premiered on April 16, 1993, on CBS, temporarily replacing “Major Dad” on Friday nights. It was canceled on May 14, 1993, after five episodes had aired, with one episode remaining unaired.
In the 1994 television mini-series THE STAND, a plague of biblical proportions sweeps across the country, decimating the U.S. and taking millions of lives. The few that survive are summoned, through dreams and visions, to either the "good" area, led by the kind "Mother Abigail" (Ruby Dee), or the "bad" area, led by the demonic "Randall Flagg" (Jamey Sheridan). Gary Sinise, Adam Storke, Molly Ringwald, and Rob Lowe play some of those summoned to Mother Abigail, while Miguel Ferrer and Sam Anderson play some of those summoned to Randall Flagg.
Max Wright appeared as “Dr. Herbert Denninger” in the production. Mick Garris directed the film. The score, by W.G. 'Snuffy' Walden, was released by Varese Sarabande.
Gary Sinise (center) and Max Wright (right) in THE STAND
In 1930s New York City, THE SHADOW battles his nemesis, “Shiwan Khan” (John Lone), who is building an atomic bomb. Alec Baldwin had the title role of “Lamont Cranston” (aka “The Shadow”) in this 1994 action adventure. Max Wright had a small role as “Berger.” Russell Mulcahy directed the film. Jerry Goldsmith’s score was released by Arista. In 2012, Intrada re-issued the album along with the complete score.
Used to love Alf. Max was good in it, he held it together playing the under-siege stressed out man of the house. But the quips of Alf and the dialogue were relentlessly funny. I remember one episode where the daughter comes home from a date and is about to kiss the boy on the porch but Alf is calling out threatening shit from inside the house like he's her protective father ! and i think it so frightens the boy that he makes an excuse and runs off.
Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau were even GRUMPIER OLD MEN in the 1995 sequel to their 1993 hit comedy GRUMPY OLD MEN. In this follow-up, “John Gustafson” (Lemmon) and “Max Goldman” (Matthau) resolve to save their beloved bait shop from turning into an Italian restaurant, just as its new female owner (Sophia Loren) catches Max's attention. Max Wright had a small role in the film as a County Health Inspector.
Howard Deutch directed the film. Alan Silvestri’s score has not had a legitimate release, but two tracks (5 minutes) appeared on the TVT Records release of the film’s songs.
Max Wright appeared in one episode of the 1998 12-episode television mini-series FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON. In the third episode, “We Have Cleared the Tower,” broadcast on HBO on 12 April 1998, NASA prepares for the Apollo 7 mission. Wright played the real life Günter F. Wendt (1924 – 2010), a German-American mechanical engineer who worked on the U.S. manned spaceflight program.
Lili Fini Zanuck directed the episode, which was scored by Mark Isham.
In the 1999 film production of Shakespeare’s A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, Kevin Kline plays “Nick Bottom, the Weaver,” one of the "rude mechanicals," who stages a play within the play and winds up in fair queen "Titania's" (Michelle Pfeiffer) swinging arbor. Bottom is turned into an ass under the spell of “Puck” (Stanley Tucci). Max Wright plays “Robin Starveling, the Tailor.” In the mechanicals’ performance of Pyramus and Thisbe, he uses a lantern in a failed attempt to portray “Moonshine” and is wittily derided by his audience.
Michael Hoffman directed the film. Simon Boswell’s score was released by Decca.
Set on the fictional island of San Piedro in the northern Puget Sound region of the Washington state coast in 1950, SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS revolves around the murder case of “Kazuo Miyamoto” (Rick Yune), a Japanese-American accused of killing “Carl Heine” (Eric Thal), a white fisherman. Covering the case is the editor of the town's one-man newspaper, “Ishmael Chambers” (Ethan Hawke), a World War II veteran who lost an arm fighting the Japanese in the Pacific War. Max Wright had a small part as “Horace Whaley” in the production.
Scott Hicks directed the 1999 film. James Newton Howard’s score was released by Decca.
Max Wright’s final regular series television role came in “The Norm Show”. The show focused on the life of “Norm Henderson” (Norm Macdonald), a former NHL hockey player who is banned for life from the league because of gambling and tax evasion. To avoid jail time for these crimes, Norm must perform five years of community service as a full-time social worker. Other characters in the show included fellow social workers “Laurie Freeman” (Laurie Metcalf), “Danny Sanchez” (Ian Gomez), and Faith Ford as “Shelly Kilmartin,” Norm’s probation officer. Norm's boss on the program for the first several episodes was named “Anthony Curtis” and was played by Bruce Jarchow. This character was quickly replaced by a new boss, “Max Denby,” played by Max Wright.
“The Norm Show” debuted on ABC on Wednesday 24 March 1999 at 9:30 PM as a replacement for the failed new sitcom “The Secret Lives of Men,” which starred Peter Gallagher and Bradley Whitford. Even though it was up against the #30 show on television, “60 Minutes II,” on CBS, “NewsRadio” on NBC, and “Party of Five” on Fox, “The Norm Show” did well enough to earn a spot on NBC’s fall schedule.
For its second season (1999-2000), the show was renamed to just “Norm,” and it spent most of the year airing an hour earlier, at 8:30 PM, on Wednesday nights. The show didn’t face particularly hard competition (“Beverly Hills, 90210" on Fox; news magazine “Dateline Wednesday” on NBC), and “Norm” was renewed for a third season.
In its third season (2000-01), ABC moved “Norm” to Friday night against CBS’s juggernaut “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” the #11 rated show for the year. In the spring, ABC relocated the show to an earlier timeslot on Friday, out of CSI’s way, but by then it was too late to boost “Norm’s” ratings and the show was cancelled after 54 episodes.
Artie Lange has said this was the proudest he's been about an acting job, primarily due to the professionalism of trained theater actor Max Wright.
The cast of “The Norm Show” (l. to r.): Laurie Metcalf, Max Wright, Norm Macdonald, Artie Lange, Faith Ford, and Ian Gomez
Max Wright did plenty of stage work and was nominated for Broadway's 1998 Tony Award as Best Actor (Featured Role - Play) for "Ivanov." But it is as a sitcom actor that most of the public will remember him best. Thanks for the fun, Max.
"Norm" is one of my personal favorite comedy shows.
They had to change the name because some cable-access show nobody and their grandmother had ever heard of, also called "Norm", sued.
The ratings decline was no surprise, considering what an awful job they did promoting the show. At one point their "brilliant" "idea" of promoting it was to show Norm's head being flushed down a toilet.
