Actors Who Quit a Show/Appear and Disaappear (1 Viewer)

[The Obsolete Man]

Back to Don Knotts for as moment...

I thought that he left because he was originally under the impression that the show would run 5 years, and Andy had even agreed to that. However, CBS offered a boat load of money for the three color seasons, and Andy decided to go on, but it was too late for Knotts to re-sign with TAGS because he had already taken a feature deal elsewhere figuring that season 5 was it for TAGS.

 

[whisperintherain]

So glad they brought Gates McFadden back by popular demand, though. Nothing against Diana Muldaur, I just love the dynamics between Picard and Crusher, it's one of those "will they? won't they?" things where you just want them to get together but know that the second they do, your show is toast.

Also, I don't really know if this counts for this thread since rumor was she got fired from both shows, but you have to admit Shannen Doherty's exits from BEVERLY HILLS, 90210 in 1994 and CHARMED in 2001 made her a prime candidate for "has been" status, and yet, here she is again almost two decades after originating the role, back as Brenda Walsh on 90210.

 

[Bill Thomann]

Steven Hill left Mission: Impossible after one season due to his religious beliefs not allowing him to work a full work week and didn't work for 10 years. He got a second big role as Adam Schiff on Law & Order decades later.

 

[Elizabeth S]

Originally Posted by Dave B Ferris ">[/url]




Dick Wolf? NYPD Blue was a Bochco/Milch show, while the C.S.I.'s are all Brukenheimer (I thought).

[/QUOTE]Sorry, Dave, I was changing the subject after Caruso and his films. I meant to add Dick Wolf's "Law & Order" shows to the list of shows where cast members leave, though in his case it is usually planned that way.

[QUOTE]Originally Posted by [b]smithb[/b] [url=/forum/thread/292175/actors-who-quit-a-show-appear-and-disaappear#post_3600433]

 

[MatthewA]

In response to some of these (and I think enough time has passed not to need spoiler tags):

John Amos left Good Times to do the mini-series Roots; he was on the outs with Norman Lear after he gave a scathing interview to "Ebony" magazine where he basically trashed the J.J. character as a bad role model for blacks. Esther Rolle gave a similar interview to another magazine, left in 1977 with Florida's remarriage and moving somewhere where her new husband Carl, who had lung cancer, would feel better, and came back in 1978, minus the husband or any evidence he existed (her idea). Maybe he died and she didn't want to talk about it?

McLean Stevenson had FOUR shows while M*A*S*H was still running, all of them bombs:
—The McLean Stevenson Show (1975-1976, NBC)
—In The Beginning (1978, CBS)
—Hello, Larry (1979-1980, NBC)
—Condo (1983, ABC)

It's almost like his agent was booking the worst shows they offered him on purpose to send a message. That is, if they offered him any good ones to begin with.

Also:

—In 1969, everyone noticed the "new" Darren on Bewitched, but Dick York had to leave for his health; he suffered a severe back injury in a car accident in 1959 and became unable to perform the demanding physical stunts.

—Had there been a 6th season of The Brady Bunch, it would have been sans Robert Reed. Sherwood Schwartz got tired of his prima donna attitude regarding the scripts (and the way he approached the serious script problems in what ended up being the show's finale, not saying anything until the day before shooting began, sealed the deal).

—ABC successfully persuaded Nancy Walker to quit Rhoda for her own show, The Nancy Walker Show, in 1976. It flopped, and so did the next show they gave her, Blansky's Beauties. She was back on Rhoda in the fall of 1977.

—Sanford and Son was only cancelled because Redd Foxx had been offered a variety show on ABC that paid more than NBC and Norman Lear would put up. Demond Wilson was also offered a CBS sitcom, Baby I'm Back. Both flopped.

—Susan St. James left McMillan and Wife in 1976, so they renamed its final season McMillan.

—Louise Lasser left Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman in 1977. Without her, they renamed its final season Forever Fernwood.

—John Travolta left Welcome Back, Kotter in 1978 for a movie career that started out successfully, became stagnant in the 1980s, and picked up again in the 1990s. The show he left failed to recover, and his replacement, Stephen Strawbridge, was as un-Sweathoglike as they got. Meanwhile, Gabe Kaplan also got fed up with producer James Komack and left with two more episodes left to shoot in 1979.

—Fred Berry, Rerun on What's Happening!!, went on strike in 1979 for a salary increase, and convinced Ernest Thomas and Haywood Nelson to join him (Mabel King already quit in 1978 because she wanted Raj and Dee to have a mother and a father; her character of Mrs. Thomas was a divorcée). Despite the show's good ratings, ABC had 17 of the top 30 shows that season, and it was the 17th of those (tying at 28th with Monday Night Football), so they deemed it expendable and cancelled it. Seven years later, when the cast was reunited in syndication on What's Happening Now!!, Fred Berry once again demanded a salary increase, and left when the producers refused to meet it.

—Diana Canova left Soap in 1980 for her own unrelated series, I'm A Big Girl Now, which co-starred Danny Thomas. Both her old and new shows were gone next year.

—Suzanne Somers believed she was the reason for the success of Three's Company and demanded part ownership in the show and $100,000 per episode, more than the producers could afford. So she was out.

—A year after Larry Hagman's successful 1980 Dallas contract renegotiation made him a rich man, Don Murray believed he could do the same for himself on Knots Landing. He failed, and his character of Sid Fairgate paid the ultimate price.

—Cindy Williams, who always felt mistreated and unappreciated on set, left Laverne & Shirley in 1982 while pregnant. The name stayed, but the viewers didn't.

—After little more than a year trying to fit into an already established show, Dixie Carter left Diff'rent Strokes because she didn't get along with Gary Coleman, whose health and patience with the way his character was being written were wearing thin; Mary Ann Mobley replaced her in the show's final season, which Coleman had to be paid quite a pretty penny to be persuaded to do. Ironically, the second housekeeper, Nedra Volz, left this show in 1982 for a role on CBS's short-lived Filthy Rich, which Carter also starred in.

—Patrick Duffy left Dallas in 1985, leading to Bobby Ewing's death. The stories' direction in the season that followed so upset Larry Hagman that he persuaded Duffy to return. He did it, but how did they erase a year's worth of story? By making it Pam's dream the night she agreed to remarry Bobby. The show never lived that one down, and when Victoria Principal left in 1987, they refused to kill her off (in spite of the way her character was written off) in case she changed her mind. It never happened, and a revolving door of veterans and newcomers passed through the show's declining years. Meanwhile, the spin-off Knots Landing, whose writers were not consulted about the least worst way to bring back Bobby, refused to push the reset button on its season that coincided with Dallas's now-legendary "dream season", so they basically split their continuities at that point. Bobby was alive in Dallas and dead in Knots Landing.

—Meanwhile, Dynasty saw Al Corley leave when they tried (at ABC's insistence) to tone down Steven's homosexuality, leading to his oil rig explosion, plastic surgery, and recast in the person of Jack Coleman.
—Charlotte Rae left The Facts of Life in 1986 because she believed the girls had grown up enough not to need Mrs. Garrett. The writers must have felt so, too; this was reflected in the dearth of air time she received in her last season.

—Shelley Long quit Cheers, where no one on the set got along with her, for a movie career. That movie career didn't even outlast the show.

—Delta Burke quit Designing Women in 1991 after a very public row (and a string of negative publicity) when the producers tried to get her to lose weight, but she couldn't. Jean Smart went with her. They tried adding Julia Duffy and Jan Hooks as Suzanne and Charlene's respective cousins, but it wasn't the same. Ironically, the 1991-1992 season had the show's highest Nielsen rating ever. Burke mended fences long enough to do a short-lived 1995 spin-off, Women of the House. What was not known at the time (or at least not reported in the tabloids) was that she suffered from severe depression.

—In 1999, Maggie Roswell refused to continue to commute from her home in Denver to LA to record her voices for The Simpsons without a salary increase. Fox refused her, so her most famous character, Maude Flanders, died in a freak accident, yet she has returned infrequently over the past few years to do her other characters.

As for spin-offs:

—Marla Gibbs had a short-lived Jeffersons spin-off called Checking In in 1981. It ran a month, and she got a smooth transition back onto the old show.

—Audra Lindley and Norman Fell weren't so lucky. ABC used the fact that The Ropers, their Three's Company spin-off, technically had 2 seasons, not to bring them back when it flopped.

—Polly Holliday was also denied re-entry to Alice when her spin-off, Flo, flopped, as it technically had 2 seasons as well.

—Lisa Bonet was spun-off from The Cosby Show to A Different World in 1987, but she got pregnant, and there was no way to write around it, so they had her drop out of Hillman College and return to the parent show in 1989. She left for good after two more years.

 

[The Obsolete Man]

Originally Posted by MatthewA

In response to some of these (and I think enough time has passed not to need spoiler tags):

...Meanwhile, Gabe Kaplan also got fed up with producer James Komack and left with two more episodes left to shoot in 1979.

It was a bit more than that. Kaplan might have appeared in a half dozen episodes that final season, if that. Most of the time, his TV Wife, Marcia Strassman became Mr. Woodman's secretary, and was substitute teaching for Kotter.

I recall Kaplan in the season premier, and the two part Horshack gets married episode, and that's about it. There were probably a couple more, but the final season of Welcome Back, Kotter was largely Kotter-less.

 

[Greg_S_H]

Originally Posted by MatthewA

In response to some of these (and I think enough time has passed not to need spoiler tags):

—Suzanne Somers believed she was the reason for the success of Three's Company and demanded part ownership in the show and $100,000 per episode, more than the producers could afford. So she was out.

Dude, save some for us!

I knew about Somers reasons for leaving, and it's hilarious. Ritter was absolutely the star of that show. There's no question in my mind about that. By the time Somers left, she had turned Crissy into a complete joke. She started out being very attractive and funny, in spite of being slightly dingy. When she left, any physical attraction was lost with her ridiculous facial expressions and her oinking. And, the writers made her too stupid to live. I've seen her say, "I created the laugh and the walk!" Gee, thanks.

—Never saw it, but I understand the female star of McMillan and Wife was killed off because she demanded more money.

—Same source, I heard that Ned Flanders' wife was killed off on the Simpsons because she wanted to be able to fly between LA and NYC between voice recording sessions.

—The Amy Allen character disappeared from the A-Team and was briefly replaced by Tawnia. George Peppard reportedly had no use for either the character or Melinda Culea, and he drove her away. He was right that a female sidekick wasn't needed and I don't think anyone cared when the idea was ultimately dropped.

—Michael Shanks left Stargate SG-1 for a season and there were other stretches of show where he wasn't around. I think he thought the character was being underused or misused and wanted out, and then realized he had had a good thing. It was apparently not too acrimonious of a split, because he guest-starred in his lost season.

 

[MatthewA]

Originally Posted by The Obsolete Man



It was a bit more than that. Kaplan might have appeared in a half dozen episodes that final season, if that. Most of the time, his TV Wife, Marcia Strassman became Mr. Woodman's secretary, and was substitute teaching for Kotter.

I recall Kaplan in the season premier, and the two part Horshack gets married episode, and that's about it. There were probably a couple more, but the final season of Welcome Back, Kotter was largely Kotter-less.

Wow, I had no idea about that. I remember watching a "Sitcom Scandals" special 10 years ago where they basically say producer James Komack turned the set into a war zone by turning Kaplan and Strassman against each other. Without actually seeing the episodes (and the prospect of any more season sets growing dimmer each day), I'll have to take your word for it.

 

[Stan]

Kind of a minor character, but I always enjoyed her, was Megan on NUMB3RS, played by Diane Farr.

She left a season or two ago. IMDB shows she did an episode of Californication this year and has a series on USA called Life UneXpected coming out sometime next year, so hasn't completely disappeared, but not much going on.

 

[Greg_S_H]

Rebecca Gayheart was on a couple episode of Dead Like Me before jumping off for good.

 

[John L]

Mandy Patinkin seems to quit TV shows after two seasons (eg. Chicago Hope, Dead Like Me, Criminal Minds) and never returns. Maybe he doesn't want to be typecast or commit to a full series ?

 

[BobSchneider]

Originally Posted by John L . The LA times did a interview with patinkin asking why he left criminal minds and simple put it wasnt money or cast conflicts it simple the show was taking a progressive wierder, vile and more graphic than he care to act in so he left the show.

 

[BobSchneider]

David Caruso post NYPD blue career tanks large due to the horrible warm steamy piles of feces movie projects he pick to be in after NYPD Blue . He has talent and sadly now is mostly ghost walking thought the last few season of CSI Miami , but he now knows it ok to collect the $$$$$$$$$ something his fellow NYPD Class mate Dennis Franz learn in the 70's LOL

 

[chadHobbick]

Well to be fair to Rebecca Gayheart, she was staring in a show as a person who takes people's souls and the year before she killed a child in a car accident by hitting him. I can't remember if she chose to leave or the writers wrote her out, but that was the ultimate reason. It was thought to be too grusome for her to be in a show about taking lives seeing as how she just did so by accident.

In regards to Patinkin, DLM was cancelled after two seasons, so he didn't really jump ship on that show. He didn't appear in the direct to dvd movie b/c he was filming Criminal Minds. I was always holding out hope that he quit Criminal Minds b/c DLM was in talks to come back and he was more interested in picking back up in that series, other than continuing on in Criminal Minds.

 

[Jack P]

The attempts to make a star out of McLean Stevenson in the 1970s, when he had absolutely zero star talent boggles the mind. They not only gave him a week hosting the Tonight Show but in 1975 he even had his own NBC variety special if you can believe it.

Some earlier examples not mentioned would be Martin Landau and Barbara Bain qutting Mission: Impossible over salary matters and that move didn't help either of their careers.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Originally Posted by Joseph DeMartino ">[/url]


On the other side of the ledger we have John Travolta and George Clooney, who really were bigger than the shows that made them stars, and proved it by moving on and becoming much bigger in movies. (And Tom Hanks who did the same, but loyally stayed with his show until it was thorugh with him, rather than [i]vice versa[/i].

 

[WendyCR]

USA Network had a TV adaption of the '87 movie The Big Easy in the mid '90s. Tony Crane had Dennis Quaid's Remy McSwain role and Susan Walters had Ellen Barkin's Anne Osborne role.

Anyway, while not completely anti-chemistry, the pairing with these actors was tepid. By the end of Season 1, there was a scene with Remy entering - I believe it was a bedroom - with Anne as the door closed.

Fast forward to Season 2 with hardly a mention of Anne at all, if any, and Leslie Bibb joined the cast as a young police recruit. The show died later that season.

 

[Greg_S_H]

On Family Matters, the Winslows had three kids. The youngest literally went upstairs one episode and never came back down. By the end, Carl would even refer to "my two kids." There was also a cousin who just kind of disappeared.

 

[Ockeghem]

^^^

Remind me not to try out for that show.

 

[Elizabeth S]

Originally Posted by Stan

Kind of a minor character, but I always enjoyed her, was Megan on NUMB3RS, played by Diane Farr.

She left a season or two ago. IMDB shows she did an episode of Californication this year and has a series on USA called Life UneXpected coming out sometime next year, so hasn't completely disappeared, but not much going on.

Diane Farr left "Rescue Me" after just one season, too. Too bad -- I liked her on the show.