Cliff Emmich, the fun-loving character actor who made his mark in Payday, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Halloween II and Little Home on the Prairie, has died. He was 85.
Emmich died Monday at his Valley Village house in Los Angeles after a protracted battle with lung most cancers, his rep Steve Stevens instructed The worldnewsintel.
In maybe his most well-known function, Emmich performed the motive force Chicago, who steered the Cadillac sedan with Rip Torn‘s hard-living honky tonk singer Maury Dann within the backseat, in Payday (1973).
In Michael Cimino‘s Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), Emmich portrayed the Western Union safety guard with a porn fetish who’s interested in the long-legged, dress-wearing Jeff Bridges. He performed one other safety guard, one who falls sufferer to a hammer wielded by Michael Myers, in Halloween II (1981).
Emmich was at his greatest on the fifth season of NBC’s Little Home on the Prairie as an chubby, shy and embarrassed middle-aged man whose daughter is ashamed of him within the episode “The Man Inside.” Michael Landon wrote it with Emmich in thoughts, and it was one of many actor’s favourite roles.
Clifford Joseph Emmich was born in Cincinnati on Dec. 13, 1936, and raised in Los Angeles. His father, additionally named Clifford, bought unique overseas automobiles to Hollywood luminaries that included Gary Cooper, Clark Gable and Ozzie Nelson.
“Coop had this Duesenberg, and he used to exit with the women despite the fact that he was married,” Emmich recalled in a 2018 interview with Rob Phrase for A Phrase on Westerns. “He referred to as my dad and stated, ‘Cliff, I obtained the Duesy out in entrance, and I’m over at this lady’s home, and if all these gossip columnists on the town discover out about that automobile, they’ll know I’m upstairs. I obtained the keys beneath the entrance seat, so if you happen to’ll come and get it and drive it over to the lot, I’ll come over and get it or ship somebody over to select it up.’”
After graduating from John Muir Excessive College in Pasadena and serving within the U.S. Air Drive, Emmich studied performing on the Pasadena Playhouse, toured with the American Repertory Gamers and did summer time inventory on the Pink Garter Theatre in Jackson Gap, Wyoming.
He made his movie debut with an uncredited function in Norman Jewison’s Gaily, Gaily (1969), starring Beau Bridges.
Later, Emmich performed the counterfeiter often called “The Sweet Man” on the two-part Comfortable Days episode “Fonzie’s Funeral” in 1979.
His résumé additionally included the movies Invasion of the Bee Ladies (1973), the Yvette Mimieux-starring Jackson County Jail (1976), Barracuda (1978), Hellhole (1985) and Digital Man (1995) and TV stints on every thing from The Odd Couple, Ironside, The FBI, Starsky and Hutch and Evening Court docket to Homicide, She Wrote, Coach, Nash Bridges and Walker, Texas Ranger.
Survivors embrace his nephews, Chuck, Mark and James, and his niece, Shirley.
Phrase famous that Emmich “by no means missed a celebration, a lunch or an Academy screening. And he was all the time in a joyous temper, crammed with fantastic reminiscences of rising up in Hollywood and his performing exploits. He additionally had the largest and most infectious laughter of anybody.”
