Photo: Araya Diaz/Getty Images for International Myeloma Foundatio
Howard Hesseman, one of TV’s first hippie-archetype character actors, has died. He was 81. According to his manager, Hesseman died Saturday in Los Angeles due to complications from colon surgery. Hesseman performed improv in San Francisco, while also moonlighting as a radio DJ. It was this dual background he channeled to play Johnny Fever on CBS sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati. Hesseman was one of the first onscreen depictions of a countercultural figure, and far more sympathetic than the Maynard G. Krebs types that preceded him. “I think maybe Johnny smokes a little marijuana, drinks beer and wine, and maybe a little hard liquor,” Hesseman told the New York Times in…
