George Wendt, Chicago actor who starred as Norm on ‘Cheers,’ dies at 76

NEW YORK — George Wendt, an actor with an everyman charm who played the affable, beer-loving barfly Norm on the hit 1980s TV comedy “Cheers” and later crafted a stage career that took him to Broadway in “Art,” “Hairspray” and “Elf,” has died. He was 76.

Mr. Wendt’s family said he died early Tuesday morning, peacefully in his sleep while at home, according to the publicity firm the Agency Group.

“George was a doting family man, a well-loved friend and confidant to all of those lucky enough to have known him,” his family said in a statement. “He will be missed forever.”

Despite a long career of roles onstage and TV, it was as gentle and henpecked Norm Peterson on “Cheers” that he was most associated, earning six straight Emmy Award nominations for best supporting actor in a comedy series from 1984-89.

The series was centered on lovable losers in a Boston bar and starred Ted Danson, Shelley Long, Rhea Perlman, Kelsey Grammer, John Ratzenberger, Kirstie Alley and Woody Harrelson. It would spin off another megahit in “Frasier” and was nominated for an astounding 117 Emmy Awards, winning 28 of them.

Mr. Wendt, who spent six years in Chicago’s renowned Second City improv troupe before sitting on a barstool at the place where everybody knows your name, didn’t have high hopes when he auditioned for “Cheers.”

“My agent said, ‘It’s a small role, honey. It’s one line. Actually, it’s one word.’ The word was ‘beer.’ I was having a hard time believing I was right for the role of ‘the guy who looked like he wanted a beer.’ So I went in, and they said, ‘It’s too small a role. Why don’t you read this other one?’ And it was a guy who never left the bar,” Mr. Wendt told GQ magazine in an oral history of “Cheers.”

In a statement Tuesday, The Second City noted Mr. Wendt’s mainstage debut in 1975 for the revue “Once More With Fooling,” noting the company was “devastated to hear of the passing of beloved alum George Wendt. … George was a faithful and funny friend and colleague who will be sorely missed. Our heart goes out to Bernadette and the whole Wendt family.”

In 2017, he returned to the Second City mainstage for a benefit titled “I Can’t Believe They Wendt There: The Roast of George Wendt,” that raised more than $200,000 for Gilda’s Club Chicago and the Second City Alumni Fund. The evening’s emcee was his nephew, actor/comedian Jason Sudeikis.

During the roast, fellow Second City alum/comedian and “SNL” alum Tim Kazurinsky, noted of his good friend: “He always liked beer. He got the iconic role of his life. There was always a bit of Norm in George right from the get-go.”

Mr. Wendt was no stranger to Chicago’s other stages, having performed here occasionally over the years.

In 2012, Mr. Wendt was set to star as Oscar Madison opposite Kazurinsky as Felix Unger in “The Odd Couple” at Northlight Theatre but exited the production when he experienced chest pains during rehearsals for the show and was hospitalized. He later underwent successful bypass surgery. The two would return to Northlight in 2015 to co-star in “Funnyman.” His other Northlight credits included “Rounding Third” in 2002.

On Tuesday, Northlight Artistic Director BJ Jones paid tribute to his old friend via a statement to the Sun-Times: “My friend George was as kind and thoughtful a human being as walked on this planet. He was a true man of the theater, and perhaps one of the most underrated actors I’ve ever had the privilege to work with. His performance in ‘Funnyman’ by Bruce Graham was inspired. … It was always about the hang with George, and during the run of “Rounding Third” we delighted in barbecuing a Turducken in my backyard with disastrous results.”

Most recently, Mr. Wendt appeared at the Emmy Awards telecast in 2024 as part of a “Cheers” reunion segment, which also featured his co-stars Ted Danson, Kelsey Grammer, Rhea Perlman and John Ratzenberger.

“Cheers” premiered Sept. 30, 1982, and spent the first season with low ratings. NBC President Brandon Tartikoff championed the show, and it was nominated for an Emmy for best comedy series in its first season. Some 80 million people would tune in to watch its series finale 11 years later.

Mr. Wendt became a fan favorite in and outside the bar — his entrances were cheered with a warm “Norm!” — and his wisecracks always landed. “How’s a beer sound, Norm?” he would be asked by the bartender. “I dunno. I usually finish them before they get a word in,” he’d respond.

While the beer the cast drank on set was nonalcoholic, Mr. Wendt and other “Cheers” cast members have admitted they were tipsy on May 20, 1993, when they watched the show’s final episode then appeared together on “The Tonight Show” in a live broadcast from the Bull and Finch Pub in Boston, the bar that inspired the series.

″We had been drinking heavily for two hours, but nobody thought to feed us,” Wendt told the Beaver County Times of Pennsylvania in 2009. “We were nowhere near as cute as we thought we were.”

Mr. Wendt had a lifelong association with beer. He had his first taste as an 8-year-old and got drunk at 16, at the World’s Fair in New York. His beer knowledge was poured into the book ″Drinking With George: A Barstool Professional’s Guide to Beer,” co-written with Jonathan Grotenstein. One line: “Will Rogers once said he never met a man he didn’t like. I feel the same about beer.”

Born in Chicago, Mr. Wendt grew up at 9201 S. Bell in the North Beverly neighborhood of the city. He attended Campion High School, a Catholic boarding school in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, and then Notre Dame, where he rarely went to class and was kicked out. He transferred to Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri, and graduated, after majoring in economics.

“He was just a good time. Everyone loved him,” said his nephew Bill Healy, an investigative journalist from Chicago, when reached by phone late Tuesday.

“Whenever he’d come (back to Chicago) back in the day, he would stay at the Four Seasons hotel and my cousins and I would go over there en masse and take over the swimming pool. George would have a suite, and we’d all just order room service. It was the greatest. I remember my sister and mom met Shaquille O’Neal in the elevator.”

“… He worked for the Daily News for a time when he was like 18, and he said he remembered running to get breakfast sandwiches from the Billy Goat … and cleaning the ash trays in (legendary columnist) Mike Royko’s office,” said Healy.

After “Cheers,” Mr. Wendt starred in his own short-lived sitcom “The George Wendt Show” — “too bad he had to step out of Norm and down so far from that corner stool for his debut stanza,” sniffed Variety — and had guest spots on TV shows including “The Ghost Whisperer,” “Harry’s Law” and “Portlandia.” He was part of a brotherhood of Chicago everymen who gathered over sausage and beers and adored “Da Bears” on “Saturday Night Live.” In 2023, he competed on “The Masked Singer.”

But he found steady work onstage: Mr. Wendt slipped on Edna Turnblad’s housecoat in Broadway’s “Hairspray,” beginning in 2007, and was in the Tony Award-winning play “Art” in New York and London.

He starred in the national tour of “12 Angry Men” and appeared in a production of David Mamet’s “Lakeboat.” He also starred in regional productions of “Death of a Salesman,” “The Odd Couple” and “Never Too Late.”

Mr. Wendt had an affinity for playing Santa Claus, donning the famous red outfit for the stage musical “Elf” on Broadway in 2017, the TV movie “Santa Baby” with Jenny McCarthy in 2006 and in the doggie Disney video “Santa Buddies” in 2009. He also played Father Christmas for TV specials by Larry the Cable Guy and Stephen Colbert.

“I think it just proves that if you stay fat enough and get old enough, the offers start rolling in,” the actor joked to the AP in his Broadway dressing room.

Mr. Wendt is survived by his wife, Second City alum Bernadette Birkett, who voiced Norm’s never-seen not-so-better half, Vera, on “Cheers”; his children, Hilary, Joe and Daniel; and his stepchildren, Joshua and Andrew.

Contributing: Sun-Times reporters Miriam Di Nunzio and Mitch Dudek.