Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Alex Karras aka The Mad Duck

Athlete and actor -- via the L.A. Times. One of my favorite people of all time. A strong and brilliant defensive tackle, he excelled for the Iowa Hawkeyes and the Detroit Lions. George Plimpton's "Paper Lion" contains numerous achingly hilarious stories about Karras' incessant comedic sallies (although Karras was not with Detroit at the time, suspended that season for gambling on NFL games).

He took a fling as a professional wrestler. He started acting, and he turned out to be quite good. I love him in the 1973 TV movie "The 500-Pound Jerk." He was the inimitable Mongo in "Blazing Saddles":





He met actress Susan Clark when making "Babe," a TV movie about Babe Didrickson Zaharias. They married, and worked frequently together, most significantly on the sitcom "Webster."



He was on the early years of "Monday Night Football." He did great work in "Centennial," "Victor/Victoria," and "Against All Odds." He was inherently funny, and idiosyncratic. What a treat it was to be around when he was.

No comments:

Post a Comment