ELEGIES
FOR A ROCKET AND A CAMP
By
Andrew Williams
³Let
us play.²--Hamilton Camp, addressing his students
Here¹s
to a man who, either by design or accident, was the first person to say ³Fuck²
on live TV and, despite that mark, continue to have a career in
Hollywood. Here¹s to a comedian who refused to give up despite having
hundreds, maybe thousands, of doors slammed in his face. Here¹s to an actor who
never gave up until he couldn¹t go any more and apparently took his own life on
the evening of October 7, 2005 near his home in Canterbury, Connecticut.
The
year was 1981. The show: "Saturday Night Live." The guest host:
Charlene Tilton. Naturally, since she was a member of the then-popular show
"Dallas," and one of the main characters had been shot by a
mystery assailant, the writers wrote a skit around that event. In the midst of
it, Charles Rocket (born Charles Claverie), playing J.R., was asked how he
felt. His timeless response, as I recall: ³I just want to know who the
fuck shot me!²
You
could say it was the fuck heard Œround the world. You would think, from the
reaction, that Rocket had actually grabbed Tilton, torn her top off, and
fondled her breasts on live TV. That momentous event would have to wait another
22.9 years. In the meantime, conservatives and lawmakers alike vented their
Kulturkampf range on the bewildered Rocket, who was summarily fired from the
SNL cast and cast adrift on Hollywood¹s indifferent shores.
But
he didn¹t give up, didn¹t resign himself to a return to local TV in Providence,
Rhode Island. He stuck in there, kept going to auditions, kept getting parts.
Here¹s a sampling of the films and TV series he worked on between 1981 and
2005: Earth Girls Are Easy. ³Max Headroom.² ³Star Trek: Voyager.² ³Law
and Order.² Dances With Wolves. ³Lois and Clark: The New
Adventure of Superman.² ³Quantum Leap.² Dumb and Dumber.
This
is not the resume of a quitter. This is the partial c.v. of an actor who
overcame a faux pas early in his career to put together a career that any actor
could be proud of. Whether he was proud of that portfolio can only be left to
conjecture.
Hamid
Hamilton, better known to sitcom fans as Hamilton Camp, also left us this
month, ending an acting career that lasted almost six decades. He died
following a fall in his house in a suburb of Los Angeles on October 2, 2005. He
was a talented comedian and musician who will be best remembered for being
involved in social satire in the 1960s.
Boomers
will remember him as half of the folk duo Bob Gibson and (Bob) Camp and one of
the comic geniuses who brought ³He & She² to life on CBS, both in the late
1960s. Comedy fans, bookmark this cast: Richard Benjamin, Hamilton Camp, Jack
Cassidy, Kenneth Mars, and Paula Prentiss. And speaking of ³He & She,²
could either TVLand or Nickelodeon please rebroadcast it so we can find out
what the fuss was about? All I know is that Harlan Ellison raved about in his
column for the LA Free Press, called ³The Glass Teat,² and gave the network
prexys major hell for canceling it. And if Harlan thinks it was primo, then I
definitely want a looksee. (His last film, Hard Four, to be released
later this year, reunited him with Prentiss.)
Us
Jonesers will know him from appearances on ³The Mary Tyler Moore Show,² ³WKRP
In Cincinatti² (³Speed kills, Del.² ³What?²) and ³Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.²
I¹ll always remember his appearance on WKRP: his nervous comic energy, like an
aneurysm about to spurt. But he could also be urbane, witty and charismatic.
Playing one of Mary Richards¹ legion of beaus, he overcame a height
differential to impress her with his intelligence and charm.
It¹s
easy to write elegies for the movers and shakers in Hollywood, Washington and
other power centers, and all too easy to forget the character actors, the
writers, the supporting players who make it possible for the Big Boys and Girls
to do what they do. So, please, dear readers, take a minute or two apiece to
remember a rocket that spent its glory in front of millions of viewers and a
comedian who could range from pointed social satire to the silliness of camp.
Or as E. Kathleen Foley of the Los Angeles Times wrote regarding one of his
last stage appearances in an LA production of Shakespeare¹s Twelfth Night:
"Hamilton
Camp, who plays the buffoonish courtier, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, is bar none the
funniest character in the show. A master of the discreet double take, Camp is
outrageously silly but never cheap, always keeping his wackiness well within
the confines of (director Kristoffer) Tabori¹s realistic construct." - LA
Times, March 26, 2004
www.imdb.com (Charles
Rocket)
