In popular culture, Ohio has a reputation for being a bit ordinary, a little mundane, and perhaps even a touch mediocre. Humorist James Thurber, the poet of the everyday, hailed from Ohio, and numerous movies, from Bye Bye Birdie to Stranger than Paradise, present the state as ground zero of milquetoast America.
Such was the spirit that animated the greatest of Ohio-set sitcoms, WKRP in Cincinnati, which, during its much-loved run from 1978 to 1982, generated plenty of laughs in the behind-the-scenes drama of a woebegone rock ’n’ roll station transmitting from the Queen City.
That same quality of lovable dissipation was central to the appeal of Howard Hesseman, who, with his longish hair, sunglasses, and washed-up itinerant hippie persona, was instantly recognizable as the show’s best-known character: too-cool-for-school disc jockey Dr. Johnny Fever.
Hesseman, who died on Jan. 29 at age 81, was typically modest about the impact of his performance on a show that was a reliable hit in its day and retains a devoted following in the present.
“I liked the idea of Fever being a soul man from the 60s,” Hesseman said in an interview in 2013. “In the 70s and 80s, that was already passe. A chance to reintroduce an audience to Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave, Joe Tex, James Brown — that was exciting. And the music became the ninth character of the show.”
Yet even a casual sampling of highlights from WKRP in Cincinnati reveals that it wasn’t just the music that made the show: It was the way Fever grooved to the tunes. In one episode, while listening to Van Morrison’s “Caravan,” Fever mouths the lyrics, thumps his chest, and conducts the chorus with his left arm. In another episode, when Fever introduces the Grateful Dead as “some more good news from an always reliable source,” we believe Fever means it because Hesseman says it with such conviction.
Born in Lebanon, Oregon, in 1940, Hesseman came to the counterculture scene all on his own. Brought up by his mother and stepfather, a policeman, Hesseman found his way to the University of Oregon but quickly found his way out. Heading south to San Francisco, Hesseman, having adopted the moniker “Don Sturdy,” honed a gift for improvisational comedy as part of The Committee, and in the gig that most accounted for the authenticity he brought to his performance as Fever, he worked at the real-life San Francisco radio station KMPX. His airtime, he told People magazine in 1979, was marked by cuing up “strange tapes” and partaking in “a lot of pot.”
In Hollywood during those days, though, such a resume was better than training at the Actors Studio, and Hesseman won guest parts on the leading sitcoms of the era: Rhoda, The Bob Newhart Show, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, and even Laverne & Shirley. His easygoing manner and friendly, mustachioed appearance made him a natural bit-part player in feature films ranging from Hal Ashby’s Shampoo (1975) to Mel Brooks’s Silent Movie (1976).
Then came WKRP, which brought genuine, if fleeting, popularity to a whole company of talented comic actors, including Loni Anderson, Gordon Jump, Gary Sandy, and Tim Reid. At the center of the constellation was Hesseman. “I have trouble with the word ‘star,’” Hesseman told People. “I have more money than I know what to do with — and less than I need to fund a study to tell me what to do with it.”
The show ended in 1982, but Hesseman would remain entrenched in the American consciousness. Like so many former hippies, he eventually found his way back into the classroom as the exceedingly mellow high school teacher Charlie Moore on ABC’s Head of the Class, from 1986 to 1990, but even when that gig ended, audience demand for him never did. You could flip to any channel in the last three decades and catch Hesseman every once in a while: The Practice, Touched by an Angel, Boston Legal, That ’70s Show. Cinematic immortality was conferred when he turned up as a supercilious manager in This Is Spinal Tap (1984).
But Hesseman will always be remembered for the pop of panache he brought to Cincinnati’s fictitious airwaves, briefly enlivening a whole state’s idea of itself — not unlike a certain Super Bowl appearance. It sounds strange to say, but Hesseman may be the counterculture’s most enduring, and benign, legacy.
Peter Tonguette writes for many publications, including the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and the American Conservative.
