Los Angeles | Tom Poston, the tall, pasty-faced comic who found fame and fortune playing a clueless everyman on such hit television shows as Newhart and Mork and Mindy, has died. He was 85. Poston, who was married to Suzanne Pleshette of The Bob Newhart Show, died Monday night at home after a brief illness, a family representative, Tanner Gibson, said Tuesday.
The nature of his illness was not disclosed. Bob Newhart remembered Poston as a "versatile and veteran performer and a kindhearted individual." "Tom was always the 'go-to guy' on Newhart in addition to being a good and longtime friend," Newhart said in a statement Tuesday.
Don Knotts was the shaky Mr. Morrison, Louis Nye was the suave, overconfident Gordon Hathaway and Poston's character was so unnerved by the television cameras that he couldn't remember who he was. He won an Emmy playing The Man Who Can't Remember His Name.
But when Allen moved the show from New York to Los Angeles in 1959, Poston stayed behind. "Hollywood's not for me right now; I'm a Broadway cat," he told a reporter at the time. When he did finally move west, he quickly began appearing in variety shows, sitcoms and films.
His movie credits included Cold Turkey, The Happy Hooker, Rabbit Test and, more recently, Christmas With the Kranks, Beethoven's 5th and The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement. On Mork and Mindy, which starred Robin Williams as a space alien, Poston was Franklin Delano Bickley, the mindless boozer with the annoying dog. On Newhart, he was George Utley, the handyman who couldn't fix anything at the New England inn run by Newhart's character.
And on Newhart's show Bob, he was the star's dim-bulb former college roommate. "These guys are about a half-step behind life's parade," Poston commented in a 1983 interview. "The ink on their instruction sheets is beginning to fade.
But they can function and cope and don't realize they are driving people up the walls. "In ways I don't like to admit, I'm a goof-up myself," Poston continued. "It's an essential part of my character.
When these guys screw up it reminds me of my own incompetence with the small frustrations of life." Besides Pleshette, 70, Poston is survived by his children, Francesca Poston of Nashville, Tenn., Jason Poston of Los Angeles and Hudson Poston of Portland, Ore.
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