Ravings of the Loquacious Madman

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Friday October 2, 2009 9:00PM EDT/8:00PM CDT on

I haven’t watched the Grammy Awards in over a decade. To be honest, it has to do with Bonnie Raitt winning best rock album and Soundgarden winning best metal years ago. Mismatched categories and undeserving artists made the show unwatchable for me. After this year, I think I’ll be adding the Emmys to my unwatchable list. I’m all for Family Guy being nominated in the Outstanding Comedy Series category, but I would call for Senate hearings to investigate some major oversights. I’ll break it down.

Outstanding Drama Series: One question. Where in the hell is The Shield?! For seven years, it was the best dramatic series on television. It never jumped the shark. It never had a down season. And I am to believe that the season of Damages was more outstanding than the last season of The Shield. For heaven’s sake, Family Meeting was one of the greatest season or series finales in history.

Outstanding Comedy Series: I have no major disagreement with the nominees, though I am left asking where are Psych and Monk.  These too shows have made USA the network it is.  Perhaps Monk has had its time in the spotlight, but Psych is an outstanding comedy.

Outstanding lead actor in a dramatic series: I am to seriously believe that Simon Baker is more deserving of an award than Michael Chiklis?  Really?  What were the voters smoking when they cast their ballots?

Outstanding lead actor in a comedy series: Kudos for including Tony Shalhoub for Monk, but James Roday runs rings around Charlie Sheen in comedic timing.

Outstanding lead actress in a dramatic series:  Anna Paquin should be front and center in this category.  She has done a tremendous job as the lead in True Blood.

Outstanding supporting actor in a dramatic series:  What is the lust affair with Lost and Damages?  Did the voters suffer brain damage and forget Walton Goggins’ amazing performance of Shane Vendrell in the last season of The Shield?

Where is Battlestar Galactica?  Despite the genre, Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell are conspicuously missing from the list of nominees.  Rescue Me is an excellent drama, but no love from the voters?

Wake me up when these awards shows become less about shock value and move back into rewarding the best works of art.  I may not always agree with the Oscars, but I cannot recall a time that so many deserving performances were completely ignored.

By JULIE CRESWELL

Billy Mays, a beloved and parodied pitchman who became a pop-culture figure through his commercials for cleaning products like Orange Glo, OxiClean and Kaboom, died Sunday at his home in Tampa, Fla. He was 50.

The Tampa Police Department said Mr. Mays was unresponsive when discovered by his wife on Sunday morning and was pronounced dead at 7:45 a.m. by the Tampa Fire Rescue Department. An autopsy is expected to be completed by Monday afternoon, said Lt. Brian Dugan of the Tampa Police Department, who was one of the first responders to Mr. Mays’s home.

On Saturday afternoon, Mr. Mays was on a US Airways flight from Philadelphia that apparently ruptured a front nose tire when it landed at Tampa International. Mr. Mays told a Fox News affiliate in Tampa that he had been struck hard on the head by a falling object when the plane landed.

No passengers from the flight reported injuries to emergency personnel who were at the landing scene, according to Brenda Geoghagan, a spokeswoman for the Tampa International Airport.

That evening Mr. Mays, who was scheduled to have hip-replacement surgery on Monday, told his wife, Deborah, that he was not feeling well, and after eating dinner he went to bed, she told investigators. Lieutenant Dugan said there was no initial indication that the airplane incident had played a role in Mr. Mays’s death.

With his twinkling eyes, distinctive bushy beard and booming voice, Mr. Mays energetically scrubbed away stains on his way to becoming an infomercial star.

Born in McKees Rock, Pa., Mr. Mays learned his craft on the Atlantic City Boardwalk, where he drew crowds as he hawked his mops and other wares. His big break came in the mid-1990s when he was hired by Orange Glo International to appear on the Home Shopping Network to promote the company’s line of cleaners, which included OxiClean, Orange Glo and Kaboom.

Part of Mr. Mays’s appeal was his apparent conviction in the products he sold. He told The Associated Press that he gave away OxiClean to every one of the 300 guests at his wedding and broke into his TV pitch on the dance floor.

Recently, Mr. Mays paired up with Anthony Sullivan, an infomercial veteran, in a reality show called “Pitchmen” on the Discovery Channel that tracks the two as they search for new products and create new ads.

“I’ll always remember his booming voice — him saying ‘Hi, Billy Mays here,’ ” Mr. Sullivan said in an e-mailed statement. “He was the best friend a man could wish for — he was much more than people knew.”

Mr. Mays’s boisterous delivery in his sales pitch also made him a favorite subject of parody on the Internet. In a wink and nod to his own unique sales style and delivery, Mr. Mays appeared in ads for ESPN’s online service.

Mr. Mays’s survivors include his wife, Deborah; their young daughter, Elizabeth; and a son, Billy Mays III, from a previous marriage.

By SUSAN STEWART [New York Times]

Farrah Fawcett, an actress and television star whose good looks and
signature flowing hairstyle influenced a generation of women and bewitched a
generation of men, beginning with a celebrated pinup poster, died Thursday
morning [June 25, 2009] in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 62 and lived in West
Los Angeles.

Her death, at St. John’s Health Center, was caused by anal cancer, which she
had been battling since 2006, said her spokesman, Paul Bloch.

To an extraordinary degree, Ms. Fawcett’s cancer battle was played out in
public, generating enormous interest worldwide. Her face, often showing the
ravages of cancer, became a tabloid fixture, and updates on her health
became staples of television entertainment news.

In May, that battle was chronicled in a prime-time NBC documentary, "Farrah’s
Story," some of it shot with her own home video recorder. An estimated nine
million people viewed it. Ms. Fawcett had initiated the project with a
friend, the actress Alana Stewart, after she first learned of her cancer.

Ms. Fawcett’s doctors declared her cancer-free after they removed a tumor in
2007, but her cancer returned later that year. She had been receiving
alternative treatment in Germany and was hospitalized in early April for a
blood clot resulting from that treatment, according to her doctor, Lawrence
Piro. He also said her cancer had spread to her liver.

Ms. Fawcett’s career was a patchwork of positives and negatives, fine
dramatic performances on television and stage as well as missed
opportunities.

She first became famous when a poster of her in a red bathing suit, leonine
mane flying, sold more than twice as many copies as posters of Marilyn
Monroe and Betty Grable combined. No poster like it has achieved anywhere
near its popularity since, and, arriving before the Internet era, in which
the most widely disseminated images are now digital, it may have been the
last of its kind.

Ms. Fawcett won praise for her serious acting later in her career, typically
as a victimized woman. But she remained best known for the hit 1970s
television show "Charlie’s Angels," in which she played Jill Munroe, one of
three beautiful women employed as private detectives by an unseen male boss
who (in the voice of John Forsythe) issued directives and patronizing praise
over a speaker phone. Her pinup fame had led the producers to cast her.

Ms. Fawcett and her fellow angels, played by Jaclyn Smith and Kate Jackson,
brought evildoers to justice, often while posing in decoy roles that put
them in skimpy outfits or provocative situations.

"Charlie’s Angels," created and produced by Aaron Spelling and Leonard
Goldberg for ABC, was a phenomenon, finishing the 1976-77 season as the No.
5 network show, the highest-rated television debut in history at that time.

Ms. Fawcett was its breakout star. Although she left the show after one
season and returned only sporadically thereafter, the show’s influence –
among other things, it inspired two much later feature films starring
Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu – was so indelible that she was
forever associated with it.

The series, whose popularity coincided with the burgeoning women’s movement,
brought new attention to issues of female sexuality and the influence of
television. Commentators debated whether the show’s athletic, scantily clad
heroines were exemplars of female strength or merely a harem of pretty
puppets doing the bidding of a patriarchal leader.

As the show’s most popular star, Ms. Fawcett became another sort of poster
girl, for the "jiggle TV" of the ’70s, and a lightning rod for cultural
commentators. Chadwick Roberts, writing in The Journal of Popular Culture in
2003, described her "unbound, loose and abundant hair" as marking "a new
emphasis on femininity after the androgyny of the late ’60s and early ’70s."

In 1978 Playboy magazine called Ms. Fawcett "the first mass visual symbol of
post-neurotic fresh-air sexuality." She herself put it more plainly: "When
the show got to be No. 3, I figured it was our acting. When it got to be No.
1, I decided it could only be because none of us wears a bra."

Ms. Fawcett acknowledged that her sex symbol status was a mixed blessing. It
made her famous, but it often obscured the acting talent that brought her
three Emmy nominations, most notably for "The Burning Bed," a critically
acclaimed movie about spousal abuse.

"I don’t think an actor ever wants to establish an image," she said in an
interview with The New York Times in 1986. "That certainly hurt me, and yet
that is also what made me successful and eventually able to do more
challenging roles. That’s life. Everything has positive and negative
consequences."

Ferrah Leni Fawcett was born in Corpus Christi, Tex., on Feb. 2, 1947. Her
father, James, worked in the oil pipeline industry; her mother, Pauline, was
a homemaker.

After dropping out of the University of Texas, Ms. Fawcett moved to
Hollywood to pursue acting. She soon found work in commercials for Wella
Balsam shampoo and Noxzema shaving cream, among other products. A Noxzema
commercial in which she shaved the face of the football star Joe Namath was
shown during the 1973 Super Bowl.

Ms. Fawcett also found acting work in television, landing guest roles on "I
Dream of Jeannie," "The Flying Nun" and other sitcoms. She appeared in four
episodes of "The Six Million Dollar Man," whose star, Lee Majors, she had
married in 1973. When Ms. Fawcett was cast on "Charlie’s Angels," she had a
clause written into her contract that allowed her to leave the set every day
in time to prepare dinner for Mr. Majors.

She was billed as Farrah Fawcett-Majors until 1979. She and Mr. Majors
divorced in 1982.

The poster that ignited Ms. Fawcett’s career was shot at the Bel Air home
she shared with Mr. Majors. "She was just this sweet, innocent, beautiful
young girl," said Bruce McBroom, who took the photograph. Searching for a
backdrop to Ms. Fawcett in her one-piece red swimsuit (which she chose
instead of a bikini because of a childhood scar on her stomach), he grabbed
an old Navajo blanket from the front seat of his 1937 pickup.

After leaving "Charlie’s Angels" to pursue a film career (she came back for
guest appearances for two more seasons), Ms. Fawcett made three forgettable
movies in quick succession, then salvaged her reputation by returning to
television. In 1981 she starred in the mini-series "Murder in Texas," as the
wife of a doctor who is subsequently accused of murdering her; in 1984 she
made "The Burning Bed."

Both movies were shown on NBC, and both performances received strong
reviews. In "The Burning Bed," Ms. Fawcett was one of the first prime-time
actresses to forgo cosmetics in favor of a convincing characterization.

In 1983 she played another victimized woman who fights back – a
vengeance-seeking rape victim – in the Off Broadway production of
"Extremities." She took over for Karen Allen, who had replaced Susan
Sarandon. Ms. Fawcett went on to star in the film version of the play in
1986.

Other roles followed in film and television – she won praise again in the
searing 1989 television movie "Small Sacrifices" – but throughout, Ms.
Fawcett tended to attract more attention for her looks and personal life
than for her professional accomplishments. Her long relationship with the
actor Ryan O’Neal, with whom she had a son, kept her on the gossip pages
long after her television work had become sporadic. In recent months she and
Mr. O’Neal had been living together. Interviewed by Barbara Walters this
month on the ABC program "20/20," Mr. O’Neal said that he had asked Ms.
Fawcett to marry her and she had said yes.

In 1997 Ms. Fawcett negated much of the respect she had earned as an actress
when, during an appearance on "Late Show With David Letterman," she promoted
a bizarre body-painting Playboy video and appeared ditsy to the point of
incoherence.

But later that year she appeared in the acclaimed independent film "The
Apostle" as Robert Duvall’s long-suffering wife, and her critical star rose
again – only to be dimmed by publicity about a court case involving a former
companion, the director James Orr. Mr. Orr was convicted of assaulting Ms.
Fawcett and sentenced to three years’ probation.

In addition to Mr. O’Neal, Ms. Fawcett is survived by her father, James, and
her son, Redmond James Fawcett O’Neal.

Though her career was volatile, Ms. Fawcett’s fame never diminished after
"Charlie’s Angels." She tried to capitalize on her celebrity with the 2005
reality series "Chasing Farrah," but it was a critical and ratings flop.
Writing in Medialife magazine, Ed Robertson described the series and its
star as "a living example of a talented actress whose career has been turned
into a parody by poor decisions."

Ms. Fawcett herself described her career succinctly. "I became famous," she
said in her 1986 Times interview, "almost before I had a craft."

By RICHARD SEVERO

Ed McMahon, who for nearly 30 years was Johnny Carson’s affable second banana on “The Tonight Show,” introducing it with his ringing trademark line, “Heeeeere’s Johnny!,” died early Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 86.

His publicist, Howard Bragman, said Mr. McMahon died at Ronald Reagan Medical Center of the University of California, Los Angeles, surrounded by his family. Mr. Bragman said Mr. McMahon had many health problems, including bone cancer and pneumonia, for which he had been hospitalized in February.

Mr. McMahon was one of the most recognizable men in America. With his broad, genial, regular-guy features, he had the face of someone you would buy a used car from. Indeed, for decades he was one of television’s most ubiquitous pitchmen, selling everything from boats to beer. He also took a few acting roles and in later years was the host of the long-running television talent show “Star Search” and wrote some popular books, including his memoirs.

But it was in the role of the faithful Tonto to Carson’s wry Lone Ranger that Mr. McMahon made his sideman’s mark. After he rolled out his introduction like a red carpet for the boss, and after Carson delivered his nightly monologue, Mr. McMahon, in jacket and tie, would take his seat on the couch beside the host’s desk, chat and banter with Carson a bit before the guests came on and almost invariably guffaw at his jokes, even when he was the butt of them. When the guests did arrive, he would slide over to make room and rarely interrupt.

The work paid handsomely — some reports said $5 million a year — and it made Mr. McMahon a familiar face, and voice, in millions of households. “The Tonight Show” became the country’s most popular late-night television diversion, and the “Heeeeere’s Johnny!” introduction became a national catchphrase.

“I laugh for an hour and then go home,” Mr. McMahon once said. “I’ve got the world’s greatest job.”

Off camera he and Carson were friends and occasional drinking buddies, although Mr. McMahon noted that Carson, who died in 2005, was not terribly social. “He doesn’t give friendship easily or need it,” he said. “He packs a tight suitcase.”

Mr. McMahon rarely ran the risk of upstaging Carson. “To me, he’s the star and I’m on the sidelines, just nudging him a bit,” he said. But early in their association he slipped up.

It happened one night when Carson was telling the audience about a study concluding that mosquitoes preferred to bite “warm-blooded, passionate people.” Before Carson could deliver his punch line, Mr. McMahon slapped his own arm, as if crushing a mosquito. The audience roared. Carson coolly produced a giant can of insect spray from under his desk and said, glaring at Mr. McMahon, “I guess I won’t be needing this prop, will I?”

It was a rare flare-up in an association that began in the late 1950s, when Carson was the host of the ABC comedy quiz show “Do You Trust Your Wife?” and Mr. McMahon was hired to announce the show and read the commercials. (The title was later changed to “Who Do You Trust?”) In 1962, when Carson moved to “The Tonight Show,” replacing Jack Paar, he took Mr. McMahon with him.

Mr. McMahon warmed up the studio audience, read commercials and served as Carson’s straight man until Carson left the show in 1992. Though Mr. McMahon sometimes projected the image of an amiable lush and got laughs for it, the cup that was always before him on “The Tonight Show” held only iced tea, he said. Years later, he said he had missed only three tapings in 30 years, because of colds or the flu.

Edward Leo Peter McMahon Jr. was born in Detroit on March 6, 1923. His father, a vaudevillian, had to move a lot to find work, and young Ed had attended 15 high schools by the time he was a senior. Edward Sr.’s career was so erratic that one year, awash in money, the McMahons lived in the Mark Hopkins hotel, atop Nob Hill in San Francisco; another year, flat broke, they existed in a cold-water flat in Bayonne, N.J.

As a boy in Bayonne, Mr. McMahon recalled, he dreamed of becoming an entertainer and did impersonations of stars, using a flashlight as his microphone and his dog, Valiant Prince, as his audience. He shined shoes, sold newspapers, dug ditches, sold peanuts, worked as an usher, labored on a construction gang and sold stainless-steel cookware door to door.

At his request he spent his last high school years in Lowell, Mass., where his grandmother lived. By the time he was 18 he had been a traveling bingo announcer in New England and had sold a gadget called the Morris Metric Slicer to tourists on the Atlantic City Boardwalk and in Times Square. He also took elocution lessons at Emerson College in Boston.

Mr. McMahon enlisted in the Marine Corps toward the end of World War II and became a fighter pilot, but did not see combat. After his discharge he attended the Catholic University of America in Washington, receiving a bachelor’s degree in 1949. He then landed a job at a Philadelphia radio station and began appearing on television as, among other things, a clown and the host of a cooking show.

But his budding television career was interrupted when he was recalled into military service during the Korean War. He flew 85 combat missions in 15 months, winning six Air Medals, and remained active in the Marine Corps Reserve afterward.

Returning from the war, he resumed his television work in Philadelphia while traveling to New York hoping to break into network television. He also pursued a separate career as a businessman. By the time he made it as an announcer, he had acquired a stationery company, a company that made knickknacks, two television and film companies and a talent agency. He also speculated in real estate.

Even when he got his big break with Carson, he never let up on his business activities. Carson would tweak him about them on “The Tonight Show,” suggesting that after that night’s show was over, Mr. McMahon would be selling jams and jellies in the elevator.

Over the years Mr. McMahon became a paid spokesman for many products and companies, including Budweiser beer, Alpo dog food, Chris-Craft boats, Texas Instruments, Breck shampoo, Sara Lee baked goods and Mercedes-Benz. His name and photograph were fixtures on the form letters mailed by American Family Publishers announcing sweepstakes winners. He marketed his own brand of liquor, McMahon Perfect Vodka. Most recently, he and the rapper MC Hammer promoted a gold-buying business called Cash4Gold. (In a commercial for the business during the Super Bowl this year, he spoofed himself with the line “Heeeeere’s money.”)

And for more than 40 years, Mr. McMahon appeared with Jerry Lewis on Mr. Lewis’s Muscular Dystrophy Association telethon over Labor Day Weekend. He did some film acting as well. Among the movies he appeared in were “The Incident” (1967), in which he played a passenger brutalized by young thugs on a New York subway train; “Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off” (1973); and “Fun With Dick and Jane” (1977).

After leaving “The Tonight Show,” Mr. McMahon appeared in summer stock and kept his hand in television, appearing as a guest star on various series and taking supporting roles in television movies. For 12 years he was the host of the talent show “Star Search”; he joined Dick Clark on “TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes”; he was Tom Arnold’s sidekick on the short-lived sitcom “The Tom Show.” For the USA Radio Network, he broadcast “Ed McMahon’s Lifestyles Live” weekly from his home.

There were books, too, most recently the best-selling “Here’s Johnny! My Memories of Johnny Carson, the Tonight Show, and 46 Years of Friendship” (2005). Others were “For Laughing Out Loud: My Life and Good Times” (1998), written with David Fisher; “Ed McMahon’s Barside Companion” (1969); and “Here’s Ed, or How to Be a Second Banana, From Midway to Midnight” (1976).

Despite his many business ventures, Mr. McMahon encountered hard times in his last years. He faced foreclosure on his Beverly Hills mansion last year after falling behind in payments on $4.8 million in mortgages. In the end a deal was worked out allowing him to stay in his home, but he was also being sued over other debts.

Mr. McMahon, who appeared on “Larry King Live” with his wife, Pam, to discuss his financial problems, blamed two divorces, bad money management and bad investments for his woes. “I made a lot of money, but you can spend a lot of money,” he said by way of explanation.

He was plagued by health problems as well, undergoing a series of operations after breaking his neck in a fall in 2007.

Mr. McMahon married Alyce Ferrell during World War II. They were divorced in 1976. They had four children, Claudia, Michael, Linda and Jeffrey. His second marriage, to Victoria Valentine, in 1976, ended in divorce in 1989. They adopted a daughter, Katherine Mary McMahon. Mr. McMahon and his third wife, Pam Hurn, a fashion designer, were married in 1992, and Mr. McMahon adopted her son, Lex. His wife and children survive him.

Mr. McMahon regarded his friendship with Johnny Carson as a marriage of sorts. “Most comic teams are not good friends or even friends at all,” he wrote in “Here’s Johnny.” “Laurel and Hardy didn’t hang out together, Abbott and Costello weren’t best of friends.” But, he added, “Johnny and I were the happy exception.”

“For 40 years Johnny and I were as close as two nonmarried people can be,” he wrote. “And if he heard me say that, he might say, ‘Ed, I always felt you were my insignific ant other.’ ”

William Grimes contributed reporting.

By BRUCE WEBER

David Carradine, an enigmatic actor who never outran the cult status he earned in the 1970s television series “Kung Fu” — even though he went on to star as Woody Guthrie in the film “Bound for Glory” and as the title character in Quentin Tarantino’s twin thrillers, “Kill Bill” Volumes I and II — was found dead on Thursday in a hotel room in Bangkok, where he was filming a new movie. He was 72 and lived in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles.

The police in Bangkok are treating the death as a suicide, The Associated Press reported, though Mr. Carradine’s manager of six years, Chuck Binder, said he didn’t believe this was the case.

“He was working, he had a family, he was happy,” Mr. Binder said in an interview Thursday. “He just bought a new car.”

Thai authorities informed the United States Embassy that Mr. Carradine, who was staying in a suite at the Swissotel Nai Lert Park, died either late Wednesday or early Thursday, The A.P. said.

“I can confirm that we found his body, naked, hanging in the closet,” Teerapop Luanseng, a police officer investigating the death, told The A.P.

A busy actor if not always the most discriminating in his choice of roles, Mr. Carradine had hundreds of credits on television and in the movies, and it can be fairly said that acting was in his blood. He was the oldest son of John Carradine, a prolific character actor who was a favorite of the director John Ford, and he had three actor half-brothers, Keith, Robert and Bruce Carradine.

He was in his early 30s and had a decade of credits in the theater, in films and on television behind him when he was cast in “Kung Fu” as Kwai Chang Caine, a half-Chinese, half-American Shaolin monk who had fled China after he killed a man in defense of his master and was on the lam in the 19th-century American West.

The character, a martial arts master and mystical peacenik, was portrayed by Mr. Carradine with a preternatural calm and, in moments of heroic violence — deployed only as a last resort — an explosive grace, a reluctant hero more comfortable spouting vaguely Confucian aphorisms than wreaking physical vengeance on even the most evil foes. The show caught on, especially with young viewers, plugging into the battle-weary spirit of the waning years of the Vietnam War and, in its depiction of the ill treatment of Chinese immigrants, the indignant anguish of the civil rights movement as well (though some Asian-Americans were irked that the role was not given to an Asian actor).

“Kung Fu” made its debut as an ABC movie of the week in 1972, then ran as a series until 1975. And though Mr. Carradine was not proficient in the martial arts himself — he studied them later — the show was influential in the rise of American interest in them and in Eastern philosophy.

In an interview with The New York Times after “Kung Fu” became a hit, Mr. Carradine said that no one was more surprised than he.

“Man, I read that pilot script and flipped!” he said. “But I never believed it would get on TV. I mean, a Chinese western, about a half-Chinese half-American Buddhist monk who wanders the gold rush country but doesn’t care about gold, and defends the oppressed but won’t carry a gun, and won’t even step on an ant because he values all life, and hardly ever speaks? No way!”

He was born John Arthur Carradine in Hollywood on Dec. 8, 1936; he changed his name in his early 20s, at the start of his acting career, because he didn’t want to be known as John Jr. (especially since his father’s birth name was not John but Richmond). He attended several colleges in the San Francisco area, studying music and eventually acting and earning money by painting murals in bars.

He served in the Army from 1960 to 1962 and landed on Broadway in 1964 in “The Deputy.” His break came the next year, when, alongside Christopher Plummer, he played an Inca king, also on Broadway, in “The Royal Hunt of the Sun,” by Peter Shaffer. From there he was cast in the lead of a short-lived television series based on the classic western film “Shane.”

As a young actor, Mr. Carradine had a reputation for being headstrong and difficult. He was also an admittedly freewheeling child of the 1960s, a partaker of psychedelic drugs who had occasional run-ins with the police. He lived with the actress Barbara Hershey during the time when she had changed her name to Barbara Seagull, and they had a son they named Free.

Mr. Carradine was married five times. In addition to his son Free and his half-brothers Keith, Robert and Bruce, he is survived by his wife, Annie; two other half-brothers, Michael Bowen and Christopher; five daughters, Kansas, Calista, Amanda, Madeline and Olivia; another son, Max; and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The popularity of “Kung Fu” helped Mr. Carradine land two plum starring roles: Woody Guthrie in “Bound for Glory” (1976), a film directed by Hal Ashby that was nominated for a best picture Oscar; and an American acrobat, opposite Liv Ullmann, in “The Serpent’s Egg” (1978), a film directed by Ingmar Bergman that is generally considered among his most problematic. Mr. Carradine also worked with Martin Scorsese — he has a memorable scene as a drunk in “Mean Streets” (1973) — and Walter Hill, in “The Long Riders” (1980), a western in which he, Keith and Robert were cast with other acting brothers, James and Stacy Keach and Dennis and Randy Quaid.

In 2003 and 2004, Mr. Tarantino helped to revive Mr. Carradine’s career with the “Kill Bill” movies, in which he played the elusive mastermind of a gang of assassins who is stalked by a former protégée, played by Uma Thurman. More recently he was busy with a number of film projects that were not as popular. He was making a French action movie, “Stretch,” at the time of his death. Indeed, perhaps his most recognizable recent work was a commercial for Yellow Book, in which he spoofed his role in “Kung Fu.”