Friday, October 01, 2010

Stephen J. Cannell


Stephen J. Cannell
1941-2010 

Usually I put bit and pieces into these obits, and here's the fun fact -- Cannell was dyslexic, and didn't discover that until he was in his thirties. 

A man who always had a "healthy" tan, he died from complications of melanoma.

You know who he is if you watched TV in the last thirty years. Most folks I know can find something to like in this list, most of which he created or co-created. Wrote, produced, sometimes played bit parts. I saw him on last season's Castle, as one of Castle's poker buddies. If he had never done anything but Baretta or The Rockford Files, that would have been plenty.

Television
21 Jump Street
Adam-12
The A-Team
Baa Baa Black Sheep
Baretta
Booker
Broken Badges
Castle (as himself)
Chase
Cobra
The Commish
The D.A.
Diagnosis Murder (acting)
The Duke
The Greatest American Hero
Hardcastle and McCormick
The Hat Squad
Hawkeye
Hunter
J.J. Starbuck
The Last Precinct
Magnum, P.I. (acting)
The 100 Lives of Black Jack Savage
Pacific Blue (acting)
Palace Guard
Profit
The Quest
Renegade (acting)
Richie Brockelman, Private Eye
Riptide
Tenspeed and Brown Shoe (acting)
The Rockford Files
The Rousters
Santa Barbara (soap opera) (acting)
Silk Stalkings (acting)
Sonny Spoon
Stingray
Stone
Street Justice
Tenspeed and Brown Shoe
Toma
Top of the Hill
Unsub
Wiseguy
Bibliography
Shane Scully series
1. The Tin Collectors (2001)
2. The Viking Funeral (2002)
3. Hollywood Tough (2003)
4. Vertical Coffin (2004)
5. Cold Hit (2005)
6. White Sister (2006)
7. Three Shirt Deal (2007)
8. On the Grind (2009)
9. The Pallbearers (2010)
10. The Prostitute's Ball (2010)
Other novels
The Plan (1996)
Final Victim (1997)
King Con (1998)
Riding the Snake (1999)
The Devil's Workshop (2000)
Runaway Heart (2003)
At First Sight (2008)

6 comments:

AF1 said...

I enjoyed hating him as Dutch Dixon on "Renegade."

Jason said...

Stingray!!!!

Yeah, yeah, leave me alone. I know I am one of the 15 people who loved that show.

Talk about a big name, that man bounced off quite a few lives with his work.

steve-vh said...

Riptide, Hardcastle and Mccormack, Stingray.
How can you not love those shows when your young??!?!?!

Daniel Keys Moran said...

His dad's name was "Rocky." It's where the name came from on Rockford.

Bobbe Edmonds said...

Ten speed and Brown Shoe

Oh, my stars and guitars...I was just a wee lad...

William Adams said...

The coolest thing of course was the nifty video ``logo'' of him typing, pulling the sheet out, then the sheet wafting back-and-forth on the screen to fall into place as the ``C'' in his company logotype.

(it's the top video result in most search engines for ``stephen cannell video logo'')

Sad that he's passed away, even peacefully and surrounded by family.