Cheers — The Zamboni Accident

When Carla Tortelli married Eddie LeBec, he earned a living by playing goalie for the Boston Bruins. But then his game started going downhill, so he retired and joined a touring show called “The Wonderful World of Ice.” Eddie played a penguin in the show and died a noble death when he was run over by a Zamboni while pushing a fellow cast member out of the machine’s path. It was later revealed that Eddie probably wouldn’t have been killed off had actor Jay Thomas not, during a radio interview, responded to a caller’s question about life on the Cheers set by saying: “It’s brutal. I have to kiss Rhea Perlman.”

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Well, that was certainly classless.

Then again, in the few interviews I've seen with him and the times he's guested on shows, he's never struck me as a particularly 'sensitive' guy. :rolleyes:

Well, that was certainly classless.

Then again, in the few interviews I've seen with him and the times he's guested on shows, he's never struck me as a particularly 'sensitive' guy. :rolleyes:


I agree with you 100% there retro. I mean no offense, but it wasn't like Jay Thomas looked like George Clooney either. lol

I agree with you 100% there retro. I mean no offense, but it wasn't like Jay Thomas looked like George Clooney either. lol

lol, absolutely NOT!

lol, absolutely NOT!


As we say in the broadcasting business...He has a face for radio. lol ;)

OMG. That is messed up. LOL.

As a Canuck fan, I have to say that the Bruins deserved him as their goalie;)

Here's more on the Jay Thomas incident in a blog post by Ken Levine, the Cheers writer who co-wrote his first episode as well as the one they killed him off in.

http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2006/07/kiss-of-death-for-eddie-lebec.html

Lots of other great Cheers stories in his blog as well.

Whoa! I had no idea! Was he being sarcastic or sincere? Sounds like it could have gone either way but it must have come out sincere if they fired him over it. Thanks for this bit of trivia!

Ouch!!! I had no idea that was the reason behind it!!

I read that he went to the 200th episode and was heckling the actors and producers from the audience. I watched the episode on Netflix and I'm guessing it has been edited out. Anybody know of where the original footage can be found. I'm interested in seeing what happened. I watched the 200th episode when it originally aired, but it's been so long ago that I don't remember this situation happening.

Yes, I recently heard this as well.

However, I don't see this as a big deal at all. Thomas was in only a handful of episodes as LeBec before the character was killed off, and so his absence from the show doesn't affect anything at all. As a matter of fact, Death Takes a Holiday on Ice (the LeBec funeral episode, where's it's revealed he was married to another woman - in addition to Carla - LOL) is definitely one of the funniest episodes of the series - and if the LeBec character hadn't been killed off, we wouldn't have gotten this episode. So, if anything LeBec's death on the show actually added a lot of additional humor to the series - ha ha.

Yes, I recently heard this as well.

However, I don't see this as a big deal at all. Thomas was in only a handful of episodes as LeBec before the character was killed off, and so his absence from the show doesn't affect anything at all. As a matter of fact, Death Takes a Holiday on Ice (the LeBec funeral episode, where's it's revealed he was married to another woman - in addition to Carla - LOL) is definitely one of the funniest episodes of the series - and if the LeBec character hadn't been killed off, we wouldn't have gotten this episode. So, if anything LeBec's death on the show actually added a lot of additional humor to the series - ha ha.

Also it was Thomas Haden Church's appearance in this episode that got him the role of Lowell Mather on Wings. So if not for this episode, who knows if that would have even happened or not.

WOW

I always thought that Eddie and Carla looked a lot alike. He commented himself out of a job, and I do think that his funeral episode was one of the best eps of the series, very memorable.

FYI LOL Jay Thomas was no fan of Robin Williams - in an interview he had many derogatory comments ... including Williams STUNK and needed deodorant & mouthwash all the time, and his alibiing was upsetting to the entire cast & crew of Mork & Mindy, and Mindy (Pam Dawber) comments that Williams would on occasion kinda feel her up +- but that was "just William's way ... no big deal" paraphrase