croiter
06-03-2001, 04:28 PM
I've added a new section to my site called why do we care and here is what I wrote for it:
Before the Iran hostage situation, before the Gary Gilmore execution, before Persian Gulf and sex in the oval office, there was Freddie Prinze. He was a star in our lives for three years beginning in 1974. I was 12 at the time he made his television debut.
In the beginning I found the show extremely funny. I'd already been watching Sanford & Son, and ranked that show higher than some of my other favorites: All in the Family, Good Times, Welcome Back Kotter and Barney Miller.
Chico and the Man never quite fit a special category for me like the others did. The show came on at 8:30 Friday nights, and when I became a teenager I chose sleepover parties and movies to Friday night TV.
But when Freddie shot himself in January 1977, something in my unfocused, adolescent mind jumped to attention. Freddie now became a human being, not just an image that flashed across the living room once a week. He had problems, like me, and he chose to deal with them in the most punishing way.
I listened for a day-and-a-half to radio and television reports. I recorded them on my old-fashioned tape recorder, a bulky Panasonic cassette with "stop" and "fast-forward" buttons the size of your fingers.
I clipped the first short newspaper article, a six-or-seven paragraph Associate Press story with the headline, "TV Actor Critical After Suicide Try." In the hours after the shooting, little or no information was given to the press. The article stated simply, "The shooting is an apparent suicide attempt because a gun was found near the body." No mention of Dusty Snyder or Carol Novak or Quuaaludes. They did cite that Freddie had parted ways with his wife, Kathy, and that he had to be in court in February for a drugs-and-driving violation.
I kept thinking that if he would wake up from his coma, he would realize what a big mistake he had just made. That night at the very end of an NBC news update, Chuck Scarborough said, "And Freddie Prinze remains in critical condition after shooting himself in the head. Doctors at the UCLA medical center said 'Prinze tolerated surgery well,' but had suffered "severe brain damage."
Then Saturday afternoon, the guy on 1010 WINS, an all news station out of New York City, said somberly: "Freddie Prinze DIED of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head." That was all I needed to hear.
I ran to my mother, who was cleaning the bathroom. "Did you hear? Did you hear?" I shouted.
My mother nodded her head. "He had to have been crazy," she said. "To put a gun to his head and do that to himself. He was nuts."
Later that night, on the six o'clock news (ABC affiliate in Manhattan), Roger Grimbsy confirmed what I'd heard on the radio. He said, "The young New Yorker took his life." Freddie was from New York? I didn't even know that. While I grew up in the lush green suburbs of the city, Freddie grew up in Spanish Harlem. He got beat up from kids for his lunch money. He wasn't into athletics in school.
I saw parallels in everyhing in our lives except for two things: poor city life and age. Freddie was older than me and I thought of him then as an adult capable of making his own decisions.
The years wore on, and I never did hear about Chico reruns, sometimes would check the newspaper TV listing to see if any of the cable channels were carrying them. None of them were, ever. Sanford was on, so was All in the Family, and even Welcome Back, Kotter (which at this point had become horribly dated and stale).
The tape recordings I made got lost over the years. My life evolved into college and several relationships; newspaper reporting in sleepy little towns like Lychburg Virginia and Bradenton, Florida.
But for 25 years I never stopped thinking about Freddie or what he had done to himself.
I reached the age of 22, same age as Freddie, and began to realize that people still thought of me as a kid. And I felt like a kid. Then, when I turned 32, I realized that people young as Freddie was when he died, sometimes are not fully grown inside. I began to realize what a loss there really was.
And to see him again, especially when he is in his element, is to witness both talent and tragedy intermingled with a warm tale of an old white man and his young Spanish helper.
You can't ask for more from Hollywood.
-- Tony Attrino
Before the Iran hostage situation, before the Gary Gilmore execution, before Persian Gulf and sex in the oval office, there was Freddie Prinze. He was a star in our lives for three years beginning in 1974. I was 12 at the time he made his television debut.
In the beginning I found the show extremely funny. I'd already been watching Sanford & Son, and ranked that show higher than some of my other favorites: All in the Family, Good Times, Welcome Back Kotter and Barney Miller.
Chico and the Man never quite fit a special category for me like the others did. The show came on at 8:30 Friday nights, and when I became a teenager I chose sleepover parties and movies to Friday night TV.
But when Freddie shot himself in January 1977, something in my unfocused, adolescent mind jumped to attention. Freddie now became a human being, not just an image that flashed across the living room once a week. He had problems, like me, and he chose to deal with them in the most punishing way.
I listened for a day-and-a-half to radio and television reports. I recorded them on my old-fashioned tape recorder, a bulky Panasonic cassette with "stop" and "fast-forward" buttons the size of your fingers.
I clipped the first short newspaper article, a six-or-seven paragraph Associate Press story with the headline, "TV Actor Critical After Suicide Try." In the hours after the shooting, little or no information was given to the press. The article stated simply, "The shooting is an apparent suicide attempt because a gun was found near the body." No mention of Dusty Snyder or Carol Novak or Quuaaludes. They did cite that Freddie had parted ways with his wife, Kathy, and that he had to be in court in February for a drugs-and-driving violation.
I kept thinking that if he would wake up from his coma, he would realize what a big mistake he had just made. That night at the very end of an NBC news update, Chuck Scarborough said, "And Freddie Prinze remains in critical condition after shooting himself in the head. Doctors at the UCLA medical center said 'Prinze tolerated surgery well,' but had suffered "severe brain damage."
Then Saturday afternoon, the guy on 1010 WINS, an all news station out of New York City, said somberly: "Freddie Prinze DIED of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head." That was all I needed to hear.
I ran to my mother, who was cleaning the bathroom. "Did you hear? Did you hear?" I shouted.
My mother nodded her head. "He had to have been crazy," she said. "To put a gun to his head and do that to himself. He was nuts."
Later that night, on the six o'clock news (ABC affiliate in Manhattan), Roger Grimbsy confirmed what I'd heard on the radio. He said, "The young New Yorker took his life." Freddie was from New York? I didn't even know that. While I grew up in the lush green suburbs of the city, Freddie grew up in Spanish Harlem. He got beat up from kids for his lunch money. He wasn't into athletics in school.
I saw parallels in everyhing in our lives except for two things: poor city life and age. Freddie was older than me and I thought of him then as an adult capable of making his own decisions.
The years wore on, and I never did hear about Chico reruns, sometimes would check the newspaper TV listing to see if any of the cable channels were carrying them. None of them were, ever. Sanford was on, so was All in the Family, and even Welcome Back, Kotter (which at this point had become horribly dated and stale).
The tape recordings I made got lost over the years. My life evolved into college and several relationships; newspaper reporting in sleepy little towns like Lychburg Virginia and Bradenton, Florida.
But for 25 years I never stopped thinking about Freddie or what he had done to himself.
I reached the age of 22, same age as Freddie, and began to realize that people still thought of me as a kid. And I felt like a kid. Then, when I turned 32, I realized that people young as Freddie was when he died, sometimes are not fully grown inside. I began to realize what a loss there really was.
And to see him again, especially when he is in his element, is to witness both talent and tragedy intermingled with a warm tale of an old white man and his young Spanish helper.
You can't ask for more from Hollywood.
-- Tony Attrino