Actor Freddie Prinze Dies


FROM: The Washington Post (January 30th 1977) ~
By Martin Weil, Staff Writer


Freddie Prinze, 22, who went from the sidewalks of New York to
television stardom in the comedy series, "Chico and the Man," died
yesterday in Los Angeles about 33 1/2 hours after shooting himself in
the head.


Mr. Prinze died about 1 p.m. at the UCLA Medical Center where he had
been listed in critical condition and on life-support systems since he
fired a bullet into his brain in his hotel room at 3:30 a.m.


In his television role as a Latin American garage mechanic, Mr.
Prinze, a man with laughing eyes and an infectious, crooked, grin, was
known to millions of viewers for his irrepressible good humor.


Police said that he had left a handwritten, unaddressed note. It said:
"I can't take it any longer."


A friend said he had been depressed over his impending divorce and
child custody hearings.


Mr. Prinze's wife, the former Katherine Cochran, 26, whom he married
in October, 1975, filed last month for divorce. After the shooting
Friday she joined the comedian's parents in a vigil at the hospital.


Doctors pronounced Mr. Prinze dead when his central nervous system
ceased functioning. He had not regained consciousness after the
shooting.


Afterward, "a doctor brought the wife and mother into a room and broke
the news," said Paul Wasserman, Mr. Prinze's agent and friend. "They
fell on the bed . . . crying."


Herbert S. Schlosser, president of NBC, which had broadcast "Chico and
The Man" since its premiere on Sept. 13, 1974, called Mr. Prinze" one
of the brightest stars in the world of entertainment . . ."


Noting that the comedian had only begun, Schlosser said, "We shall
never know how far he could have gone, how much laughter and pleasure
he could have given us all in the years ahead."


A swaggering six-footer who described himself as "this street punk,"
Mr. Prinz blended a natural comic gift with keen observation to create
what he called an "all-purpose Latin" image on the air.


To a great extent he drew for his comic inspiration and invention on
his own upbringing and ethnic heritage.


A native New Yorker, he grew up on Manhattan's West 157th Street, on
the northern edge of Harlem.


His mother, Maria, a Puerto Rican, worked in a shoe factory. His
father, Karl, a tool and die maker, is of Hungarian background.


Mr. Prinze was bilingual, speaking both Spanish and English.


For show business purposes, his Hispanic background was transmuted
into what he called his "crazy" "Rican" accent.


Before he achieved television stardom, he had employed this thick
patois as an increasingly successful standup comedian, in such
favorite roles as that of a work-avoiding New York building
superintendent.


The well received tag line to this comic turn was invariably: "Eeets
not my job."


Mr. Prinze also created comic material out of some of the afflictions
of life in less affluent sections of the city.


He related, for example, some of his imaginary conversations with
cockroaches, who would say: "Hey, Freddie, where you going, man? Hey,
you don't bring back some potato chips, we shut the door on you, man."


A deft and libber and a skilled impressionist, Mr. Prinze seemed to
have inherited some of his cosmic gifts from his father, whose
principal stage was the family's lively living room.


By the age of four, it is reported, Mr. Prinze was memorizing and
repeating his father's jokes.


Although there is little indication that he was determined from
childhood on a career in comedy, Mr. Prinze showed an early interest
in other performing arts.


His father played the piano. Several relatives played other
instruments. Mr. Prinze, while growing up, learned to play piano,
drums and guitar and to compose music. In addition, at his mother's
urging, he took ballet lessons.


After attending parochial elementary schools he enrolled in the High
School of Performing Arts, a special New York public school. "I always
thought my future would be drama or ballet," he once recalled.


By his own account, a turning point for him came when he had a small
part in his school's production of "Barefoot in the Park." He played
Harry pepper, a Jewish telephone repairman.


Changing the character's name to Jose Perez. Mr. Prinze played him as
a Puerto Rican. "'Hell.'" he recalled himself thinking, "'that's what
I know.'"


"I went out and did it in my mother's accent and there were roars from
start to finish," he said. "It was the first time I had ever gone into
myself and thought I was a comedian."


Deciding on a career in comedy, he began performing at two Manhattan
nightclubs that offered would-be comedians a nonpaying chance to
perform.


After finishing his after-school job as an usher, he would go to the
clubs, remaining until 3 a.m., studying others as he waited his own
turn.


On result was that he missed many early classes. "Instead of a
diploma," he once said, his school gave him a certificate "saying I
went to school every day."


After Mr. Prinze had achieved stardom, he told an interviewer with
what appeared to be uncharacteristic bitterness, the school sought to
make amends.


"Now," he said, "they want to give the diploma to me . . . Well,
they're not going to claim credit for me."


What might be seen as a hint of bitterness emerges occasionally from
Mr. Prinzes other recollections.


As a child, he said, while studying ballet to please his mother, he
also ran with street gangs for his own protection.


"I wasn't the funniest guy" in the neighborhood, he said once. "The
funniest guys are in jail."


While still in school, Mr. Prinze was discovered by David Jonas, a
talent manager who got him bookings in small clubs, resort hotels and
on television.


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