Christopher Hewett passed away last week. He was best known for playing the title role on the situation comedy, Mr. Belvedere, which — I was surprised to just learn — was on ABC for five whole years.
I have, you may be shocked to know, an anecdote about working with Mr. Hewett, albeit briefly. In 1983, I was writing a show for ABC and a cameo appearance was arranged with the stars of Fantasy Island in the interest of network solidarity and cheesy cross-promotion. Hewett had just joined the cast (replacing Herve Villechaize as Mr. Roarke's sidekick) so he and Ricardo Montalban came by to tape a couple of short bits. When Hewett came into the room, I couldn't resist: In my best Gene Wilder simulation, I muttered, "Max, he's wearing a dress." There was a pause as everyone else in the room looked at me like I was more insane than usual. None of them got the reference. None of them recalled that Christopher Hewett played the effeminate director, Roger DeBris, in Mel Brooks's classic movie, The Producers.
Mr. Hewett, fortunately, threw back his head and howled with laughter. We talked a bit about the film — "A great honor…my one disappointment was that they wouldn't allow me to keep the wardrobe" — and about his then-recent stint on stage, playing Captain Hook to Sandy Duncan in Peter Pan. He was a wonderful Hook, wallowing in villainy and masterfully goading the audience into hissing his every move. And though his off-camera manner made Roger DeBris look dead butch, his on-stage piracy was right in masculine character. (I have seen some Hooks whose feet touched the floor less often than Peter's.)
After praising his performance in that, I was groping for something else to say and I hit upon, "Was that your first time on Broadway?"
Given his résumé, It was an incredibly-stupid question but he was ever-so-polite in how he told me that. "Oh, no, dear boy," he said. "I've trod those boards many a time."
"Really?" I asked. "What was your first Broadway show?"
He said, "My Fair Lady." And I could tell he wasn't talking about any revival. He meant the original version; the one with Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews.
I looked it up when I got home. Sure enough, he originated the role of Zoltan Karpathy, the Hungarian linguistics professor who threatens to expose Eliza Doolittle when Higgins takes her to the ball. It was a smaller role on stage than it was in the movie, but hell, even a cameo in that show was theatrical history.
He appeared thereafter in dozens of theatrical productions, many of them on Broadway, and in the occasional film and TV role until he joined Fantasy Island. After that show went off, Mr. Belvedere made him a star and, I'd suspect, a very wealthy man. It is an odd irony of show business that someone can devote a lifetime to the stage and have it as their first love…and then they do a sitcom or a commercial and achieve near-instant fame and fortune. (Sir Laurence Olivier, it is said, made more money in three years doing commercials for Polaroid Cameras than he did in all his Shakespearean appearances, combined.)
So it was a bit sad to see all those obits that spoke only of Hewett's TV work. There are those out there who consider My Fair Lady the greatest musical ever produced on stage and The Producers, the funniest movie ever made. Most actors go their entire lives without being in anything as wonderful as either of those…and Christopher Hewett, may he rest in peace, was part of both.