Charles Nelson Reilly, who spent much of the 1970s as both a staple of “The Match Game” and a regular on Saturday morning television, has died at the age of 76.
Funnily enough, I just did an interview with Marty Krofft – soon to be posted on Bullz-Eye – where he and I discussed Charles Nelson Reilly’s role on “Lidsville” as the evil magician Horatio J. Hoo Doo (seen above). I always thought Reilly was a hoot, one of those staples of ’70s television who – rather unfairly, I thought – never managed to escape from his reputation as a staple of ’70s television. But the guy was a Tony-winning actor for “How To Succeed In Business Without Even Trying” who studied acting alongside Steve McQueen and Hal Holbrook, and although his film career never really took off (career highlight: “Cannonball Run II”), he stayed active on TV and doing animation voiceovers ’til the very end. His most memorable work in recent years…? I think you have to give it to his role as Jose Chung on “The X-Files,” a part he reprised on a later episode of “Millennium.” But he did a great comedic turn as himself on an episode of “The Larry Sanders Show,” and he also turned up on a couple of episodes of “The Drew Carey Show” as well.
Me, I always remember him for his role as Uncle Croc. “Uncle Croc’s Block” was a very, very short-lived Saturday morning series where Reilly played a crotchety kids show host, and although I have no idea how it would play for me today, at the time, I thought it was hilarious because it was so different from anything else on Saturday mornings as the time.
Sorry to see you go, Charles. Hopefully, one of these days, the film of your one-man show, “The Life of Reilly,” will make it to DVD…although there’s a line in this trailer for the film that isn’t nearly as funny any longer.
In the meantime, we’ll leave you with the final word on one thing you absolutely weren’t:
