Merlin Olsen died this week. He had been battling cancer for the past couple of years, so it wasn’t a surprise that he passed away. What was surprising was his age.
Merlin Olsen was 69. Which seems impossible … since it seemed like he had been around forever.
In 1968, Olsen sang “Under the Boardwalk” with his Los Angeles Rams defensive linemates (known as the “Fearsome Foursome”) on ABC’s “The Hollywood Palace” variety show. Variety shows were big back then, and the “Hollywood Palace” attracted every name star of the day to its stage. The “Palace” doesn’t exist anymore, and the Rams — no longer in Los Angeles — are anything but fearsome these days.
Merlin Olsen
Olsen, a college and professionall Hall of Fame football player, made the jump to the TV broadcast booth in the late 1970s and, as a sidelight, became an actor. He played good old boys and tough guys in movies, but found a home on “Little House on the Prairie” as Michael Landon’s sidekick Jonathan Garvey. Landon, who knew all about acting alongside big softies from his days with Dan “Hoss” Blocker on “Bonanza,” developed a brotherly rivalry with Olsen.
After “Little House,” Olsen went on to “Father Murphy” and “Aaron’s Way,” each less successful but which kept his face in front of viewers. At the same time, Olsen became the unlikely TV spokesman for FTD florists — a big guy talking about budding bouquets or holding a dozen roses.
We don’t have celebrities like Merlin Olsen today. We have fast-rising young stars who are often replaced in a few years by other fast-rising younger stars. Today’s TV stars more often than not try to do other series (and mostly fail) and if they do TV ads at all, it’s voice-over narration so as to keep their identity a guessing game.
They’ll do the late-night talk shows … but mostly to promote their latest endeavour, not entertain. And we know so much about our sports heroes these days, they’re so controlled by agents and media handlers, that you can’t imagine one taking Merlin Olsen’s path through celebrityland.
For some reason, Olsen’s death made me think of Neil Patrick Harris opening the Oscars with a song-and-dance number. Harris was “Doogie Howser, M.D.”; now he’s Barney on “How I Met Your Mother.” He’s hosted the Emmys and the Tonys, and has become a cult favorite with movies such as “Starship Troopers” and “Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle” … and on the Internet with such projects as “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.”
It isn’t a stretch to imagine Neil Patrick Harris on “The Hollywood Palace.” Like Merlin Olsen, he appears to be someone who’ll just seem to have been around forever.
