World renowned voice actors, legendary comedians, and even a few canine companions.
Countless stars have appeared on Married… With Children, but which actors from this classic
sitcom have sadly left us for the great film studio in the sky? Keep watching to find out.
Kim Weiskopf started his
career as a writer on such hit series as Good Times, Three's Company, and The Jeffersons. He
made the jump to executive producer on 1986's comedian-centered Melba, and a few years later,
Weiskopf was a co-producer for Full House. Weiskopf joined Married... with Children
as a supervising producer in 1990, eventually working his way up to executive producer by 1995.
Yet Weiskopf didn't just write and produce the show. He
also voiced the family dog Buck from Season 8 until the end of the series.
"I knew they wouldn't forget me."
Weiskopf continued his voiceover work even after Buck dies and gets reincarnated as Lucky Bundy
for the final seasons. After the show ended, Weiskopf would go on to co-executive produce the
twin comedy Sister, Sister and serve as executive producer on Malcolm and Eddie. The show he did
the most work for, however, was Married... With Children. His passing in 2009 from pancreatic
cancer saw the death of a man who touched so many shows — and voiced two disgruntled dogs.
Joseph Bologna was
one of many actors who had successful, prolific careers that included appearing on Married...
with Children for just an episode or two. Occasionally, these cameos and arcs left
a mark that lasted long beyond their short time on screen. Bologna had starred in films,
TV movies, and series since 1971. Yet his turn as Charlie Verducci, a construction worker friend
of Al's on a single episode of Married... with Children, led to an entire spinoff.
Of course, Charlie's reputation on the show was solidified by his son Vincent "Vinny" Verducci,
played by a young Matt LeBlanc, who appeared on a few more episodes than
Charlie did. After the episode, entitled "Top of the Heap," the duo starred in a spinoff
following the Verduccis entitled, you guessed it, Top of the Heap.
The series only lasted for seven episodes, but both actors went on to more success. LeBlanc,
of course, became Joey Tribbiani on Friends. Bologna, on the other hand, appeared on TV shows
such as CSI. He also did some voice acting for Superman: The Animated Series, and Ice Age:
The Meltdown. Bologna also appeared in many films, including his memorable turn as the father in Adam
Sandler's Big Daddy. Bologna died of pancreatic cancer on August 13, 2017 at the age of 82.
Tim Conway was another actor with a long,
varied resume who made a few important appearances on Married... with Children. His career blew up
when he played Ensign Charles Parker in McHale's Navy, first in the 1964 film and
then on the subsequent 1966 TV series. He went on to play the title lead on the 1967 series Rango,
then went on to host his own shows, The Tim Conway Show and The Tim Conway Comedy Hour.
He was a regular guest on The Carol Burnett Show and made
appearances in countless other films and TV series. Later, he turned to cartoons,
voicing characters on shows ranging from SpongeBob SquarePants to DreamWorks Dragons.
"Now wait just a darn minute."
On Married... with Children, he had a brief appearance playing an extremely important
character: Ephraim Wanker, Peggy's alcoholic father. Ephraim appears in several episodes,
dropping such gems as the fact that he forced Al to marry Peg at gunpoint because,
in a classic take on the disapproving father-in-law, he actually liked Al.
Tim Conway died of normal pressure hydrocephalus on May 14, 2019. He was 85 years old.
Kathleen Freeman voiced
Peg Bundy's mom, Ma Wanker, the regular butt of Al's fat jokes. Ma Wanker never physically
appears on Married... With Children, but she's referred to throughout the series.
She does receive one quasi-appearance in Season 7, via Freeman's offscreen voice. Freeman herself
had consistent work in Hollywood over the course of the later half of the 20th century.
Freeman's acting career began with The Naked City in 1948.
One highlight of her long and illustrious time in showbiz is her turn as Sister Mary
Stigmata in The Blues Brothers. Many bios also mention her appearance in Singin'
in the Rain as the woman who gives Jean Hagen's character, Lina, diction lessons.
Freeman also did a lot of voice work, especially in her later years.
That includes performances on cartoons like DuckTales,
and video games like Curse of Monkey Island. Freeman died of lung cancer on August 23, 2001.
One of the running gags
on Married... with Children is the abundance of larger women who come into the shoe store where Al
works and make his thankless job even tougher. Diana Bellamy played several of these women.
Bellamy first appeared in the Married… With Children Pilot episode as Customer #1,
a woman who insists she wears a smaller shoe than she actually does. This leads Al
to rebut with a series of jokes centering around her inability to accept her size.
"Come on, Arnold. We're leaving."
"I want a balloon."
"You've already got one."
She later appeared as Kathleen Morgan, a wealthy woman who is
attracted to Joe Bologna's Charlie Verducci in his guest appearance.
In her final performance on Married... with Children, Bellamy played Shirley, who had
previously been credited as Nancy, the head of an organization called Crimes Against Obesity.
This group takes Al and his endless string of jokes against larger women to court, and wins.
As a character actor, Bellamy appeared in many films and TV series. Her most recurring role as
the thorn in Al's side served as a great bookend, with her appearing in both in the pilot and
the final season. According to The Los Angeles Times, she died of cancer at age 57 on June 17,
2001, after her cancer treatment had aggravated her diabetes and left her blind.
Throughout Married...
with Children, there are a few constants. One is Al's miserable job as a salesman at Gary's Shoes,
where he's constantly forced to cater to women who seem to take pleasure in denigrating him
and his job. Yet a big surprise comes towards the end of the series,
when it's revealed that Gary is, in fact, a woman played by Janet Carroll.
Carroll had been acting onstage since the 1960s, even performing on Broadway.
Starting in 1981, she went from the stage to the silver screen and then TV.
Possibly one of her most memorable appearances is in the film Risky Business. In the movie,
Carrol appears as the mother to Tom Cruise's character, Joel, an upper-class woman completely
oblivious to the fact that her son has turned her family home into a brothel.
Gary, however, is a true boss. She is the one woman who has corporate power over Al
and knows how to keep her employee in line. She serves as an authoritative reminder that
despite Al's misogyny, the women are in charge.
While appearing on multiple episodes of Married... with Children,
Carroll was also acting on another Fox show, the drama
Melrose Place. Carroll would act until her death from brain cancer on May 22, 2012.
According to Vulture, the Bundys were based on
Roseanne Barr and Sam Kinison, and the showrunners offered each actor the opportunity to play the
character they inspired. Of course, Ed O'Neill and Katey Sagal took the roles of Al and Peggy
and the rest is history. However, Kinison did appear on the show, if only for a holiday special.
The pastor-turned-comedian best known for his rage-filled screams appeared in a two-episode
Married... with Children Christmas special in 1989 called "It's a Bundyful Life."
In the style of It's A Wonderful Life, Kinison played an angel sent to earth to convince Al
life was worth living after he gets shocked by some Christmas Lights.
"No Bundy, we're gonna take a little trip. Just like you wondered,
I'm gonna show you what it'd been like if you'd never been born."
Kinison's raw, street-savvy angel steals the two-parter.
The episode shows the Bundy clan much happier without Al,
which leads Kinison's angel to feel like a failure. Al eventually decides he wants to live
because his family doesn't deserve happiness after all the aggravation they've caused.
Kinison died on April 10, 1992 in a head-on collision with a pickup truck. He was 38.
Kevin Curran was
one of many comic geniuses who came out of the legendary Harvard Lampoon,
a college magazine whose alumni shaped 20th century comedy. It's no surprise, then, that
Curran's longest credit was on The Simpsons, a frequent landing place for Harvard Lampoon alumni.
Curran tallied 282 Simpsons episodes as a co-executive producer, and more as a supervising
producer and a consulting producer. However, he cut his teeth as a writer on Married... with
Children. Not only was Curran a writer and producer, he also voiced Buck the dog from
Season 4 until his departure from the show in Season 7, at which point Kim Weiskopf took over.
"Well, when the going gets tough the tough drink out of the toilet."
He also played the human version of Buck in the Season 6 episode "Psychic Avengers."
Curran entered the world of TV as a writer for Late Night with David Letterman from
1984 to 1989. He left to join fledgling series Married... with Children as a story editor,
where he eventually worked his way up to a supervising producer. He held that role until
1993, when he left to executive produce two new series: The Good Life and Unhappily Ever After.
It was after that that Curran found a home with The Simpsons,
where he was a producer until 2015. Curran died on October 25,
2016 at the age of 59, forever renowned as a true giant of comedic storytelling.
Buck is the Bundys' dog whose cynicism
and unhappiness mirrors that of his family. Beloved enough to garner mention in a Los
Angeles Times article about TV's top dogs, Buck Bundy fills out the bedraggled family perfectly.
On the show, Buck looks like a shaggy mutt, but in reality, the dog was played by a pedigreed Briard
originally named Mike. He was renamed Buck after his adoption by trainer Steven Ritt. Aside from
Married... with Children, Buck appeared in a Janet Jackson video and the Bill Murray film Scrooged.
The Complete Married With Children book reports that, by Season 10, Buck was having
trouble identifying his cues and signals. Buck's last episode was "Requiem for a Dead Briard,"
where the Bundy pup dies and goes to heaven. The episode ends with a title card which read,
"Dedicated to Buck the dog, who with this episode
begins a well-deserved retirement and hopefully a nice gig at stud."
Buck died for real on May 28, 1996, less than a year after his retirement.
When Buck dies on Married... With Children,
he's reincarnated as a new, younger dog. He wonders who's adopted him in this reincarnated
form and discovers, to his dismay, that God has punished him for his aggression towards
cats by landing him with the Bundys once again. Unlike Buck, Lucky is a spaniel, and while the
audience knows he's still Buck, the Bundys see Lucky as a completely new dog. They pour
affection on him and pay him attention they rarely paid the original Buck. Talk about cruel irony.
Having arrived close to the end of the show's run, Lucky finished out the series as the Bundy
family's faithful, bedraggled dog from 1995 until the series finale in 1997.
Lucky enjoyed a much longer retirement than Buck, living until January 18, 2006,
when the sweet canine died at the ripe old age of 10.
Steven Susskind
had a long career as a journeyman actor. He made appearances on shows such as MacGyver and Frasier,
and had bit roles in films like Friday the 13th: Part III and Star Trek V:
The Final Frontier. He also did voice work on the series The Tick and the original Monsters, Inc.
film. Susskind most notably played Al's friend Barney in 6 episodes of Married... with Children.
Despite being one of Al's many cronies, Barney helps kick Al off his softball team due to the
protagonist's poor playing. He also beats Al handily in another episode's poker match.
A classic Barney scene occurs in "Requiem for a Dead Barber," where all the men have to go to
a salon because their barber has died. When they talk about going to a pool hall, Barney protests:
"Nah, nah. The severity of the neon will ruin the highlights of my hair."
In another episode, Barney and his peers become absolutely starstruck when Bud
brings home an attractive guest. And of course, he eventually joins Al's male liberation group,
"No Ma'am." Steve Susskind worked up until his death in an automobile accident on January 21,
2005. He was 62.
Fans of the NFL and
Police Academy alike are familiar with Bubba Smith. His death was, therefore,
a very widely lamented occurrence. However, his widespread fan base might not know that
he also appeared on Married… With Children. While Smith's CV reaches across careers,
his cameo on the sitcom references a compelling moment ripped from Al's glory days.
Bubba Smith plays "Spare Tire" Dixon in the Season 5 episode
"All Night Security Dude." In that episode, it emerges that Al Bundy and Dixon had a rivalry
reaching back to their time in high school. Dixon claims that in a big game, he got Al's
knee to the ground before Polk High's legendary quarterback scored the game-winning touchdown.
In an act of vengeance, Dixon steals Polk High's trophy,
and will only give it back if Al can get past him. This challenge results in an epic showdown
full of eyeball gouges and bites, during which Al almost
kneels before he finally emerges victorious. Smith died on August 3, 2011 at the age of 66.
Gilbert Gottfried enjoyed
many great film and TV roles over the course of his long and illustrious career, and his
appearance on Married... with Children stands out as one of his greatest one-off performances.
Uniquely, Gottfried played himself in Season 9's "Ship Happens." In the episode, he performs on
a cruise the Bundys are on, and winds up in a life raft with the Bundys after the ship sinks.
There are few fates worse than being trapped with people you hate on the big blue sea.
Al endures this when he's stuck with Peg, the D'Arcys, a fellow passenger, and Gottfried,
who annoys him. Before long, Al expresses that his patience has run thin. Peg responds by
pointing out the sea is calm, but Al explains it's not seasickness that's bothering him.
“It's not the sea, Peg. It's Gilbert Gottfried."
Gottfried starts doing some stand-up with food trays, driving Al
even crazier. Despite Al's frustration, Gottfried uses his humor — specifically
his impression of Jerry Lewis — to repel a shark. Gottfried died on April 12, 2022,
from ventricular tachycardia related to type II myotonic dystrophy. He was 67 years old.
Tawny Kitaen was a
model and actor who famously appeared in many heavy metal music videos.
Her storied history lent itself well to the raucous sensibilities of Married...
with Children. Though her role on the show is brief, it's quite memorable.
Kitaen plays a lingerie model named Dominique who walks into Al's shoe store in Season 9's
"Shoeway to Heaven." After finding a box of old shoes from the '70s,
he turns the store into Al Bundy's House of Sole, as a way to tap into the hype
surrounding nostalgic style. Dominique asks if somebody can help her, to which Al replies,
"My name is Al Bundy and I was born to rock your world."
He ends up giving her a free pair of shoes in exchange for her help promoting the store.
Kitaen appeared on a wide variety of TV shows, ranging from sitcoms like Seinfeld to reality
programs like The Surreal Life. She died on May 7, 2021. Months after this news broke,
the cause of death was revealed to be dilated cardiomyopathy. She was 59 years old.
Fred Willard was a
comedy actor with a long list of credits to his name, ranging from parts in the Anchorman films
to a significant role on Modern Family. He was particularly good at playing smarmy characters,
which made him perfect for the role of Stan, a cheesy salesman who appears in
Season 6's "My Dinner with Anthrax." Stan, who is undergoing a midlife crisis and desperately
needs to make a sale, tries to get Al and Peg interested in purchasing a timeshare.
By the time Willard appeared on Married... with Children in 1992, he had been acting
for decades. His appearances ranged from one-episode cameos to lengthy recurring roles.
He became particularly well known for his performances in Christopher Guest's movies,
including A Mighty Wind and Waiting for Guffman. Willard delivered an especially
memorable performance in Best in Show, where he played colorful dog show commentator,
Buck Laughlin. As reported by Rolling Stone, Willard died on May 15th, 2020 at the age of 86.
Alan Thicke was perhaps best known as
Dr. Jason Seaver, a loving father and psychiatrist on the classic sitcom Growing Pains. Several years
after that show ended in 1992, he portrayed two very different roles on Married... with Children.
First, he played Henry, an older man who goes on a double date with Kelly Bundy in Season
10's "Enemies." One season later, Thicke returned as successful businessman Bruce
in Season 11's three-part special, "Breaking Up Is Easy to Do." These episodes are part of
a brief arc in which Peggy and Al split up. Bruce is interested in Peggy, and as he owns
several used car dealerships, he offers her the life of luxury she often professes to desire.
"I hate to see you see you slaving away in the kitchen. From now on we eat out."
"Oooo, can we go to one of those fancy French places?"
Thicke died on December 13, 2016 at the age of 69.
People later revealed that the cause of death was a type A aortic dissection.
Beckie Mullen enjoyed
a wide variety of roles over the course of her career. It's certainly not every actor who appears
in productions as disparate as MADtv, Cybill, Black Scorpion, and even a Van Halen music video.
Despite this plethora of projects, Mullen was likely most famous for her very first role:
Sally the Farmer's Daughter. This wasn't just an acting role, either: it was a wrestling role.
As Sally, Mullen was one of the original members of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, the group
that provided the inspiration for the celebrated Netflix series GLOW. Appropriately enough, Mullen
wrestled in "Al... with Kelly," a Season 5 episode of Married... with Children. As the beautiful
Yvonne, she fights Pamela Anderson in a dream sequence that takes place in the Bundys' bed.
Mullen died on July 27, 2020 at the age of 56. The cause of death was liver and colon cancer.
According to The Complete Married With
Children Book, the Bundy family was named after wrestler King Kong Bundy. Given this distinction,
it might surprise fans that the man himself only appeared in two episodes of the series.
He played himself in Season 10's "Flight of the Bumblebee," where he wrestles Bud Bundy,
who was wearing a bee costume. Unsurprisingly, the larger Bundy trounces the smaller one.
He also appeared in Season 2's "All in the Family" as Peggy's Uncle Irwin.
Bundy was a legendary figure of 1980s and 1990s wrestling who grappled with icons like
Andre the Giant and Hulk Hogan. He was especially renowned for his massive physique.
The WWE reports that he was 6'4" and weighed in at 458 pounds, easily living up to his nickname,
the "walking condominium." Bundy died on March 4, 2019, at the age of 64.
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus,
even more Looper videos about your favorite sitcom stars are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.