July 24, 2012

Goodbye to Sherman Hemsley.

Here's an obituary. I was looking for a great "All in the Family" or "Jeffersons" clip, but I found this "Twilight Zone" performance — "I of Newton" — where he plays a math professor who gets involved with selling his soul to the Devil:



(Notice how the saying on the Devil's T-shirt keeps changing.)

18 comments:

Sebastian said...

"Hell is a city much like Newark." Haha.

bagoh20 said...

That got me thinking: What would you command if you could command an omnipotent being to do anything you wanted?

After a lifetime of stories that always end bad when someone screws with fate or the natural order of things, it's hard to take a chance on anything big. I might just ask to lose 20 pounds in my sleep, or for a really good piece of pie.

Kev said...

(the other kev)

I actually remember seeing "I of Newton' on TV. It was one of the few modern 'Twilight Zones' that I thought could measure up to the originals.

And Mr. Hemsley was very good in it, as was Mr. Glass.

edutcher said...

I'd seen something that he had died.

A good actor, a better actor than Norman Lear gave him a chance to show.

rcocean said...

The modern twilight zone reminds me of the "New Coke"

Icepick said...

Yeah, I loved that Twilight Zone episode.

RIP Mr. Hemsley.

Peter Hoh said...

I thought he might ask for the square root of a negative number, or ask the fellow to count as high as possible.

Ron said...

Wow, I too remember that Twilight Zone from seeing it live! I used that "Hell is much like Newark" line for years...

RIP Mr. H

Bob Ellison said...

He liked my competitor's product. I never liked him after that.

Known Unknown said...

George Jefferson didn't build those dry cleaners.

Somebody else did that.

Hemsley was a good one.

Chip S. said...

Movin' on up?

bwebster said...

Thought the Devil looked familiar -- that's Ron Glass, who played Shepherd Book in "Firefly"/"Serenity". ..bruce..

Wince said...

Had I known I could've sold my soul to the devil when I was struggling with integrals of inverse trigonometric functions my life would have been very different.

RIP Mr. Helmsley.

Jim said...

To a deluxe apartment in the sky!

William said...

Is an infinite series of numbers divisible by two less infinite than an infinite series of numbers?.......I'm starting to think that 74 is not that old....He was very good at expressing dyspepsia. Perhaps he had greater range than you saw in the sitcom, but that one thing he did very well. Maybe he would have made a great Othello, Instead if jealous rage, he could have played him as subject to fits of dyspeptic irritation.

Quaestor said...

Peter Hoh:
I thought he might ask for the square root of a negative number...

That's easy just take the root of the absolute value and multiply by i. To Hell you go, Peter Hoh!

Since ole Sherm's a math prof I expected something like "Using the Archimedean method compute π to the last digit.” Being a transcendental without resolution or repeated patterns, the devil would choke on that piece of π.

Will Collier said...

Excellent choice. I remember watching that episode when it first aired. It's still close to perfect, thanks to Hemsley, Ron Glass, and the writer, Joe Haldeman.

Strelnikov said...

Well, at least he and Weezie are together again.