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George Kennedy??, ?’Cool Hand Luke?,’ ?’Naked Gun’ Actor Dies At 91-Years-Old

By Stephen Jordan
Published on: 10:47 PST, Feb 29, 2016

Actor George Kennedy, best known for his roles in Cool Hand Luke and Naked Gun, died at the age of 91, reported TMZ.

The site stated that Cory Schenkel, the grandson of George, said Kennedy died Sunday morning at 4:30 a.m. in Boise, Idaho. Apparently, the actor’s health had been on a steady decline ever since his wife, Joan McCarthy, passed away several months ago. For the past few weeks, Kennedy had been under hospice care.

George Kennedy, born on February 18, 1925, had an interview with Smashing Interviews in 2011 where the actor expressed bitter-sweet contentment with where he was in his acting career. It seemed that as far as the craft was concerned, Kennedy felt that he had accomplished everything he needed to and that his “turn [was] over.”

“My time in movies and shows is up. The people who I talk to you about right now with great affection are, for the most part, gone. When they talk about somebody coming out in a brand new movie now, I don’t even know who they are. It is their turn. My turn is over and that’s fine. It was fun. The fact that it was all I could do made it even better. I loved what I did.”

George Kennedy was a New York City native, born and raised, with his father, George Harris Kennedy, being a musician as well as an orchestra leader. George Sr. died when George Jr. was only 4-years-old. He was raised by his mother Helen, who was a ballet dancer and whom George praised as a saint.

“When I was growing up, I didn’t feel like talking to other people about my problems because it seemed to me that they had as many problems as I did,” Kennedy said.

After acting on stage and being a radio performer, Kennedy joined the Army Air Corps during the second World War and served for 16 years. George had an involvement with the opening of the first Army Information Office, where technical assistance was given to films and television shows. Coming back home, Kennedy became a technical adviser for The Phil Silvers Show and his acting career began in 1961 with his role in The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come. George appeared on several shows in the ’60s, including Bonanza, Maverick and The Andy Griffith Show.

“The big guys were on TV and they needed big lumps to eat up,” George Kennedy said in an interview in 1971. “All I had to do was show up on the set, and I got beaten up.”

It was his performance as the character Dragline in the 1967 Stuart Rosenberg-directed Cool Hand Luke which earned him his first Academy Award nomination and win for Best Supporting Actor. He went on to have a role in The Dirty Dozen and starred in the Oscar-winning Airplane in 1970. He also starred in the film’s three sequels that followed.

George Kennedy had stated that there was one role he missed out on that he wished he would’ve taken. The chance to be on stage with Henry Fonda performing Of Mice And Men would have been greatest moment of his life, only they weren’t able to do it following the death of the man who was in charge of the whole thing. Kennedy felt overwhelmed when Fonda offered it to him.

Later in his life, George Kennedy moved to southern Idaho and got married to Joan McCarthy. The couple had a daughter, Shaunna, and adopted their grandchildren Cory and Taylor after Shaunna was incarcerated.

“Acting is beautiful,” George Kennedy said. “If I’m prejudiced toward doing it, it is because of the joy that I derive from it.”

[Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images]

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