Caddyshack Actors You Might Not Know Passed Away

1980's "Caddyshack" represents many things to different people. The snobs-vs.-slobs comedy marked the film directorial debut of Harold Ramis (who also co-wrote the film with Brian Doyle-Murray and Douglas Kenney) and the first substantial movie role for comedian Rodney Dangerfield. "Caddyshack" was also the final script co-written by the brilliant but troubled Kenney (via ESPN), who also collaborated with Ramis on "Animal House." And as Chris Nashawaty's book "Caddyshack: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story" noted (via Sports Illustrated), it helped to cool a long-standing feud between "Saturday Night Live" alumni Chevy Chase and Bill Murray.

"Caddyshack" is a cult favorite, beloved by comedy and sports fans alike, and an endlessly quotable touchstone for sports professionals like PGA Tour champion Jerry Kelly, who told Sports Illustrated, "There is not a day that goes by in which I don't use a line from 'Caddyshack.'" And as Slate notes, even Barack Obama quoted the film in a tribute to Ramis after his death in 2014, when he cited Bill Murray's speech about the Dalai Lama by wishing Ramis "total consciousness."

And while its best scenes will last forever as movie moments, the cast is sadly mortal. Released to theaters in the summer of 1980, "Caddyshack" is now over four decades old, and while many of the cast of "Caddyshack" remain active, others have died. Find out which cast members have reached the 18th hole in this list of the "Caddyshack" actors you might know passed away.

Ted Knight brought the signature pomposity and high-strung anxiety of his best-known role -– TV anchor Ted Baxter on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," which earned him two Emmy Awards -– to his turn as the Fresca-loving, impossibly snobbish Judge Elihu Smails in "Caddyshack." Though Knight was best known for his TV work, the actor appeared in numerous features during his long career, including Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho," but often in minor or even uncredited roles.

Prior to stardom on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," Knight employed his impeccable delivery and baritone voice on radio and commercial voice-overs while pursuing on-camera guest roles on TV series. Guest shots on series like "The Twilight Zone" and "Get Smart," as well as voice acting work for numerous series (most notably the stentorian narration for "Super Friends") preceded his breakout role on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."

Knight enjoyed a second stint on a successful TV series with the sitcom "Too Close for Comfort," which ran on ABC from 1980 to 1983 and in first-run syndication from 1984 to 1987. A revamp in 1986 changed the title to "The Ted Knight Show," but the new iteration was cut short when the 62-year-old Knight died on August 26, 1986 after surgery for urinary tract cancer (via The Washington Post).

One of the film's more amusing portraits in hypocrisy is Bishop Fred Pickering, a country club member and seemingly upstanding figure who also enjoys an off-color joke and likes his liquor a bit too much ("You never ask a navy man if he'll have another drink"). And as we discover over the course of the film, the Bishop also hungers for a perfect game of golf, which he pursues in a rainswept round caddied by Carl Spackler. He misses the final hole and is promptly struck by lighting, but he later turns up, haggard and unshaven, to renounce God.

The Bishop was one of the final screen roles for actor Henry Wilcoxon, who turned to acting in the early 1930s after a stint as an amateur boxer (via Turner Classic Movies). He began his career on stage before moving into features in 1931, and a meeting with director Cecil B. DeMille led to some of his best known movie roles, including Marc Anthony in 1934's "Cleopatra" and the captain of the pharaoh's guards in "The Ten Commandments" (1952). Wilcoxon also appeared in such classic Hollywood titles as "Mrs. Miniver" and DeMille's "The Greatest Show on Earth" before moving into television in the 1960s and '70s. He made his final film appearance in the low-budget 1983 horror film "Sweet Sixteen" before his death on March 6, 1984 at the age of 78 (per The New York Times).

Struggling to help oversee Danny's sprawling litter of siblings (which include director Harold Ramis' daughter, Violet, as one of its youngest members) is their unnamed and clearly frazzled mother. The role was one of the relatively few screen appearances of actress Elaine Aiken, who found greater fame as a well-respected acting teacher in New York.

Born in Cordoba, Spain, she studied acting under famed instructor Lee Strasberg and joined the Actors Studio, where she became a member of its auditions panel. Aiken appeared in a handful of TV episodes and co-starred with Anthony Perkins and Jack Palance in the 1957 Western feature "The Lonely Man," but focused much of her energy into teaching. She taught acting at the Strasberg Theater Institute in the late 1970s and co-founded her own school, Actors Conservatory, in 1987. Among the many actors who studied under Aiken were Harvey Keitel and Alec Baldwin.

"Caddyshack" marked Aiken's final film role, which she followed with a trio of episodes on the daytime soap opera "Search for Tomorrow" in 1983. The 71-year-old actress and teacher died of cancer on July 12, 1998 at her home on New York's Upper East Side (via AP News).

Smoke Porterhouse was the country club's dutiful attendant, responsible for all manner of minor tasks, and though he only appeared in a handful of scenes in "Caddyshack," he was a funny and memorable presence in all of them. Porterhouse makes the wager with caddy manager Lou Loomis (Brian Doyle-Murray) over whether Judge Smails' dimwitted grandson, Spaulding, would consume the contents of his nostril after picking it. Porterhouse later repays Judge Smails' racist joke by subjecting his golf shoes to an industrial-style grinder.

Jackie Davis, who played Porterhouse in "Caddyshack," appeared in several other features between the 1970s and '90s -– most notably Martin Scorsese's remake of "Cape Fear" in 1991 -– but he was also a major figure in the world of jazz (per Jazz Music Archives). The Florida native was among the first musicians to play a Hammond organ on jazz recordings, both as a sideman for artists like Louis Jordan and as a bandleader for Capitol Records. Davis issued numerous albums of light jazz mixed with pop standards in the 1950s and early '60s before settling into steady work as a club performer.

He returned to recording in 1980 -– the same year as the release of "Caddyshack" -– and performed regularly in North Carolina and Florida into the early '90s. A series of health and financial setbacks, including the loss of his home in Hurricane Andrew in 1992, preceded his death on November 2,1999 at the age of 78 (per Allmusic).

"Caddyshack" co-writer and co-producer Douglas Kenney appears very briefly in the film as a bespectacled guest at the Fourth of July dinner that Al Czervik upends with a flurry of one-liners (re: Spaulding Smails: "Now I know why tigers eat their young"). In the scene, Kenney shares a table with Brian McConnachie, an actor and TV scribe who also wrote for the National Lampoon, the groundbreaking humor magazine that Kenney co-founded in 1969 (via Esquire). The Lampoon served as a launching pad for Kenney's tenure in Hollywood, which began in 1977 with "Animal House," a wildly successful comedy penned by fellow Lampoon writers Chris Miller and Harold Ramis, who worked on the National Lampoon Radio Hour and National Lampoon Show with Bill Murray.

A brilliant writer, Kenney struggled with substance abuse, which took a toll on his physical and mental health. A profile of Kenney in Harvard Magazine noted that he suffered from mood swings and deep depressions, as well as a self-destructive tendency that extended to his work. He showed up inebriated at a press conference for "Caddyshack" in 1980 and spoke disparagingly about his own film. As Miller told Harvard Magazine, "His brain has to be like some mirror that got broken into a thousand glittering shards: each one is very bright, but they're not connected anymore." That same year, Chevy Chase -– who was undergoing his own substance abuse issues (via The New York Times) -– invited Kenney to accompany him to Hawaii. During the trip, Chase left briefly for Los Angeles, and while preparing to return, was informed that Kenney had gone missing. His body was found at the bottom of a cliff on the island of Kauai; the 33-year-old's death was attributed as an accident.

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

Upon discovering Danny and Lacey in his bedroom, Judge Smails goes on a rampage, pursuing the caddy through his mansion. The chase causes the judge to collide with his butler, who drops a tray with tea service over a stair railing. The entire mess lands near the visiting Havercamps, who seem unfazed by the clamor. "That must be the tea," notes Rebecca Burritt's Mrs. Havercamp with nearly perfect comic delivery.

Handling –- or mishandling, as it were –- the tea tray in "Caddyshack" was Texas native Mel Pape, a bit player in several features and television productions who was better known as the personal assistant to and costumer for comedy legend Jackie Gleason. Pape enjoyed a number of minor roles in Gleason's projects, including the first and third "Smokey and the Bandit" movies and "Nothing in Common." Pape also appears to have worked in several film and TV projects based in Florida, where Gleason lived, including episodes of "Flipper."

Pape occasionally ventured outside of Gleason's orbit for acting roles, most notably in the Dom DeLuise-directed comedy "Hot Stuff" and the slasher pic "Eyes of a Stranger." Pape outlived Gleason, who died in 1987, by nearly a decade; he died in Austin, Texas on April 24, 1995 at the age of 83.