By Movieguide® Staff
Ronnie Schell, the character actor who gave GOMER PYLE: USMC its street-smart foil, died Friday of natural causes at UCLA Hospital in Los Angeles. He was 94.
“I used to call myself ‘America’s Slowest Rising Comedian,’” Schell once told the Copley News Service. “Now that I’m co-starring in a series, I figure I’m America’s fastest slowest rising comedian.”
His death was announced by family. No services have been scheduled.
Born Ronald Ralph Schell on December 23, 1931, in Richmond, California, he was still a senior at San Francisco State University when he auditioned at the city’s famed Purple Onion nightclub. Two weeks turned into five months. Sharing a bill with Phyllis Diller and an up-and-coming Kingston Trio, Schell found his footing in stand-up comedy.
He eventually worked his way through San Francisco’s best rooms — the Hungry I, Bimbo’s 365 Club, Fack’s 11 Jazz Club — before his manager pushed him to relocate to Los Angeles in 1962. Television followed two years later.
His nearly 150 TV credits began with an appearance on Groucho Marx’s game show YOU BET YOUR LIFE, but the role that defined him was Pvt. Duke Slater on GOMER PYLE: USMC, the hit spinoff from THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW starring Jim Nabors. As Duke, Schell played the good-natured, more worldly pal to Nabors’ hayseed Gomer — the city kid who never lost patience with the country one, and never once tried to change him. The show ran from 1964 to 1969.
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Midway through the run, he stepped away to co-star with Joby Baker on GOOD MORNING WORLD, a 1967 CBS sitcom about a pair of morning drive disc jockeys. The series also featured a barely-known Goldie Hawn. Schell later recalled telling her she lacked discipline — a verdict he’d have to live down.
“Two years later she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the movie CACTUS FLOWER,” Schell told San Francisco State University. “I found this out while I was working in a toilet bowl in Omaha.”
He returned for GOMER PYLE’s fifth and final season, then kept working across five more decades. His credits ran from THAT GIRL and MORK & MINDY to CHARLIE’S ANGELS, THE DUKES OF HAZZARD, THE LOVE BOAT, and, in later years, GENERAL HOSPITAL and Disney’s PHIL OF THE FUTURE.
On the movie screen, Schell appeared in more than 24 pictures — including three Disney productions, GUS, THE SHAGGY D.A., and THE DEVIL AND MAX DEVLIN — alongside Carl Reiner’s FATAL INSTINCT and Tim Conway’s DORF GOES FISHING. His voice turned up in some of the era’s most beloved Hanna-Barbera animation: GOOBER AND THE GHOST CHASERS, BATTLE OF THE PLANETS, JETSONS: THE MOVIE, SHIRT TALES, and THE SMURFS, among others.
He served as spokesman for San Francisco’s BART transit system and won his first national CLIO Award for a Kemp’s Ice Cream commercial. In 2002 he received the first California Standup Comedy Legend Award, and San Francisco State inducted him into its Hall of Fame. In 2019 he starred in the Off Broadway musical comedy revue DON’T LEAVE IT ALL TO YOUR CHILDREN.
Las Vegas performances continued almost until his death. Those who knew his work best knew why.
“I have trouble not finding something funny in everything,” Schell once reflected. “At the most serious time, I think of something funny. Most comedians are like that.”
Schell is survived by his wife, Janet; sons Gregory and Christian; and granddaughter Chiara.
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