One Cheers Cast Member's Father Was A Notable Part Of The Show For 8 Seasons
Let a television series stick around long enough, and the cast members, provided there isn't a tremendous amount of turnover, begin to feel like family. They're weekly guests in your living room (or, nowadays, travel companions on your morning/evening commute — or just about anywhere you can watch a TV show without crashing a car or walking into oncoming traffic), and they're doing all the entertaining. It's a nifty arrangement.
This coziness would be impossible to maintain over double-digit seasons if the sets of these series weren't friendly, respectful environments. There are deadlines and airdates to hit, so it behooves everyone to be not only professional, but pleasant. This means being an adult and realizing that everyone has their quirks and bad days. You cut people slack, and you make as much room as possible for whatever tsuris is going on in their life — because if you keep at it for enough years, your work family is family full-stop.
And this isn't always a difficult situation. Sometimes, a co-worker's personal mess adds color and joy to the creative process.
Take Rhea Perlman for example. The actor's career went supernova in the early 1980s when "Cheers" became one of the most popular shows on television. The sitcom had just entered its Nielsen ratings prime in 1986 when her parents, Philip and Adele Perlman, retired and moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles to be closer to their showbiz-pro daughters (Rhea's sister, Heide Perlman, was a writer and producer on "Cheers" and, later, "The Tracey Ullman Show" and "Frasier"). Philip dropped by set on occasion, and, being a convivial fellow, eventually found his way onto one of the fictional establishment's bar stools. He belonged, thus beginning a career as a walk-on presence in many a film and TV series.
A nepo-daddy who made a big difference
If you know "Cheers" well, you know that one of the sitcom's secret weapons was Al Rosen. When the writers needed to throw a punchline to someone outside of the main cast, they often gave the line to Rosen, who played an elderly barfly who wasn't as slow on the uptake as he appeared. When Rosen died in 1990, the "Cheers" started feeding his lines to Philip, who'd been a background presence in the bar since the fourth season.
He was an instant hit. That said, he wasn't exactly an amateur. He'd already logged some camera time in a few of his son-in-law's movies. In fact, I think Danny DeVito (who is now amicably separated from while still legally married to Rhea Perlman) gave Philip his finest hour on camera as the author of "40 Years of Naugahyde: A Girl and a Dream" in "Throw Momma from the Train."
In any event, Philip earned plenty of big laughs on "Cheers," and even made a guest appearance on the episode of "Frasier" that reunited the title character with Carla, Norm, and Cliff (he admires Niles' sport coat).
So when you commence your umpteenth rewatch of "Cheers," keep your eyes peeled for a slightly built old man who can work wonders with a single line of dialogue. That's Philip Perelman. And he was very much his daughters' father. As Heide said of Philip, who passed away in 2015, "He had a unique acting style; he was completely unschooled. We put together a reel of all his performances for his 90th birthday, and he really had great timing. He was extremely natural."