This week, the PCC Features department breaks out of the standard worthless comedy/stupid parody rut to offer a long-overdue tribute to one of the finest talents the entertainment industry has ever known: Mr. Norman Fell.

Hopefully you remember the classic television series Three's Company. If you do, then you must remember Fell; he spent several seasons on the show portraying the well-meaning, slightly sinister, ever-sarcastic landlord, Stanley Roper. He then went on to reprise that classic role in a spinoff series, Three's Company's Friends--The Ropers!

Theater students will no doubt also be intimately knowledgeable regarding Fell, or "Feller," as friends in the entertainment industry came to know him. His groundbreaking comedy style is one still taught and referred to by instructors in theater classes across the nation. He is perhaps best known for the now-classic "Fell Take," in which he delivers a wacky joke ("No, Helen; the proof ISN'T in the pudding!") and then turns directly to the camera to give it a sardonic stare.

"He changed the face of comedic acting," says Jim Carrey, star of Dumb and Dumber and The Truman Show, in a recent interview. "I still watch his tapes. He was a machine; just remarkable. I'm constantly in awe."

Just a few weeks ago, Fell ascended to that big wacky funny farm in the sky, hopefully making the Lord laugh until he cries along with Audra "Mrs. Roper" Lindley. Since his passing, our crack team of investigators have been researching the mysterious background of Feller, obtaining never-before seen outtakes from Three's Company, unused screen test footage from many of the major studios, and the first chapters of an uncompleted biography manuscript being written by Kitty Kelly, in an effort to bring our loyal readers a special and rare glimpse into the life of a performer whose comedic genius has touched millions. We offer now the untold story of a man called Roper.

THE EARLY DAYS

Norman Fell's first exposure to showbusiness came at birth--he was born onstage! His mother, Joanna Burns, was performing her strenuous tap act in the Zigfield Follies while she was 9 months pregnant, and went into labor onstage one evening. Fortunately, there was a "doctor in the house," and it was only a matter of minutes before Norman peeked his adorable comedic skull out from betwixt his mother's legs. She named him after the doctor who helped deliver him, a man she later married.

From an early age, little Norman showed incredible entertainment prowess and a sincere desire to amuse others. His mother has commented many times in interviews regarding her famous son that "he was really funny from birth. When I would breast-feed him, he'd occassionally clomp his gummy teeth down on my breast, and look up at me with that Norman look he has, the same one he uses on that Three's Company show. I laughed and laughed until I cried, because it actually hurt my breast, you know. But I knew from the start he would make it big."

HOLLYWOOD CALLS

Fell left home at age 18 to pursue a career in showbiz, spending his time working as a male escort and waiter in Hollywood before recieving his big break at the age of 31 with a part in 1955's classic television comedy series Joe & Mabel with Jerry Stiller, now better known for his performance as George Costanza's father on the hit television series Seinfeld.

"Norm was a consumate professional, a real class act," recalls Stiller. "He owes me twenty bucks from a poker game, but he's still a great guy. WHERE THE HELL'S MY MONEY, YOU BASTARD?! Be sure you PRINT that, got it? I WANT MY MONEY!"

But Feller's meteoric rise to stardom could not be contained by the small screen. Shortly after the cancellation of Joe & Mabel, Fell met Frank Sinatra at a charity party in Las Vegas and soon after became a sometime member of the infamous "Rat Pack," culminating in his appearance with the other Rat Pack members in the classic crime film Ocean's Eleven.

"Yeah, Feller was a fucking god," remembers Sinatra, commenting just weeks before he would join Fell in that big Rainbow Room in the sky. "He would start drinking at 6 A.M. when he arrived at the set, and wouldn't stop until the last take of the night. Then we'd go out all night and do it over again. This for the entire 3-month shoot. Unfortunately, he used to look at Ava like he wanted to fuck her, so I had to ask a few of Sam Giancana's friends to teach him a hard lesson in life. But he's a class act, solid gold, baby."

THE DARK SIDE

It was after his brief stint with the Rat Pack that Fell sank into a bout with alcoholism and drug addiction, a rendezvous with addiction that would carry on until his appearance in 1967's smash hit The Graduate with Dustin Hoffman. It was Hoffman who woke Fell up to his own dangerous ways and put him back on the straight path to right living. Because Fell credited Hoffman so often with changing his life so dramatically, some film historians speculate that Hoffman and Fell shared much more than just screen time during the course of making The Graduate.

"Oh, he was queer as a cute little crooked baby's bottom," speculates Ricardo D'Amico, professor in queer studies at the University of Toronto and author of the book Sparklers in Tinseltown: Opening Hollywood's Closet. "They both were. Little queens. Norman would rub Dustin's bottom and Dustin would kiss Feller's wee-wee. Read my book. It's all there."

Though Fell would maintain highly visible romances and dalliances with some of Hollywood's most beautiful women, his experimentation with homosexuality during the era of "free love" and heavy drug use remains a tantalizing, if ultimately unconfirmable, possibility.

Another little-known Feller factoid is his screen test for the role of Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's film masterpiece, The Godfather. A clip unearthed from the vaults at Paramount Studios reveals a chipper and optimistic Fell mugging for the camera after being reassured by Coppola and producer Robert Evans that he was a shoe-in for the key role in the epic, which certainly would have earned Fell an Oscar just as easily as it earned one for Marlon Brando. This major snub on the part of Coppola would later be recalled by Feller during his work on Three's Company, when Coppola petitioned the producers of the show to write and direct an episode of the hit TV series, allegedly to be titled "Jack's Last Dance." Fell used his star clout and power on the show to demand that Coppola's script and proposal be rejected. This story, revealed in Kelly's unfinished manuscript, offers a glimpse into the darker side of Feller's moody and complex psyche, packed tightly with demons that the jovial clown would have to deal with time and again over the course of his career as success twisted his soul and changed his temperment.

A STAR RISES

A string of film appearances culminated in the movie role that most fans will remember Feller for, his work as Stanley in the adventure-comedy classic Cleopatra Jones and the City of Gold. It was for this film that Fell recieved his first Academy Award nomination, for Best Actor. It was a nomination made especially poignant after his bout earlier that year with bulimia and his failed relationship with future Golden Girls star Bea Arthur. Unfortunately, he would lose the Oscar to Jack Nicholson, who won that year for his performance in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. But the new-found fame of the Oscar nomination would lead a few years later to his screen testing and eventually winning the role of Stanely Roper in the smash hit TV series Three's Company.

Next: the apex of Feller's success, his meteoric plummet from the highest echelons of stardom, and an examination of his legendary feud with fellow actor Don Knotts.