Whitney Rydbeck, the actor and mime who portrayed the final of the paintball victims in Jason Lives: Friday the thirteenth Half VI and one of many unique crash check dummies in an iconic public service marketing campaign that promoted seat belt security, has died. He was 79.
Rydbeck died Monday of problems from prostate most cancers whereas in hospice care in Chatsworth, California, his longtime pal Tommy McLoughlin, the director on Jason Lives, informed The Hollywood Reporter.
“We misplaced not solely a very humorous comic and actor … however one of the good-hearted human beings I’ve ever recognized,” McLoughlin wrote in a tribute on Instagram.
The lanky Rydbeck appeared on dozens of TV reveals throughout his busy profession, from The Brady Bunch, Phyllis, M*A*S*H, Cagney & Lacey and Freeway to Heaven to Star Trek: The Subsequent Era, Sisters, Residing Single, Celebration of 5 and Scrubs.
Within the sixth Friday the thirteenth movie, launched in 1986, Rydbeck impressed because the comically nerdy Roy, who whereas sporting protecting goggles over his common glasses comes throughout the masked villain within the woods throughout a company paintball sport. He tries to run away, however he’s not going to outlive.
Like Jason, Rydbeck and Tony Reitano additionally donned masks, not for a film however to play the crash check dummies Larry and Vince, respectively. As a result of they had been silly sufficient to not strap in, they bounced round in automotive accidents and suffered a number of injury — whereas supplying researchers with information on how passengers can escape harm.
The slapstick sequence of advertisements, which debuted in 1985, closed with the road, “You Might Study a Lot From a Dummy.”
Whitney Wilbert Rydbeck was born in Los Angeles on March 13, 1945. He attended Pasadena Excessive Faculty, Pasadena Metropolis School after which Cal State Fullerton, the place he studied theater.
Beginning within the early Nineteen Seventies, he and McLoughlin had been members of the Richmond Shepard Mime Troupe and the McLoughlin-founded L.A. Mime Firm. “He was the proper man for that since he was so nice at bodily comedy,” McLoughlin famous.
Rydbeck made his onscreen debut on a 1970 episode of Nanny and the Professor earlier than he and McLoughlin put their mime abilities to work as silent robots within the yr 2173 in Woody Allen’s Sleeper (1973).
Earlier than the last decade was by means of, Rydbeck would additionally present up within the George Hamilton-starring Love at First Chew (1979), the Sylvester Stallone-directed Rocky II (1979) and Steven Spielberg’s 1941 (1979).
In 1979, he starred as a cab driver who discovers a robotic despatched to Earth from one other planet on the NBC children present Whitney and the Robotic.
His résumé additionally included the movies Oliver & Firm (1988) and A Very Brady Sequel (1996) and the TV reveals Lassie, Swap, seventh Heaven, Buck Rogers within the twenty fifth Century and Far Out House Nuts.
Extra lately, he taught drama at Pasadena Metropolis School. Survivors embrace his girlfriend of 10 years, Claire.
In 2010, Whitney Rydbeck (proper) and Tony Reitano celebrated the twenty fifth anniversary of the Vince and Larry crash check dummies public service marketing campaign.
Invoice O’Leary/The Washington Publish
For the Division of Transportation’s crash check commercials, Rydbeck informed The Washington Publish in 2010 that it took about 45 minutes for he and Reitano to get into costume. Their masks utterly lined their heads, not permitting them to listen to, see or speak correctly. (Jack Burns voiced Vince, Lorenzo Music voiced Larry.)
Within the story, Rydbeck joked that he frightened that sooner or later a newspaper would carry the headline, “Actor Who Performed Crash Dummy Died for Not Buckling Up.”
“I at all times buckle up, I’ll inform you that,” he stated.
