Comic and actor Avery Schreiber, who with partner Jack Burns was a fixture on TV in the 1960s and '70s, particularly for their taxi-cab routines, and who was known to younger viewers as the Doritos chip "cruncher," died Monday Jan. 7 of a heart attack at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He was 66. Burns and Schreiber often appeared often on such TV programs as "The Ed Sullivan Show" and "Hollywood Palace." They had their own summer comedy-variety series, "The Burns and Schreiber Show," on ABC in 1973.
     After the duo went their separate ways, Schreiber became a fixture in Doritos commercials, appearing as a chef, sultan, judge, pilot or some other character who would be distracted by the loud crunch the chip made. Recent TV credits included an episode of the CBS sitcom, "Becker," in 2000. He also taught improvisational theater to Hispanic comedians and was working on a screenplay, "Julius and Ethel," about the Rosenbergs' 1950s espionage trial and execution. He especially enjoyed political satire and skewering politicians, particularly Richard Nixon. Among Burns and Schreiber's works was the album "The Watergate Comedy Hour."
    Not all of Schreiber's work was comedy. He appeared onstage in both "Hamlet," and Ovid's "Metamorphoses." Other stage credits included "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," "Can-Can," "Wally's Cafe," "Strike up the Band," "Showboat," "Sugar Babies," "Dreyfuss in Rehearsal," "Kelly" and "Fiddler on the Roof." His last stage appearance was on Broadway in "Welcome to the Club," Cy Coleman's a 1989 musical about divorced men who refuse to pay alimony.
    Survivors include his wife of 40 years, Rochelle, and a son and daughter. (Daily Variety, January 8, 2002)

Kaye Stevens
(Jeri Clayton, 1974-1979)
July 21, 1932-December 28, 2011

     Singer and actress Kaye Stevens, who appeared as Jeri Clayton on "Days of Our Lives" from 1974-1979, has died. She had been battling breast cancer and blood clots, according to Gerry Schweitzer, a close friend. Ms. Stevens died on Wednesday, December 28, 2011 at the Villages Hospital, north of Orlando, Florida. She was 79.
     Stevens is credited with helping to put the town of Margate, Florida on the map. The community's developer, Jack Marquesee, hired her to do the first commercials for Margate in the mid-1950's. She went above and beyond, often mentioning the town during her TV appearances. She once quipped on "The Tonight Show" that the entrance and exit signs for Margate are back to back. As a token of appreciation, the city named a park for her at the corner of Copans Road and State Road 7. Stevens lived in the west Broward community until 2004, when she moved to Summerfield, north of Orlando.
     Stevens was born Catherine Louise Stephens in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on July 21, 1932. Her family eventually moved to Cleveland, Ohio where a teenage Stevens got her start as a drummer and singer. She later married bandleader/trumpet player Tommy Amato, and the couple performed throughout the eastern United States (they would divorce after a seven-year marriage). During a gig in New Jersey, Stevens was discovered by Ed McMahon, Johnny Carson's longtime "Tonight Show" sidekick, which led to new bookings. Her big break came when she was playing a lounge at The Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. Debbie Reynolds became ill and was unable to perform in the main room. Stevens filled in and was an instant hit. Stevens would later perform with Rat Pack members Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Joey Bishop. During the Vietnam War era, Stevens performed for American soldiers in the war zone with Bob Hope's USO tour. She also sang solo at venues such as Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas and the Plaza Hotel's Persian Room in New York City.
      She played Jeri Clayton on "Days" from May 1974 to April 1975 and again from April 1976 to June 1979. In the storyline, she was the mother of Trish Clayton and a singer at Doug's Place. Towards the end of her "Days" run, Marlena Evans stopped Jeri from killing herself and, soon after, Jeri left town. Stevens never signed a contract with "Days", preferring to recur while she persued other opportunities. While appearing on "Days", she was a TV game show staple, appearing on such shows as "The Match Game", "To Tell the Truth", "Hollywood Squares" and "Password." She also acted on such shows as "Chips" and "Police Woman" and appeared in six movies, earning a Golden Globe nomination in 1964 for "The New Interns."
      In a 1976 article, Stevens stated that she decided to leave "Days" the first time in 1975 because she was making $14,000 a year on the show, instead of the $25,000 she would usually get for just one singing performance. But her love for "Days" brought her back to the show a year later. Stevens felt she "had acquired a family" when she was on "Days" and noted that "when I opened my act here in Los Angeles earlier this year...co-stars Susan Seaforth Hayes and Wesley Eure wept during my entire act. [Executive producer] Betty Corday even got out of a sick bed to come see me sing and dance." 
      During the past two decades, Stevens left her acting career behind, started her own ministry, and began performing Christian and patriotic music. She staged benefits to help build St. Vincent Catholic Church in her longtime home of Margate, Florida. She leaves no immediate survivors. 

K. T. Stevens
(Helen Martin, 1966-1967, 1969)
July 20, 1919-June 13, 1994



(New York Times, June 22, 1994)



Ray Stricklyn
(Howard Hawkins, 1991)
October 8, 1928-May 14, 2002

     Ray Stricklyn, an actor who scored his greatest triumph in the mid-1980s after abandoning his once promising acting career a decade earlier and becoming a highly respected Hollywood publicist, has died. He was 73. Stricklyn, whose one-man show as Tennessee Williams earned him critical praise and a new lease on his former career, died Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles after a long battle with chronic emphysema.
     "Confessions of a Nightingale," based on interviews with Williams by Charlotte Chandler and C. Robert Jennings, opened at the Beverly Hills Playhouse in January 1985.Stricklyn portrayed the legendary playwright in his declining years--a time when Williams' talent had faded but his outsized personality remained in full bloom. When his one-man show debuted, Stricklyn was representing Bette Davis, Elizabeth Taylor, Lynn Redgrave and other stars as co-director of publicity for the West Coast office of John Springer Associates, the prestigious Manhattan-based public relations firm. But what had been intended as a four-weekend performance ran for a year and earned Stricklyn best actor awards from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle and L.A. Weekly, among others. Stricklyn quit his day job. "Confessions of a Nightingale" opened off-Broadway in New York in 1986, earning a laudatory review from New York magazine critic John Simon, who wrote: "All those small mannerisms, tics, idiosyncratic intonations, hesitancies, shifts of mood are fraught with authenticity." Stricklyn toured with his one-man show for the next decade, with engagements as far-flung as Scotland and Israel. "When I was first working on portraying Williams, I didn't have any idea of doing much with it," he told the Chicago Tribune in 1987. "But he certainly brought me back to life and, in a way, I have done the same for him."
     Born and raised in Houston, Stricklyn became enchanted with acting in kindergarten when he portrayed Little Boy Blue in a school pageant. He pursued dramatics throughout school. He moved to New York in 1950 and made his Broadway debut two years later, playing the juvenile lead in Moss Hart's "The Climate of Eden." His performance earned him a Daniel Blum Theater World Award as the season's most promising young actor. Moving to Hollywood in 1955, he made his film debut as a "cracked-up" Marine in George Seaton's "The Proud and the Profane." Among other early roles, he played Bette Davis and Ernest Borgnine's son in "The Catered Affair" and Gary Cooper and Geraldine Fitzgerald's son in "Ten North Frederick," which earned him a Golden Globe nomination as most promising new actor of the year. Hollywood gossip columnist Louella Parsons predicted that the young contract player for 20th Century Fox "could be the next Montgomery Clift." But by the early 1960s, the career of the young actor with the boyish good looks began to founder. "I was 27 and still looked 16, but there was a whole new crop of boys coming up who really were that age," he told The Los Angeles Times in 1984. "Before, I'd thought my career was going straight up. So like a lot of foolish young actors, I started living beyond my means. I bought expensive cars, got into debt. Once you think you're going to be a star, then you're not--it's a rude awakening." Stage and film work had virtually dried up for Stricklyn by 1973, when publicist John Springer asked him to head up his West Coast office. From then on, Stricklyn said, "I basically shut myself off from that old life--although I missed the performing and needed it terribly."
     His self-imposed exile from acting ended in 1982, when he began appearing in local stage productions.The by then mature Stricklyn, his boyish face lined and his hair gray, gave a moving performance as Mr. Nightingale, a dying homosexual living in a seedy New Orleans boardinghouse, in Tennessee Williams' "Vieux Carre" at the Beverly Hills Playhouse in 1983. His performance earned him best actor awards from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, L.A. Weekly and Daily Variety. Portraying Williams' alter ego in "Vieux Carre" served as a prelude for "Confessions of a Nightingale." When not touring as Williams, Stricklyn did guest shots in "Cheers," "The Nanny," "Seinfeld," "Days of Our Lives" and other television shows. After falling ill with emphysema in 1997, he began writing his autobiography. Published in 1999, "Angels & Demons: One Actor's Hollywood Journey" is a candid and witty account of a man who, Stricklyn wrote, "might qualify as one who has had his 15 minutes in the limelight; perhaps even 20." He is survived by his sister, Mary Ann, and his longtime companion, Los Angeles stage director David Galligan. (Los Angeles Times, May 16, 2002)