Dennis Weaver

When I'm bored, which is often, I like to poke around Google Video's selection of lengthy interviews from the Archive of American Television. The other day I found there's a lot of interviews of some really great television personalities who have since passed on to that great cathode ray tube in the sky. Here are five I think are worth checking out:

Fred Rogers: Several years ago, despite the fact that he hadn't really done anything besides what he had done most of his life, host a children's program, Esquire magazine named Fred Rogers their Man of the Year. It was one of the best profiles the mag had ever done, and it's because nobody on television was as kind and genuine as Fred.

Wow, it's been a bad week for TV veterans.  First Curt Gowdy passed away, then Don Knotts and Darren McGavin. Now comes word that Dennis Weaver, who acted in various roles on television for over fifty years, passed away Friday at the age of 81, apparently due to complications from cancer.

Weaver's best known roles were as Chester Goode on the long-running Western Gunsmoke and as a New Mexican cowboy lawman transplanted to New York City in the Seventies mystery series McCloud.