"Cheerio, Cheers" was Coach's last full–episode appearance ...
Sadly, many of today's TV viewers are unfamiliar with Nicholas Colasanto.
I guess that isn't too surprising. Colasanto died more than 25 years ago, on Feb. 12, 1985, a few days after taping one of the last episodes of Cheers!' third season.For really young TV viewers, Cheers! may not be too familiar, either. It went off the air nearly 17 years ago. But it ran for an amazing 11 years, and it did serve as the launching pad for one of the most well–known TV characters of all time — Frasier Crane, who was portrayed, first on Cheers and then on his own spin–off series, by Kelsey Grammer.
Grammer wasn't a charter member of the Cheers! cast like Colasanto. He came along in the third season, in time to work with Colasanto for a little while.
... but unused material was included in the season's final episode ...
But I think Grammer would tell you that his career wouldn't have been the same if he had been deprived of that time with Colasanto, however brief it was. Colasanto had been in the entertainment business for a quarter of a century. The role of Coach was a supporting role, but Colasanto played a variety of roles in a career that included both TV and films. He also did some directing in his life.
That career began 51 years ago on Friday with a small part in a Playhouse 90 production of "For Whom the Bell Tolls" that starred Jason Robards, Maureen Stapleton, Eli Wallach and Sydney Pollack. To put things into perspective, Grammer was barely 4 years old at the time.
Colasanto appeared on several popular TV shows in his career — My Favorite Martian, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Ben Casey, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., I Spy, The Fugitive, Mannix, Mission:Impossible, Ironside, Kojak, Baretta. He almost never made more than one episode with any show until he signed on with Cheers — and it is beyond me why someone with a lengthy resume of appearances in crime dramas cast his lot with a sitcom.
But that's what he did, and anyone who watches the early Cheers! episodes in the future will be grateful. Coach was oblivious to a lot. He wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. But he had the proverbial heart of gold, and he left a void in the cast until Woody Harrelson joined the show as Woody Boyd.
... and then Sam adjusted Colasanto's picture of Geronimo in a tribute
to Coach in the last act of the series' finale in 1993.
After Colasanto's death, the cast continued to pay tribute to him on screen.
A picture of Geronimo had been hanging in his dressing room. The cast hung the picture on the set and it stayed there until the final episode eight years later.In that final episode, Sam straightened the picture, as you can see in the attached clip. A final salute to Coach.
What relevance did Geronimo have to Nicholas Colasanto? Ultimately, not much, I guess — except that it was said the picture had special meaning for Colasanto.
I don't know what that special meaning was. But it apparently is why he kept it hanging on a wall in his dressing room.
Consequently, after Colasanto died, it had a lot of meaning for his castmates as well.
