Marcia Strassman 1948-2014
Originally published at Scott Edelman. Please leave any comments there.
Unlike Mark Evanier, I never met Marcia Strassman, who portrayed Julie Kotter, the wife of Gabe Kaplan’s character on Welcome Back, Kotter. Strangely, though, I felt as if I had, because I wrote two issues of the DC Comics series based on that TV show, and so got paid to put words into the mouth of an actress who never actually got to speak them.
As I’ve mentioned here before, I believe I was given the chance to script that comic because I was a Sweathog. (Don’t believe me? Just listen to what I sounded like back then.) Which meant that I had far more in common with guys from Brooklyn than those who would marry them after they grew up. (Or, to put it more accurately, after they didn’t grow up.) But still, I did my best to channel the character she embodied.
In my first issue, that consisted primarily of her reacting to the antics of those around her …
… which while accurate to the show, was also what, according to Evanier, had her dissatisfied with it.
That may have been the cause of an oddity in my second issue. When I scripted it, I was told that we weren’t allowed to use Strassman’s character in the issue (perhaps because they felt she’d be off the show by then), and so instead of having Kotter chatting with his wife, I instead showed him interacting with her photo.
Those two issues were all I got to write of Welcome Back, Kotter, because the comic was cancelled after that, though a few new stories based on the show were later written by others and published in a Limited Collectors’ Edition.
This extremely peripheral relationship to Strassman, who I always liked, has me feeling connected to her and touched by her death in a way I’m pretty sure I don’t deserve. Such is the way of the Sweathog.
Rest in peace, Mrs. Kot-tair!