Actor and comedian John Ritter gained stardom for his role as single ladies' man and culinary student Jack Tripper in the ABC sitcom Three’s Company, which aired from 1977 to 1984. He died suddenly on September 11, 2003, from a tear in his aorta caused by a previously undiagnosed heart defect.

Born as John Southworth Ritter on September 17, 1948, in Burbank, California, to cowboy matinee star Tex Ritter and American actress Dorothy Fay, Ritter hadn't originally planned to become a performer. Instead he started out studying psychology with a minor in architecture at the University of Southern California.

But an acting class taught by Nina Foch changed his mind about drama so he switched his major to theater arts. In 1971 he graduated with a bachelor of fine arts degree in drama. He also studied acting with Stella Adler at the Harvey Lembeck Comedy Workshop.

While in university, Ritter first appeared on television as a contestant on The Dating Game, where he won a vacation to Lake Havasu, Arizona.

Beginning in 1968 Ritter had several small roles in various television shows such as Crazy World, Crazy People, M*A*S*H, The Bob Newhart Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Starsky and Hutch.

In 1970 he played a campus revolutionary in the movie Dan August which also starred Burt Reynolds and Norman Fell.

Several small roles and five years later Ritter beat out fifty people, including young Billy Crystal, for the lead role in A Man About the House, which played on ABC. The pilot was trashed and several cast changes later the show became the series Three’s Company. Ritter played womanizer chef Jack Tripper who lived in an apartment with two women while pretending he was gay to keep the landlords happy. When the show ended in 1984 Ritter acted on the spin-off Three’s a Crowd for one year.

Ritter then went on to appear in a number of movies including Problem Child and Problem Child 2. In the early 1990s he starred with Markie Post in the sitcom Hearts Afire.

Ritter also made guest appearances on Ally McBeal, Scrubs, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He was also the voice for Clifford in the animated children’s show Clifford the Big Red Dog. He received two Emmy nominations for his role.

In his entire thirty-five year career Ritter was nominated for seven Emmy Awards and won the Theater World Award in 2001 for his performance in The Dinner Party at Music Box Theater on Broadway, co-starring Henry Winkler.

In 2002 he made his TV comeback with the ABC family sitcom 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter. It was while filming the second season of this show that he became ill, and was taken from the studio to Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center where he died hours later. He died days before his fifty-fifth birthday in the same hospital in which he was born.

Ritter is buried at Forest Lawn-Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles. He leaves behind one ex-wife, one wife, and four children.

YUDDY