Vernon Weddle Jr. (August 23, 1935) is an American film, stage and television actor who appeared as Horace Burnett, the Administrator of the Hospital that ends up losing Mindy when she goes in to have her tonsils out, leaving a panicked Mork trying to find her, in Season 2's Mork's Health Hints.
Biography[]
Weddle was born on, August 23, 1935, in Hattiesburg, Mississippi the son of Vernon Sr. and Grace Weddle.
When he was thirteen years old, he and his family moved to Texas, where he has attended at Lon Morris College and University of Texas, in 1958. While there he met fellow student, Gerri, where they both shared the same bill on the musical Roberta. They later married and had two sons, Kirk and Richard.
After graduating Lon Morris, he then attended Stephens College, where he was a resident actor and instructor for theatre arts.
He retired from acting in 1991. [1]
Career[]
Weddle began his career on stage, appearing in praised productions such as the New York Festival's Much Ado About Nothing (1960) where he played the co-lead of Benedick.[2] He also turned his hand to writing, co-writing a stage play, with his wife, Gerri, playing the role of an exhausted psychologist, with Tom Ewell (of the 7 Year Itch Fame) as the lead in the play. The play was shown at the Okoboji Summer Theatre.[1]
With theatre dominating his first decade as an actor, he began to diversify, starting to appear in film and television programs, his first screen credit coming in an episode of Bonanza, playing the role of "South", in 1969, launching a 20 year career in TV, during which he appeared in numerous television programs, including, Barney Miller, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Three's Company (and its spin-off The Ropers), Archie Bunker's Place, The Mod Squad, Sanford and Son, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Hill Street Blues, The Jeffersons, The Rockford Files, Trapper John, M.D., The Dukes of Hazzard and Lou Grant. He also appeared in television soap operas, such as, General Hospital, Dynasty, Knots Landing, Dallas, Hotel, The Colbys, Filthy Rich and Days of Our Lives.
On the Big Screen Weddle made his bow in The Take (1974) and The Parallax View (1974) going on to appear and/or co-star in movies, such as, Oh, God! Book II, The Devil and Max Devlin, Norma Rae, Carbon Copy, Harry's War, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, and Endangered Species.
He also appeared in numerous television movies including, The Forgotten Man (1971); Second Chance (1972); The President's Plane Is Missing (1973); Scream of the Wolf (1974); Betrayal (1974); Twin Detectives (1976); To Kill a Cop (1978); The Clone Master (1978); Murder in Texas (1981); and Malice in Wonderland (1985) where he played producer Sam Goldwyn. [3]
Mork & Mindy[]
Weddle played the part of Horace Burnett, administrator of the Hospital Mindy has gone into to have her tonsils out, and who is somewhat bemused when an agitated Mork arrives in to hand him a dollar, having been told the Buck stops with him. It's Burnett who is agitated a few moments later when he realizes that the hospital has somehow managed to lose Mindy in the shuffle. No one having any idea where the operation bound McConnell is...something which has happened before. When he proves more interested in getting Mork to sign off on the hospital not being responsible for anything that might happen to her, than in actually finding her, an annoyed Mork vows to go find her himself, end of visiting hours or not.
Burnett finds him again amid chaos, dressed as a surgeon and trying to hold off a doctor and nurse, who are trying to submit Mindy (mistaken for a Mandy MacDonald) for brain surgery, as a doped up Mindy wanders around the exterior rim of the building on the 6th floor. Confirming that Mork is correct and Mindy has been mixed up with another patient, he finally manages to bring some calm to the chaos.