LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Norman Fell, who had a 50-year acting career but was best known as the irritable landlord Stanley Roper on the television sitcom "Three's Company," has died of cancer. He was 74.
Fell died Monday at the Motion Picture and Television Fund's retirement home in Woodland Hills, said Stan Schneider, his business manager.Fell appeared in 35 movies, including "The Graduate" and "Catch-22" and TV series including Burt Reynolds' 1970-75 detective drama "Dan August."
But with his exasperated expression and droopy eyes, Fell was most easily identified for his supporting part as Stanley Roper, like it or not, Schneider said.
"I think he felt toward the end . . . it typecast him. But it was the one everyone knew him as. Everyone called him Mr. Roper, on the street, wherever he went," Schneider said.
Fell and Audra Lindley played Stanley and Helen Roper on ABC's "Three's Company," which debuted in 1977 and starred John Ritter, Joyce DeWitt and Suzanne Somers as their tenants.
Lindley, 79, died in 1997 of complications from leukemia.
"Three's Company" continued until 1984 with Don Knotts as the new landlord and other cast changes.
A native of Philadelphia, Fell served as a tail gunner in the Pacific during World War II.