CHARLES Rocket’s brief moment of TV immortality came in February 1981 – when he used the f-word on “Saturday Night Live.”
He was fired pretty much as soon as the lights went down, and thereafter became known as the guy who threw away a comedy career in the twinkling of a word.
He continued to work somewhat more anonymously in lower-profile movie and TV roles.
But Rocket never approached the fame of his castmates Eddie Murphy, Gilbert Gottfried and Joe Piscopo.
Rocket, 56, has finally made headlines. He was found dead in a field 10 days ago near his Connecticut home. His throat had been cut.
Yesterday, the state medical examiner ruled that Charlie had done it himself.
There are few clues as to why Rocket, born Charles Claverie, took his own life. He apparently did not leave a suicide note.
He’d been married to the same woman, Beth, for 33 years and had a son, Zane. No trouble at home was reported.
And he left behind a group of friends who had long forgotten Charlie’s big screwup – even if the rest of the world had not.
“He was an absolutely upbeat kind of guy,” says Rudy Cheeks, a friend of Rocket’s for over 30 years. “If he was dealing with something that was tough, he would come right back at it.
“He didn’t stay down for any length of time. He wasn’t one to be morose or depressed.”
Rocket was hired for “SNL” in the 1980 season, the first time the show underwent major cast changes after the orginals – Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Jane Curtin et al. – had elected to move on.
Charlene Tilton, a cast member from the highly successful “Dallas” series, was guesthosting and the show was doing a send-up of the prime-time soap, Charlie was playing J.R. Ewing, who’d just been shot on the CBS series. For some reason, Rocket decided to improvise on his lines and ended up blurting out: “I’d like to know who the [bleep] did it.”
NBC apologized to viewers, and Rocket was fired.
He went on to forge a career as a supporting player in movies (“Dances With Wolves,” “Dumb and Dumber”) and on TV, where he played Bruce Willis’ brother on “Moonlighting” and costarred opposite John Goodman in the short-lived Fox sitcom, “Normal, Ohio.”
He managed lots of one-shot roles on other series, including “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” and “Touched by an Angel.”
Lately, he’d been doing a lot of voiceover work. Several years ago, he left L.A. and moved to Connecticut.
Cheeks says that Rocket never let on that his firing from “SNL” was a minor roadblock; shortly thereafter, he picked himself up, brushed himself off and went back to finding work.
One of Rocket’s former “SNL” castmates remembers him as hungry for attention and being “wrapped up in career issues. If he wasn’t front and center, he was bothered.
“He was never happy on the show and always wanted more.”
“I wouldn’t say [the f-word incident] haunted him,” says Cheeks. “He got right back up.
“I think he more or less took the attitude that life goes on and he did a lot of work and kept on working.”
There was no word on funeral arrangements yesterday.