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Character actor Roche dies at 75

LOS ANGELES - Eugene Roche, a paunchy character actor who played the kitchen-cleaning "Ajax man" in commercials and had memorable roles in such television shows as All in the Family and Magnum P.I. has died at age 75.

Mr. Roche died Wednesday (July 28, 2004) after suffering a heart attack in an Encino hospital, family friend Timothy Wayne said Friday. He had been hospitalized July 26 for tests after suffering a mild heart attack at his home in Sherman Oaks, Wayne said.

Mr. Roche's name may not be familiar to most audiences, but his face surely was.

Plump and jovial with glinting eyes, Mr. Roche co-starred on TV's Webster as a lovable landlord, and was Archie Bunker's neighborhood nemesis Pinky Peterson on All in the Family.

Mr. Roche, born in Boston, also played the curmudgeonly "old school" private investigator Luther Gillis on Magnum P.I., the sly attorney E. Ronald Mallu on the sitcom Soap and the newspaper editor Harry Burns on Perfect Strangers.

One of his most memorable movie roles was in 1971's Slaughterhouse-Five, based on the novel by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Mr. Roche played a likable POW named Edgar Derby, who amid the scorched remains of a firebombed Dresden picks up an intact porcelain figurine as a souvenir - and is promptly executed for looting by his German captors.

Survivors include his wife, Anntoni, and their nine children.

NEW YORK - Satirist-commentator Al Franken will return to his TV roots next month when his radio show begins appearing on cable's Sundance Channel.

Beginning Sept. 7, The Al Franken Show, heard live each weekday from noon to 3 p.m. on Air America Radio, will go on display in a one-hour edition on Sundance each night at 11:30 p.m. and 2:30 a.m., executives at both networks told the Associated Press on Monday.

The Franken TV hour is currently scheduled through the November election, but all parties voiced hope the show would continue on Sundance indefinitely.

"It would be nice if it were a permanent home," Franken said.

A writer-performer who helped launch NBC's Saturday Night Live three decades ago, Franken in recent years has been more identified as a left-leaning political humorist whose bestselling books include Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.

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