Charles Rocket, an actor and former Saturday Night Live cast member who caused controversy 25 years ago for uttering an obscenity during a skit on the show, committed suicide on October 7 near his home in Canterbury, Connecticut. He was 56.

Born on August 24, 1949 as Charles Claverie in Bangor, Maine, he attended the Rhode Island School of Design before shifting his attention from fashion to journalism. He spent much of the '70s as a news reporter and anchor for an NBC affiliate in Pueblo, Colorado under the name Charles Kennedy. He longed to work in television in another capacity, and he got his wish when he was hired by SNL for the 1980-81 season to host the Weekend Update news parody. Unfortunately, that season - the initial one after all of the first wave of "Not Ready For Prime Time" players (Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Jane Curtain, etc.) had left - had to endure critical savaging from the press, and after Rocket let an expletive slip during a spoof of the famed "Who Shot J.R.?" plot line from the popular soap opera Dallas, his tenure at SNL was all but over.

Still, nothing if not diligent, Rocket continued to plug away and he landed some good recurring parts on television. The first being Bruce Willis's philandering brother on the hit series Moonlighting (1985-88); and as an oily network executive in Max Headroom (1987-88). He scored his first prominent parts in films as well, playing Geena Davis playboy fiancee in the cult hit Earth Girls Are Easy (1988); and as a military officer in Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves (1990).

His physical appearance, tall and gangly, hid a surprising physical grace that made him ideal when it came to pratfalls, so he found much work in lowbrow, slapstick comedies: Bette Milder's Hocus Pocus (1993); John Candy's last outing Wagon's East; the hugely successful Jim Carey vehicle Dumb & Dumber (both 1994); and the innocuous Disney fare Tom and Huck (1995). On occasion, he was given the chance to cut his teeth into grittier material, such as the frenetic dark comedy Carlo's Wake (1999); and the cutting satire about modern living Bleach (2002). His finest hour actually came on television, when he played a terminally ill man who manipulates others to kill for him in an episode from last season's Law and Order: Criminal Intent. Rocket is survived by his wife, Beth, and a son, Zane.

by Michael T. Toole