This is one of those blogs that I just knew I’d be writing soon. Jeff Conaway, who was best known as playing Bobby Wheeler on “Taxi” and Kenickie in Grease, has died at age 60. He went to the hospital on May 11 and was in critical condition for much of his stay. His illness was first attributed to a drug overdose, but later officials said it wasn’t, but his drug use had caused him to wait too long to seek medical help. He was taken off life support last Thursday after slipping into a coma.
I think Radar put it best when it said Conaway’s death was “the end of a long, sad road of addiction that made him one of Hollywood’s cautionary tales.”
When Conaway was 10, he appeared in the Broadway play All the Way Home. He would finish at NYU before appearing in his first film, Jennifer on My Mind. He would play Kenickie in Grease in 1978 after having played the role on Broadway.
It was also in 1978 when Conaway landed the role of Bobby Wheeler in “Taxi.” Wheeler was an aspiring actor who drove cabs until his big break came. He was nominated for Golden Globe for the role in 1978. Conaway played the role until 1982.
Conaway would work steadily over the years, starring as Zack Allen on “Babylon 5” and appearing in “Murder She Wrote,” “The Bold and the Beautiful,” and “Matlock.” When he died, he had four movies in either pre- or post-production.
However, Conaway could never conquer his drug addiction. In 2008, “Taxi” writer Sam Simon said that he remembered Conaway being too high on the set on time to perform and his lines were divided among co-stars.
Conaway joined Dr. Drew Pinsky’s “Celebrity Rehab,” but he failed to get sober. Last year, he was injured in a fall while using OxyContin and methadone. Of his addition and appearance on “Celebrity Rehab,” Conaway had said, “I think people are just enamored with other people’s problems because they have enough of their own, and they want to stop thinking about their own and think about somebody else’s for a while. I think that’s what television is all about, really.”