Donald Gibb
The Revenge of the Nerds marathon was on Cinemax this long Thanksgiving weekend. So of course I took the opportunity to catch pieces of a few of this '80s spawned masterpiece of college film sequels. (There was also a television pilot for Revenge of the Nerds in 1991 that was never aired, sadly enough).
Donald Gibb played a character named Fred "The Ogre" Palowalski in the first original flick as well as Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise, and Revenge of the Nerds IV: Nerds in Love. Ogre was conspicuously absent from Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation. One can only assume that the film budget for the 3rd installment was not large enough to afford such a high caliber of classic character actor.
The character of Ogre was basically a massive beer swilling, dim-witted bully from the rival Alpha Beta fraternity. Anyone who has seen the film will remember him well from visual memory as the frizzy maned viking that slapped nerds silly.
After the Nerds films, Gibb was seen on the underrated HBO comedy series 1st and Ten from 1985-1989 as Dr. Death. Also of note, Gibb played Ray Jackson in the Van Damme vehicle Bloodsport (1988).
Aside from that, Donald had many television bit appearances in series ranging Cheers in 1992 to The Facts of Life in 1987. Recently, Gibb played a character called Worm on The Young and the Restless in '03. Since then, his appearances have been few and far between.
How does one go from such esteem to playing bit-parts on daytime television? Such is the cruel world of Hollywood and the life of an actor. There is simply no justice in the world sometimes. Sadly enough, it seems that Donald is now apparently in the twilight of his thespian career at a ripe 53 years of age.
Bonus fact: it was revealed in 1994's 4th installment that Dudley "Booger" Dawson is from Detroit. Makes sense, I guess...
Bonus material: video footage of the Lambda Lambda Lambda rap song from the original classic film below.
1 comment:
A few of the characters were actually based on real people, Ogre included. Booger was based on a friend of the writer(s) who in real life was named Booger Bartoli. Count your (jewish) stars that the recently optioned script to remake the classic was just put to bed and will never be made. The classic remains a classic. That's like someone remaking Paid In Full.
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