This is sad news for any fan of the shows Welcome Back Kotter and Cagney and Lacey: veteran actor Robert Hegyes passed away at the age of 60, and due to an apparent heart attack. He first hit the American Zeitgeist with his character Juan Luis Pedro Phillipo de Huevos Epstein, a Puerto Rican-Jew, on the show.
What I liked about Welcome Back Kotter is it tried to represent the then growing urban racial “melting pot” as diversity was called then, in an honest and funny way. Welcome Back Kotter ran from 1974 to 1979 on ABC. And at 25, Robert became one of the show’s directors.
But get a load of those Afro’s!
Here’s a clip:
Hegyes, who would have been 61 this year, lived from May 7, 1951 to January 26, 2012. According to Wikipedia, he was married three times, and with his girlfriend Cynthia Wylie, raised four children, two from his third marriage, as well as two from his relationship with her.
Official website: http://www.roberthegyes.com/
Stay tuned.