{"id":14682,"date":"2017-02-02T15:17:42","date_gmt":"2017-02-02T20:17:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=14682"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:42:58","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:42:58","slug":"cecil-actor-and-sea-serpent-dies-at-58","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2017\/02\/cecil-actor-and-sea-serpent-dies-at-58\/","title":{"rendered":"Cecil, Actor and Sea Serpent, Dies at 58"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cecil\"<\/a>Cecil, the actor who played a sea serpent in the 1960’s television show Beany and Cecil<\/em>, and who was in fact a professionally-trained sea serpent in private life, died on Tuesday near his home in San Fransisco Bay.\u00a0 He was 58.<\/p>\n

His manager, Davey Jones<\/span>, said the cause was seasickness.<\/p>\n

A competent actor with a lispy, fluid voice, Cecil was born Acrochordus Granulatus Zimmerman in 1959.\u00a0 He formally adopted his stage name later that year, after his eponymous television show became popular among pre-schoolers.<\/p>\n

Cecil played a good-natured, bumbling character, loved by all who met him but especially by Beany, a squinty, fatherless boy portrayed by Gilbert Gottfried.\u00a0 The on-screen displays of affection did not, however, continue off the set — directors complained that Cecil drank heavily, slurred his lines, and often salivated on his co-stars.<\/p>\n

After production on Beany and Cecil<\/em> ended\u00a0<\/em>in 1962, <\/em>Cecil drifted for a number of years before turning to cruise-ship theater in the early \u201970s.\u00a0 His last memorable role was that of the serpent in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra<\/em>, for Carnival Cruise Lines in 1978.<\/p>\n

Cecil was due to reunite with Beany and Uncle Captain on an episode of Matlock<\/em> in 1994, but the show was pre-empted on its scheduled evening by coverage of the O. J. Simpson Ford Bronco chase.\u00a0 The reunion episode was never aired and is now considered lost.<\/p>\n

Cecil is survived by his ex-wife Ness and their six daughters, Hydra.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cecil, the actor who played a sea serpent in the 1960’s television show Beany and Cecil, and who was in fact a professionally-trained sea serpent in private life, died on Tuesday near his home in San Fransisco Bay.\u00a0 He was … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14682"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14691,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14682\/revisions\/14691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}