Alan Thicke, a television mainstay as writer, composer of theme songs, host of game and late-night shows and, most notably, the wisdom-dispensing patriarch of the long-running sitcom Growing Pains, died Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 69.
The Canadian-born performer, who also appeared on soap operas (The Bold and the Beautiful) and reality TV shows (Unusually Thicke), reportedly died after a heart attack. Carleen Donovan, a publicist for Thickeโs son, pop singer Robin Thicke, confirmed the death to the Associated Press.
โLiving with Alan was like being on an endless est seminar,โ the first of his ex-wives once said. But his compulsive work habits, amiable public persona and quest for self-improvement propelled him from Canadian Broadcasting Corp. gofer to his home countryโs leading media personality within a decade.
Along the way, he wrote comedy and sketches for high-profile TV specials in Hollywood, co-wrote the theme song for Wheel of Fortune and sitcoms including The Facts of Life and Diffโrent Strokes, and helped craft the Norman Lear-produced Fernwood 2-Night (1977), a satire of low-budget community talk shows that doubled as a send-up of middle-American values and prejudices. โIt was way ahead of its time, predating the emergence of the great โ80s era of irony,โ said cultural scholar Robert Thompson.
Thicke plunged into emceeing and acting work and got the leading role on ABCโs Growing Pains in 1985. Thicke played Jason Seaver, a psychiatrist who moves his practice into his home to help raise his children while his wife focuses on her reporting career. Like other smash sitcoms The Cosby Show and Family Ties, Growing Pains was a throwback to the conventional nuclear families of 1950s TV, Thompson said.
Immune from the tepid reviews, Growing Pains remained a viewer favorite over its seven-year run, in part because of an appealing cast that included Joanna Kerns as Thickeโs wife and teen heartthrob Kirk Cameron as a son.
Thicke was born Alan Willis Jeffrey in Kirkland Lake, Ontario, on March 1, 1947. He was 6 when his parents divorced, and he took the surname Thicke from his stepfather, a physician.
His work as the creator of musical earworms for sitcoms proved one of his most lucrative legacies. โI get ringtone royalties,โ Thicke told the A.V. Club in 2010. โApparently what happens is, you get college kids after a couple of rounds of Beer Pong, and they start to bet each other who can remember the most lyrics to an iconic sitcom, and they order it up on ringtones, and I get 11 cents. It doesnโt keep up with the current state of the global economy, but itโs always a pleasant little surprise in the mail.โ