Ronnie Schell, 'Gomer Pyle' best friend and 'slowest rising comedian,'
dies at 94
[June 13, 2026]
By BETH HARRIS
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ronnie Schell, who played the best friend to the
title character on the 1960s sitcom “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.” and whose
gradual ascendancy in show business earned him the title of “America’s
Slowest Rising Comedian," died Friday. He was 94.
Schell died of natural causes at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. He
had been hospitalized after a recent fall, according to publicist Harlan
Boll, who spoke to Schell's son Gregory.
Schell played Marine Pvt. Duke Slater opposite star Jim Nabors for three
seasons on the popular CBS show.
He left during the fourth season to star as a DJ in his own sitcom,
“Good Morning, World.” But it flopped after 26 episodes, and Schell
returned to “Gomer Pyle” for its fifth and final season. By then, his
character was promoted to corporal.
Schell was tagged with the “slowest rising” label by San Francisco radio
personality Don Sherwood.
“It was Sherwood who coined the phrase because everybody I worked with
moved on ahead,” Schell told The Mercury News in 2011, citing Phyllis
Diller and the Smothers Brothers as newcomers who later hit it big.
Schell’s co-star on “Good Morning, World” was Goldie Hawn, who became a
regular on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” and won a supporting actress
Oscar in 1970.
"I always say it’s been mighty lonely in the middle,” he told the San
Jose, California, newspaper.
But Schell found steady work, and sometimes outlasted his contemporaries
who scored early success and later stopped or were no longer around.
Born Ronald Ralph Schell in Richmond, California, on Dec. 23, 1931, he
joined the U.S. Air Force out of high school and served four years. He
got into entertaining in the military and later at San Francisco State
University, where he graduated in 1958.
While appearing in a college play, he received an offer to appear for
two weeks at San Francisco’s Purple Onion comedy club, a booking that
stretched to five months. Diller and the Kingston Trio shared the bill.
The Kingston Trio hired him as an opening act for their nationwide
college tour.
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Schell honed his comedy act at the
famed hungry i nightclub in San Francisco, where Woody Allen and
Mort Sahl got their starts. Schell performed his comedy act in Las
Vegas for over 40 years.
He worked as a writer and sketch performer for Sherwood’s radio and
television shows in the San Francisco Bay area.
“I didn’t get the big break, but I got many little breaks,” he told
San Francisco State’s online alumni spotlight.
Schell appeared on a 1959 episode of the TV quiz show “You Bet Your
Life,” demonstrating a comic barrage of beatnik jive talk for host
Groucho Marx.
In 1962, he left the Bay Area for Los Angeles and two years later
was hired for “Gomer Pyle.”
He had dozens of television guest credits, including “The Andy
Griffith Show” and “The Patty Duke Show,” and in later years “The
Love Boat,” “Mork & Mindy,” “Saved by the Bell,” “The Golden Girls,”
and “Yes, Dear.”
Schell was the voice for the hockey puck-shaped character on the
“Peter Puck” cartoons, which aired during televised NHL games in the
1970s. In the 1980s, Schell appeared in television commercials for
Shakey’s Pizza.
His more than 24 film roles included “The Shaggy D.A.,” “Love at
First Bite” and “Jetsons: The Movie.”
His extensive voice-over work included “Goober and the Ghost
Chasers,” “The Skatebirds,” “Battle of the Planets” and “The
Smurfs.”
Schell served as comedy adviser to actor Richard Dreyfuss in the
2019 Netflix film “The Last Laugh.”
He is survived by his wife Janet Rodeberg, sons Gregory and
Christian, and granddaughter Chiara.
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