Early Life
Ritter was born in Burbank, California. His father, Tex Ritter, was a singing cowboy/matinee-star of German descent, and his mother, Dorothy Fay (née Southworth), was an actress. Ritter attended Hollywood High School, where he was student-body president. He went on to the University of Southern California, where he was a member of the Phi Gamma Delta (FIJI) fraternity, and majored in psychology and minored in architecture. In 1966, Ritter was a contestant on The Dating Game.
While still in college, Ritter traveled to England, Scotland, Holland, and West Germany to perform in plays. After his graduation from USC in 1970, his first TV acting experience was a campus revolutionary in the TV series, Dan August, starring Burt Reynolds and Norman Fell. In 1971, Ritter landed his first movie role in The Barefoot Executive. Ritter made guest appearances on the television series Hawaii Five-O, M*A*S*H and others. Ritter had a recurring role on the drama series The Waltons from October 26, 1972, to December 23, 1976, as Reverend Matthew Fordwick. Ritter appeared on a total of 18 episodes. As he was not a weekly cast member, he had the time to pursue other roles, which he did until December 1976, when he left for a permanent role on Three’s Company.
Read more about this topic: John Ritter
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing—to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of Caesar, or an oration. Presently we return to the sight of another that globes itself into a whole as did the first, for example, a beautiful garden; and nothing seems worth doing in life but laying out a garden.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)