Colasanto is best known for his role as Coach Ernie Pantusso, a character in the television sitcom Cheers; he also directed episodes of many television series, including Hawaii Five-O, Starsky & Hutch, Bonanza, Columbo, and CHiPs. He also appeared in feature films, including The Counterfeit Killer, Fat City, and Alfred Hitchcock'sFamily Plot. Colasanto was in-demand as an actor and director but in the mid-1970s he was diagnosed with heart disease, which was exacerbated by his alcoholism. After twenty years of alcoholism, he became an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous from March 31, 1976, and became sober in the same year. In the late 1970s he began having difficulty securing directing jobs due to his declining health. His last major film role was as mob boss Tommy Como in Raging Bull. Colasanto was preparing to retire when the role of Coach Ernie Pantusso was offered to him on Cheers. Coach would become his best known role. By the third season of Cheers, Colasanto's health had seriously deteriorated. His fellow cast members noticed his weight loss, but Colasanto kept the severity of his illness secret. Shortly after the Christmas holiday in 1984, he was admitted to a local hospital due to water in his lungs. Co-star Ted Danson later said Colasanto had difficulty remembering his lines during production of the season. When Colasanto was released from hospital in the week of January 28 – February 3, 1985, after a two-week stay, his doctor recommended he should not return to work. Although he appeared in the cold opening of the third-season finale episode "Rescue Me", Colasanto's last full episode was "Cheerio Cheers", which was filmed in late November 1984.
Death
Colasanto died of a heart attack at his home on February 12, 1985, at the age of 61. On February 16, more than three hundred people, including John Ratzenberger, the only cast member of Cheers to do so, attended his funeral. NBC would not allow the entire cast to take a break from filming to fly to Colasanto's funeral in Providence, Rhode Island. Ratzenberger, a New England native, was sent as a representative for the cast. The cast and crew held a memorial for Colasanto on the set in Los Angeles. Colasanto is buried in Saint Ann's Cemetery in Cranston, Rhode Island. On April 19, 1985, Colasanto was posthumously awarded the Best Supporting Actor by Viewers for Quality Television, a now-defunct non-profit organization that determined what was considered high-quality on television. Colasanto's character was written out of the show as also having died. The fourth-season premiere episode, "Birth, Death, Love and Rice", deals with Coach's death and introduces Colasanto's successor Woody Harrelson, who played Woody Boyd. Colasanto had hung a picture of Geronimo in his dressing room; after his death it was placed on the wall in the bar of the Cheers production set in his memory. Near the end of the final episode of Cheers in 1993, eight years after Colasanto's death, bar owner Sam Malone walks over to the picture and straightens it.
Selected filmography
Film
The Counterfeit Killer – Plainclothesman
Fat City – Ruben
The Manchu Eagle Murder Caper Mystery – Bert
Family Plot – Constantine
Raging Bull – Tommy Como, mob boss
Television
Cheers – Coach Ernie Pantusso, co-bartender
Run for Your Life
– "The Council" Part 1
Ironside – "The Challenge"
Hawaii Five-O – "A Thousand Pardons, You're Dead", "To Hell with Babe Ruth", "Just Lucky, I Guess", and "Most Likely to Murder"
Bonanza – "Ambush at Rio Lobo"
Hec Ramsey – "The Detroit Connection"
Columbo – "Étude in Black" and "Swan Song"
Nakia – "No Place to Hide" and "A Matter of Choice"
