The well-liked sitcom, which starred an alien, ran from 1986 to 1990 but will always be remembered as a classic of 1980s pop culture.
Benji Gregory, who as a child starred in the hit television show “ALF” from 1986 to 1990, has passed away. He was forty-six. In an interview, his sister, Rebecca Pfaffinger, confirmed his death, saying that Mr. Gregory and his service dog were found dead in his car on June 13 at a bank parking lot in Peoria, Arizona.
In order to give themselves time to grieve, the family decided not to publicize the news immediately. He died of heatstroke after falling asleep in the car, she wrote on Facebook.
Mr. Gregory’s most famous role was that of Brian Tanner in the NBC sitcom “ALF,” which centers on a suburban family that adopts the mindset of a PG-rated insult comic to deal with a snout-nosed, Chewbacca-like “alien life form” (hence the term). Brian is ALF’s younger brother and best friend.
The show would endure in people’s memory as a classic of 1980s popular culture, even though it officially stopped in 1990.
In 2014, RadioShack created a Super Bowl commercial in an effort to revitalize its brand. An employee in the commercial said, “The ’80s called; they want their store back,” and then he or she watched helplessly as Chucky, Hulk Hogan, ALF, and Cliff from “Cheers” raided the shelves.
In the same year, a passenger wearing sunglasses puts on an oxygen mask for himself before putting one around ALF’s muzzle in a Delta in-flight safety movie with an 80s theme.
“ALF” was not considered prestige television by the majority of people. Lenny Venito, who starred in the alien-themed ABC sitcom “The Neighbours,” complained to The New York Times in 2013 that his program “got compared a lot to ‘ALF,'” which meant that viewers thought it was attempting to earn a lot of money by using a gimmick. Earlier this year, The Times classified “ALF” as a “weird family TV show.”
Its supporters, however, continued to be sentimental. For many years after the program’s conclusion, Thomas Cannavo, a resident of Jackson, New Jersey, kept up a “ALF” fan club. His wife was concerned that he would call his newborn child “you-know-what,” he told The Times in 1997. The ALF bar, named for the television show, was discovered in Sarajevo in 1992 as a result of Times war reporting.
In a 2022 interview with the YouTube program “BTM Legends Corner,” Mr. Gregory also claimed that 80 percent of the still sizable number of admirer emails he got came from Germany.
He recalled that his main responsibility on the show was to concentrate on the ALF puppet instead than Paul Fusco, who portrays the character’s voice and puppeteer. Over time, “interacting with ALF became quite natural,” according to Mr. Gregory. Benjamin Gregory Hertzberg was born on May 26, 1978, in the Los Angeles area, and grew up in Thousand Oaks, California. He was featured in advertisements as a newborn.
His father, Gary Hertzberg, was a federal examiner of credit unions, and his mother, Patty (Stenger) Hertzberg, was his manager. Gary’s mother, the seasoned talent agent Estelle Hertzberg, also helped Ben’s career.
In addition to “Alf,” Mr. Gregory starred in a number of successful television shows in the 1980s, including “Amazing Stories,” “Punky Brewster,” and “The A-Team.”
Among his films are the animated feature “Once Upon a Forest” from 1993 and the comedy “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” from 1986, in which Whoopi Goldberg plays a lonely Manhattan computer programmer. According to his sister, he left acting when he was still in his 20s to join the Navy and work as a weatherman aboard an aircraft carrier until being honorably discharged. While in the Navy, he got married and got divorced.
He had been treated for both bipolar disorder and depression, according to his sister, Ms. Pfaffinger. In a later YouTube video, Mr. Gregory claimed to have met an Alcoholics Anonymous group and maintained contact with Max Wright, the actor who played his father in “ALF” and died in 2019. Mr. Gregory frequently posted about addiction and mental health conditions on social media.
According to Ms. Pfaffinger, Mr. Gregory was survived by his mother (now Patty Golightly), father, stepfather Hal Golightly, stepmother Judy Hertzberg, and a brother.
About The Author
