Tuning in to TV: Ron Palillo, Horshack on ‘Kotter,’ dies at 63

The actor best known as the nerdy high-school student Arnold Horshack on “Welcome Back, Kotter,” has died in Florida.

Ron Palillo was 63.

Mr. Palillo’s friend, Karen Poindexter, said he died early Tuesday in Palm Beach Gardens of an apparent heart attack.

Mr. Palillo was forever remembered for the character he played from 1975 to 1979 on the ABC sitcom: a nasally Brooklyn teen whose hand shot skyward and who barked out a string of “Ooohs” when a teacher posed a question.

Though his co-star on the show, John Travolta, went on to fame, Mr. Palillo struggled to expand beyond his role as Horshack.

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Of Horshack, Mr. Palillo once told an interviewer from the Birmingham News: “While I loved him, I really loved him, I didn’t want to do him forever.”

‘70s murder conviction keeps Dog out of U.K.

Duane “Dog” Chapman has his bags packed for London, but a murder conviction from the late 1970s is keeping him out of the United Kingdom.

The reality television star from the show “Dog the Bounty Hunter” was to appear on another reality show, “Celebrity Big Brother,” but he has been denied a visa.

“It’s something that follows you the rest of your life, no matter who you become or who you are,” Mr. Chapman, 59, said Monday from Honolulu, where he lives. “I’m not proud of it.”

He was 23 in Pampa, Texas, in 1976 when he was in a car outside a house where a friend had gone inside to buy marijuana, he explained. The friend got into an argument with the dealer and shot him.

“In Texas in the ‘70s, if you were present, you were just as guilty,” Mr. Chapman said. He and the others in the group all were found guilty of murder. Mr. Chapman was sentenced to five years in prison and was paroled after 18 months.

“I shouldn’t have went and I shouldn’t have been the person I was back then,” he said.

But he said he’s frustrated that it’s keeping him from visiting his fans in the U.K.

“It feels terrible. I’m dumbfounded. I can’t believe it, after all these years, especially when we’ve been on television for the past nine years.”

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