‘Lou Grant’ Actor Jack Bannon Dies at 77

Actor Jack Bannon, who played assistant city editor Art Donovan on CBS‘s Lou Grant died Wednesday at the age of 77, according to The Spokesman-Review.

Bannon died in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, according to the paper after living in town with wife, actress Ellen Travolta — the older sister of John Travolta — since 1995.

Bannon came from a long line of actors, with his mother Bea Benaderet receiving two Emmy nominations for her performances on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show. She also was Kate Bradley on Petticoat Junction and Green Acres and was the voice of Betty Rubble on The Flintstones.

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His father Jim Bannon played the Red Ryder in four 1940s cowboy movies.

Bannon appeared in all five seasons of Lou Grant from 1977 to 1982. The show, which showed life inside a newspaper, was a spin-off of the sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and won an Emmy for outstanding drama series in 1979 and 1980

When he was hired for the Lou Grant gig, he went inside the L.A. Times to get a feel for the role, he said in the 1996 book Lou Grant: The Making of TV’s Top Newspaper Drama.

“I tried to look at the way people handled things — phones, those pencils with no erasers,” he said. “I tried to get a feel for that rather than just make a complete pretend out of it.

“It’s probably a job that not as many people would know as much about as they would about reporting,” he added. “You see reporters, you see them on television. You don’t see assistant city editors, generally.”