Ed Asner.

 Sad Hollywood news this day.  Ed Asner, probably best known as "Lou Grant", has died.  

 

 

What can you say about Ed Asner that hasn't already been said thousands of times?  A fantastic actor, beyond versatile, beyond long lived, beyond talented.  IMDB lists 416 acting credits for him, going back to 1957, with a handful of projects yet to complete.  Just thinking about his most famous character, it occurs to me that I cannot recall another actor taking a character from comedy (Lou Grant's bluster on The Mary Tyler Moore Show) to drama (Lou Grant's leadership and integrity on Lou Grant) at all, let alone with such success or character recognition.

That's just 2 of those 400+ credits I mentioned.  He did memorable turns on shows like The X-Files, the original AND modern reinvention of Hawaii Five-0 as the SAME CHARACTER, separated by 37 years or so, voiced characters on shows like Gargoyles and Batman and even played Jabba the Hutt on the radio adaptation of Return of the Jedi.

While I have many memories of his character work on live action television, I'm most fond of his years and years of voice work in cartoons.  Hudson on Gargoyles, Carl Fredrickson in Up, J.Jonah Jameson on Spiderman the Animated Series in the late 90s, Roland Daggett on Batman the Animated Series and many more over decades of brilliant work.

But of all his characters, of all his work, nothing, but NOTHING is better than Ed Asner in Superman The Animated Series as...

Granny Goodness!

Ed Asner's gravelly voice isn't the first thing that pops into most people's minds when they hear of a character named "Granny Goodness" but Asner is BY FAR the best person to ever voice or play Darkseid's orphan training sadist.  Creepy as fuck and twice as fun.  I would have loved to watch him in those recording sessions.  You can hear how much fun he's having in every syllable.

We'll miss Ed.  I guarantee that every once in a while for the rest of my life I'll hear a voice in a new cartoon show or film and think, "Ed Asner would have killed that!"