Howard Hesseman’s ‘Head of the Class’ Mates Share Memories of the Late Star

Lori Acken 2 seconds ago

HEAD OF THE CLASS, Howard Hesseman, 1986-91, — Warner Bros. Television/courtesy Everett Collection

Howard Hesseman was best known for playing disc jockey Dr. Johnny Fever, who endures a flock of flying turkeys and other indignities, on the Emmy-winning sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati, which ran from 1978-1982. But an entire generation — and their parents — best remember Hesseman as beleaguered Manhattan high school teacher Charlie Moore on Head of the Class. The ABC sitcom, which ran from 1986-1991, featured Hesseman’s teacher imparting lessons in history, social studies and how to get by in the world to a hodgepodge group of honors students.

Cinematographer George Spiro Dibie, who worked one episode of the series, told the Television Academy Foundation that Hesseman was “the only pro on the show” among a cast of “very nice boys and girls.”

Now grown, some of those nice boys and girls, plus their principal, recently gathered at the Hollywood Show in Burbank and remembered their time with the mercurial Hesseman, who passed in 2022.

Head of the Class cast 2025 Hollywood Show

ReMIND Staff

Khrystyne Haje (Simone Foster)

“I was 17 when I got the show,” Haje recalled. “I was a new actor, but I had been a big fan of WKRP in Cincinnati. For one of the callbacks I had to read with Howard Hesseman and I thought ‘I’m good, I’m done. I’ve met Dr. Johnny Fever.” Once she landed the part, Haje says she found a mentor and trusted advisor in Hesseman, “whether it was career advice or guidance. He was such a gifted comedic actor and he’d also come from a big improv background. But he was always guiding me back to making sure that the story was more important than the joke, and that if I was in the moment enough that the joke would come through.”

To that end, Hesseman reportedly lamented “We’re not doing the show that I was led to believe I’d do, and it’s difficult for me to get off that. I don’t want to air dirty laundry in public, but I do feel that the educational arena is one that offers a variety of story ideas as a means of investigating our lives — what we mean to one another and what’s important. We could do all that with considerable humor, not with jokes, but with genuine humor that comes out of character and situations.”

HEAD OF THE CLASS, (top row, l to r): Dan Frischman, Lara Piper, Brian Robbins, Howard Hesseman, Robin Givens, Tony O'Dell, (bottom): Kimberly Russell, De'Voreaux White, Rain Pryor, Dan Schneider (laying down), Michael DeLorenzo, Khrystyne Haje, (Season 4), 1986-91,

Warner Bros./Courtesy: Everett Collection

Jeannetta Arnett (Principal Bernadette Meara)

“He was really funny and odd,” Arnett recalled, adding that Hesseman could also be “sometimes really tender, sometimes cantankerous that he had been the star of [WKRP] and now he was sharing it with all the children. … Here he had to be the mature, responsible, wise and knowing adult, and with that show, he was Johnny Fever.”

Tony O’Dell — (Alan Pinkard)

“He was reckless,” O’Dell recalled of Hesseman’s freewheeling time on WKRP. “So then you come in and have to share that with so many people — especially when you’re told that you’re gonna be the one who’s gonna be pretty much running the ship.”

Marcia Christie (Lori Applebaum)

“He was very kind,” Christie recalled, noting that she spent some time socializing with Hesseman and his wife, French actress Caroline Ducrocq. “I had spent time at their house and yeah, [he was] very kind but he had some grumpiness too.”

Stream WKRP in Cincinnati on Apple TV. Head of the Class can be found on Prime Video and Apple TV and airs on Rewind TV.