John Helps Launch American Made Advertising
John Ratzenberger has been searching across the planet for folks that get advertising, understand customer service, and actually care about their clients. Enter Ryan Erwin and his team at American Made Advertising. John chose a group of marketers, operatives, and digital folks that take pride in every graphic, every banner, every video, every like, every comment, and every ad they create. In the multi-billion dollar ad industry, this team stands out. Learn more by visiting...
read moreMeet John Ratzenberger
During more than three decades of movie making and theatre, John Ratzenberger has enjoyed success as a screenwriter, director, producer and multi Emmy-nominated actor. He is also an accomplished entrepreneur and philanthropist. John’s career began in earnest in the early 1970s, when he formed the improvisational theatre duo “Sal’s Meat Market,” which performed to standing-room-only crowds throughout Europe for 634 straight performances. To help pay the bills, John also worked as a house framer, archery instructor and deck hand on a fishing boat. Learning a few trades allowed him to pursue his dream of acting. In 1982, John accepted a writing assignment for CBS in Los Angeles. On the day he was scheduled to return to London, he auditioned for a role on the upcoming Cheers. At the time of his audition, the character of the postman did not exist. As he walked out of the room, he turned and asked the creators “Do you have a bar know-it-all?” They didn’t know what that was, so John gave them five minutes of improv, demonstrating exactly what it meant with the perfect Boston accent. They loved what they saw and Cliff Clavin was born. In the history of television, only a handful of series have achieved the worldwide success of Cheers, on which John portrayed Cliff for the show’s entire 11-year run. To this day, thanks to daily syndication, Cliff continues as one of America’s most beloved characters. John is better known to a younger generation as the only actor to voice a character in every Pixar film including: the witty Hamm the piggy bank in Toy Story 1 (1995), Toy Story 2 (1999), Toy Story 3 (2010) and Toy Story 4 (2019); P.T. Flea, the circus ringmaster in Bug’s Life (1998); the lovable snow monster Yeti in Monsters, Inc.(2002) and Monsters University (2013); the ever-changing school of Moonfish in Finding Nemo (2003); the philosophical character The Underminer in The Incredibles (2004) and The Incredibles 2 (2018); a Mac-truck in Cars (2006), Cars 2 (2011) and Cars 3 (2017); Mustafa, the head waiter in Ratatouille (2007); as John, a human in WALL-E (2008), the construction worker in Up! (2009); Gordon the guard in Brave (2012); Harland in Planes (2013), Fritz in Inside Out (2015); Earl in The Good Dinosaur (2015); Bill the Crab in Finding Dory (2016); and Juan Ortodoncia in Coco (2017). Pixar artists always find a way to include John’s recognizable eyebrows and mustache. Pixar’s creators call John their “good luck charm.” John’s latest project is a partnership with actor and director Kevin Sorbo in the upcoming film East Texas Miracle – a faith-based project (a genre John is very active with). In all, John has acted in 38 major motion pictures including blockbusters such as Superman, Star Wars: Episode V –The Empire Strikes Back and Ghandi to independent films like his hit The Woodcarver. He has written, directed or produced hundreds of television projects over the span of his career making him the 6th largest grossing actor of all time based on box-office receipts. Since climbing off the barstool at Cheers over a decade ago, John has immersed himself in what makes America great, a country in which a truck driver’s son wound up being a TV icon. He wrote the...
read moreLet’s Bring Back Shop Class to Educate and Inspire
Millennials are the first American generation who have not been taught how to use tools — wrenches, screws, saws, etc. — and that could have a negative effect on the country’s trade industries. Skilled labor is in increasingly high demand as manufacturing jobs trickle back into the country, but as shop class has steadily disappeared from the high school curriculum, there are not always enough skilled laborers to fill the positions, according to the Foundation for America, a nonprofit that invests in creating a skilled labor force. The foundation is run by John Ratzenberger, an actor who has done many voiceovers for Pixar, including Hamm in the Toy Story series. He began his career as Cliff Clavin, the affable postman on the television show Cheers. To demonstrate his commitment to teaching tool use, and the joys of working with one’s hands, Ratzenberger has donated $1 million to the state of Georgia to begin the National Education Initiative. Ratzenberger said in a recent interview that teaching tool skills is about making young people more well-rounded individuals: “It makes you a more well-rounded human being, more capable and self-reliant if you can fix your own screen door. … There are a lot of jobs in manufacturing right now, a lot of jobs in construction, and there’s nobody to fill them because we neglected to teach our children how to use tools and we’ve denigrated the image of manufacturing.” Read the full article at...
read moreMy Carpentry Skills Played a Big Role in My Acting Success
We should be teaching our children the power of building things by hand Growing up in the 1950’s and 60’s, I was fortunate to be surrounded by people who actually had real-life-skills. Having a tool box handy wasn’t an anomaly; it was the norm—and kids were taught how to use theirs. This was especially true in the factory town of Bridgeport, Conn., where I was raised. Read the full article at...
read moreWhere Everybody Learns a Trade
Georgia receives $1M donation from former “Cheers” star to revive shop class in public schools April 2015 – Actor John Ratzenberger, best known for his role as Cliff Clavin, the know-it-all postal carrier on the sitcom “Cheers” is using his blue-collar ethos to bring back shop class. In his portrayal of Cliff, Ratzenberger dispensed half-baked yet believable theories such as why beer makes you smarter. Now he is delivering funds through the Foundation for America, a nonprofit whose mission is to beat the drum of skilled trades—and their decline, to re-ignite individuals’ passion for blue collar work and boost U.S. manufacturing. The Foundation for America made headlines earlier this year when Ratzenberger donated $1 million to the state of Georgia as a part of a National Educational Initiative to revive shop classes in schools. Read the full article on...
read moreNY Daily News Honors Cheers by Reposting 1993 Story
This article was posted on nydailynews.com. Click to read the full story. (Originally published by the Daily News on May 16, 1993. This story was written by David Bianculli.) Here are two quick anecdotes, spaced a decade apart, attesting to the excellence of NBC’s “Cheers,” which ends its 11 season run Thursday night. After the 1982-83 TV season, the Television Critics Association (TCA) polled its members to nominate and acknowledge, for the first time, the best new series on TV. Although the competition that year included much-appreciated “St. Elsewhere,” the runaway winner was a then-little-known sitcom named “Cheers.” Ten years later, in an interview with Kurt Vonnegut that I was conducting a book called “Teleliteracy: Taking Television Seriously,” Vonnegut made this appreciative comment about his favorite sitcom: “I would say that television has produced one comic masterpiece, which is ‘Cheers,’” Vonnegut said. “I wish I’d written that instead of everything I HAD written. Every time anybody opens his or her mouth on-that show, it’s significant. It’s FUNNY.” Continue reading this article on...
read moreWhat “American Made” Means to John Ratzenberger
This article was originally posted in HuffPost Business by Stacey Alcorn. Click here to read the full article. There’s a good chance you know him as Cliff Clavin, the know-it-all postman onCheers. Or maybe you know him from his hit show Made In America on the Travel Channel where he showcased the people behind the products made in the USA. He has worked on feature films like Superman and Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, as well as independent films like The Woodcarver. He’s also the only actor to voice a role in every Pixar film with such beloved characters as Mack the Truck and Hamm the Piggy Bank. John Ratzenberger has been listed as the 6th most successful actor of all time in terms of box office receipts and there’s no slowing him down. In addition to an average of 5 speeches a month, regular visits with Congressional leaders on issues that affect American manufacturers and another Pixar film release this summer, he’ll be launching 1-2 minute syndicated vignettes called “It’s a Little Known Fact” on radio stations nationwide starting this month. Successful? No question. Self-made? You bet. He started his acting career while working part-time as a carpenter to pay the bills. Ambitious? Let’s just say that in between his acting, vocal talents, and screen writing, he is also an avid entrepreneur with his hands in several businesses. Ambitious is an understatement. Passionate? Without a doubt. And that’s what brings us to today and this article.John Ratzenberger loves acting, writing, and entrepreneurship. But his absolute passion is America. He’s a fascinating person to talk to, rich with knowledge of history and how things work. He could talk for hours about the infrastructure of America and how highways, tunnels, and cities were meticulously built during a time when the only manpower was true man power; the blood, sweat, and tears of laborers. Ratzenberger is an aficionado of learning, a connoisseur of understanding the mechanics of how things work, and an advocate for re-introducing trade, mechanics, shop, and carpentry skills back into schools so that we can truly marry human talent and skill to today’s innovative society in order to create a better America. He says that he hopes his legacy, when people fall upon his name one hundred years from now, is not that he was Cliff from Cheers, or Mack the Truck in a Pixar film, but that he was that guy who advocated for empowering individuals to leave America better than it was found. Here are John Ratzenberger’s four simple strategies for putting the most powerful brand in the world back into the hands of the people to make Made in the USA mean something again: Click here to continue reading this article at...
read moreJohn Ratzenberger Delivers the Weather Report
You may know him as an actor, a spokesman, a philanthropist, or even a mailman, but John Ratzenberger can finally check Weatherman off his bucket list! He’s delivering the weather for his favorite cities ~ and talking the science of air travel from Elite Aviation Products. Check out the weather report as only Ratzie can deliver it on The Weather...
read moreCheers Cast Joins Friends, Will & Grace, Frasier, to Honor James Burrows
This article was originally posted on E!Online. Click here to view the full article Must See TV lives again on Sunday, Feb. 21 on NBC. The casts of Friends, Fasier,Taxi, Will & Grace, The Big Bang Theory, Cheers, and more are coming together to honor TV director James Burrows for Must See TV: A Tribute to James Burrows. Burrows made his directorial debut with an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and went on to work on Taxi, Cheers, Frasier,Will & Grace, Mike & Molly, Two and a Half Men and currently NBC’s Crowded, among other shows. “There is nobody with better TV comedy instincts than Jimmy Burrows, and because of his guiding hand these remarkable shows will be forever celebrated and stand the test of time,” Paul Telegdy, president of alternative and late night programming at NBC Entertainment, said in statement. “The caliber of talent joining us to celebrate Jimmy’s accomplishments is a testament to his imprint in television history.” Continue Reading...
read moreJohn Ratzenberger Reunites with Cheers Cast Members
This article was originally posted on people.com, click here to view the full article. Kirstie Alley is going back to where everybody knows her name. The actress, 64, lost 50 lbs. with Jenny Craig and has kept off the weight for the past year – and now she’s celebrating her success with some familiar faces in a Cheers-themed commercial for the diet program. “When they asked me to do the commercial, I had a lot of consideration that it was an iconic show – I didn’t want to walk onto some set that looks artificial,” Alley tells PEOPLE. But her fears were put to rest when she saw the set, which perfectly recreated the bar from the popular 80s sitcom. “Honestly, when John [Ratzenberger] and George [ Wendt] and I walked on, it was a little bit like The Twilight Zone because it was an exact duplicate,” she says. “It was crazy. I didn’t think anybody would ever be able to replicate that set like...
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