Welcome back kotter how many seasons

Though it lasted a mere four seasons — and after the third, most of the original writers as well as John Travolta and Kotter himself were largely absent — the television series spawned boatloads of merchandise. There were action figures, lunch boxes , comic books , board games and more. The Sweathogs were household names. Especially John Travolta.

In , after moving to L. Yep, that's Barbarino lying on the ground. The source material for the hit sitcom was Gabe Kaplan's stand-up routine " Holes and Mello-Rolls ," which colorfully chronicled his formative days as a teenager in New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn. Kaplan's gang of real-life Sweathogs would toss around the insult, "Up your hole with a Mello-Roll," suggesting that one stick the pictured ice cream treat you know where.

Obviously, it had to be cleaned up for network television. In September of , the city of Boston implemented a busing system to desegregate public schools. The mandated desegregation led to a series of riots. A year later, when Welcome Back, Kotter was preparing its premiere, racial tension was still running high in the city.

The local ABC affiliate WCVB feared that a sitcom depicting an ethnically diverse classroom would stoke the flames, so it passed on airing the show. Image: Discogs.

Former Lovin' Spoonful frontman John Sebasian was tasked with writing the theme song to a upcoming comedy titled Kotter. The problem was he could not come up with any good words that rhymed with "Kotter. In , one of Italy's two national networks decided air Welcome Back, Kotter due to the global success of Travolta. The actor was still riding high off Saturday Night Fever, so the Italians renamed the series I ragazzi del sabato sera , or "The Saturday Night Boys," perhaps hoping to confuse audiences into thinking the two stories were related.

Image: liquida. Only one, Mr. T and Tina , made it to air on its own. Yet that Pat Morita sitcom, set up with a quasi-backdoor pilot in the season two premiere, "Career Day," lasted a paltry five episodes on air.

The Chicago-set comedy flopped minus the Sweathogs. Later that season, another backdoor pilot was attempted with "There Goes Number 5," which was planned to become a Horshack-centric spin-off titled Rich Man, Poor Man; Horshack!

Oh, and the prior episode featured zero Horshack, to show the Sweathogs could live without him. He had a few odd roles in movies and television shows, but not solid stardom. Gabe Kaplan not only starred as Mr. Kotter in the hit series, he was also the show's writer. He based the show on his experiences in an under-achieving classroom in the s. After the show, Kaplan starred in several films; the most recent was 's "The Grand.

They also have a daughter Ella Bleu, born in , and a son Benjamin, born in It's delivered smoothly and in a deep, resounding voice. It was another of the show's one-liners that jumped from the screen and into popular culture. Like a lot of the Kotter cast members, Hilton-Jacobs started acting in the late '60s and has been working consistently since that show came to a halt. Hilton-Jacobs is also a crooner who has recorded a few solo records and performed with singers like Rick James.

Ron Palillo's career started in the late '60s. He had a few minor roles on TV shows before being cast as Arnold Horshack, whose defining trait was his loud, deep laugh that sounded like a hyena's mating call. It was simultaneously annoying and endearing. He was the quirkiest — and possibly the smartest — of the Sweathogs.

Horshack was promoted out of their remedial class but returned because he felt more at ease with his friends. In the mid-'90s, he played himself on Ellen , the talk-show host's popular sitcom.

Acting, in TV and stage roles, was just a part of Palillo's performing career. He also directed several theater productions and illustrated a couple of children's books. Barrie, debuted in New York in and was performed on various stages. Though he had an active career, upon his death in — due to a heart attack — a newspaper article reflected on his ambivalent feelings about the role. Robert Hegyes played Juan Luis Pedro Felipo de Huevos Epstein, a Sweathog with a running gag of attempting to pass off phony excuse notes from his mom.

He reads them aloud to Mr. Kotter and other supervising faculty members, making certain to emphasize that each one is signed by "Epstein's Mother," to enforce their validity. He studied acting in college and prior to claiming the Epstein role, he'd been doing theater in New York City. When he was 25, Hegyes also began directing some episodes of Kotter. His acting career slowed down after that, finding him doing a handful of roles and appearing as himself in some television retrospectives.

Hegyes studied acting in college and later gave that knowledge back, maintaining a teaching career that included instructing students in screenplay writing and acting at Rowan University, his alma mater. Hegyes died of a heart attack in , at age In her best known role, Marcia Strassman played Gabe Kotter's wife, Julie, on the sitcom after kicking off her career about a decade prior.

As Mrs. Kotter, she loves the students but is sometimes annoyed by their constant visits outside of school hours. One of the show's running bits is about Julie trying to get everyone to eat her "world famous tuna casserole," which is obviously terrible and inedible. Thankfully, she got to do more on the show than just cook — she, like her hubby, had a degree, and she eventually started working at Buchanan High, too.

Strassman had been public at times about being unhappy on the Kotter set. Strassman died in after a long battle with cancer. She published a memoir in in which she talks about her illness and career.

Gabe Kotter's prime mission in returning to his alma mater is to help the Sweathogs learn while increasing their self-confidence.