Johnny, Remember Me
A brief tribute to free-spirited Stephen Stucker, one of the first celebrities to speak openly of living with AIDS
July 2, 2025
Today, July 2, 2025, Stephen Stucker would have turned 78 years old.
If imagining the robustly flaming imp Johnny from Airplane! (1980) as a senior citizen is difficult, would that it were not — he died of AIDS in 1986.
I think of Stucker often. I went to see Airplane! with friends more than once, and I’m still obsessed with the ridiculous comedy. I think, contrary to popular belief, there is very little in it that audiences would genuinely find offensive 45 years later, even if one of its creators, David Zucker — who has lived to see 78 — is an anti-woke Republican who seems to think filmmakers can’t “get away with” anything anymore. (Ever see Veep?)
Stucker’s improvised performance (the filmmakers allowed him to make up all his own responses to straight lines) had its roots in the limp-wristed pansies of Hollywood’s, er, Golden Age, and therefore allowed mainstream audiences to laugh at the big fairy. But undeniably, Stucker infused his character with a defiance, a sense of agency and a scene-stealing aplomb that allowed a portion of the audience to laugh with him.
There is a liberation in Stucker’s performance as he takes the piss out of everyone around him, prioritizes “a sale at Penney’s!” over people dying and seems to luxuriate in his own little lavender world where he’s free of the fear he could be fired for being like … that.
Stucker was born in Des Moines. The class clown and a serious pianist (one can only imagine what he’d do with that line) cut his comedy teeth with his future Airplane! employers, David and Jerry Zucker and the late Jim Abrahams, as part of the Kentucky Fried Theater sketch troupe. His outrageous humor was preserved in The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), a cult classic to this day.
Unfortunately, his talents — like those of so many one-of-a-kind performers — were rarely captured.
Including the bizarre erotic comedy Carnal Madness aka Delinquent School Girls (1975), in which he played an accused pervert, and the “juvenile, sexist and racist” (user reviews are always so circumspect) Cracking Up (1977), in which he played a character named Tushy, he made just 10 films and had only one TV gig, on an episode of Mork & Mindy in 1982.
On the latter, he played Mork’s pink-pantsed producer “who got Arthur Miller to write that episode of CHiPs.” Imagine Stucker, Robin Williams and Jonathan Winters riffing.
He also returned as Johnny clone Jacobs for Airplane II: The Sequel (1982), which deservedly crashed and burned at the box office, considering it was a retread of most of the first film. I did always like his riff:
“Let’s see. First, the Earth cooled, and then the dinosaurs came. But they got too big and fat, so they all died and they turned into oil, and then the Arabs came and they bought Mercedes-Benzes. And Prince Charles started wearing all of Lady Di’s clothes. I couldn’t believe it. He took her best summer dress out of the closet and put it on …”
Back to why I think about Stucker often: In a Donahue segment taped in November 1985, he spoke at length about living with AIDS. He’d been diagnosed on July 12, 1984, and when he came out as a PWA, he was one of the very first recognizable figures to do so — but of course his story and the stories of so many were instantly overshadowed by Rock Hudson’s death in 1985.
In the Donahue clip — which in my opinion is a valuable piece of LGBTQ+ history — Stucker’s chaos-agent tendencies are on full display. I think when I was younger, I would have reviled his borderline denialism, but now I see what he is saying as being his best effort to truly live while dying:
He was still pretty funny, and the fabulous Donna Mills doesn’t say anything stupid, which is high praise for a straight lady talking about AIDS in 1985. (I remember a printed story that Henry Fonda’s much-younger wife Shirlee, still alive today at 93, once wondered aloud about getting AIDS from shared exercise mats.)
Stucker also told Donahue in 1985 that he thought he had had AIDS since 1979, when many of his symptoms and cancer battles began, years before the syndrome was identified or widely discussed.
Ultimately, I think he was brave, even if his comments about AIDS 40 years ago were forgivably misguided.
Stucker, for all his bravado, died April 13, 1986, at 38 in Hollywood.
And like Leon, I think the effect he had on me is “getting largerrrr” as time goes by.⚡️
Enormously fun to watch. What a brilliant comic stylist. Thanks for your pithy reportage.