Celebrity Biographies
Jeff Conaway
Jeff Conaway has died in Los Angeles, after ten days in a coma. He remains in the memory of the moviegoer as Kenickie, John Travolta’s partner in Grease .
He was born under the name of Jeffery Charles William Michael Conaway on October 5, 1950 in New York, United States. He began acting at a very young age, and attended the North Carolina School of the Arts.
He was from the beginning in popular film titles, yes, in small roles, such as those in the war The Eagle Has Arrived (1976) and the Disneyan that combined real actors and animation Pedro and the dragon Elliot (1977). But the role that would bring him fame was that of Kenickie in one of the key films of the 1970s, the musical Grease (1978). Curiously, in the version on the Broadway stage, Conaway played the character that made Travolta a celebrity, Danny Zuko. The actor would marry two years later precisely with the sister of one of the film’s actresses, Olivia Newton-John . But the marriage to Rondha Newton-John ended five years later.
Conaway did a lot of television, and specifically his character as Bobby Wheeler in Taxi (1978-1982) gave him a Golden Globe. For the small screen he also did Department Stores , Murder She Wrote and Babylon 5 . And he even tried directing a single film, Bikini Summer II, whose title gives an idea of the mediocrity of this product, a summer comedy. The actor was active until the end of his life. He had difficulties due to his addictions and various health problems. His Scientologist friend John Travolta helped him by inviting him to his group’s programs to seek his detoxification.
Two weeks before his death, the actor was found unconscious from what appeared to be an overdose of painkillers. Subsequently, the doctor who had treated him for his addiction problems ruled that it was pneumonia with sepsis, difficult to diagnose due to the patient’s previous history. Conaway was unable to come out of her coma and died on May 27, 2011.