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In 1985, when a strange man stood at the podium of the Emmy Awards to accept the Best Supporting Actress in a Drama statuette for Betty Thomas of "Hill Street Blues," the show, and the actress, managed to take it in stride. That was Barry Bremen, a Michigan-born prankster who loved to stir things up by showing up when least expected and hogging the spotlight. Bremen, the "no guts no glory" kind of jock, died recently, according to MyFoxLA.
Bremen was an insurance salesman by trade, but loved the limelight, and loved to gatecrash, particularly at sporting events. He was chased off the field at the Seattle Kingdome in 1979 during the warm-ups for the All-Star game, and wound up getting chased off the field by the then-manager of the Dodgers, Tommy Lasorda, who was "stringing curse words in previously unimagined combinations."
Besides rushing the stage in Pasadena for the Emmys, Bremen popped up elsewhere in the country at sporting events, including an NBA All-Star game, the Super Bowl, and the U.S. Open. He said in 2005 he had retired, and that it was not easy to gatecrash in a post-9/11 nation. He died in Scottsdale, Arizona, on June 30th, which was his 64th birthday.
