Dave Madden, "Reuben Kinkaid" of The Partridge Family, Dead at 82

Thursday saw two TV Land deaths, with Russell Johnson ("The Professor" on Gilligan's Island) and also Dave Madden, who plaid "Reuben Kinkaid" on The Partridge Family. I was always a Brady Bunch kid, and didn't watch the Partridges as much. Nonetheless, Madden was a part of my childhood for sure, always there on our very low tech, very basic cable in the mid-to-late 70s. Madden had mastered a weird little trick, one some other actors (both "Darrins" on Bewitched, Dick York and Dick Sargent, Ted Bessell of That Girl) could do: he could move his eyebrows, and his hair seemed to move. Maybe it was a toupee, or maybe it was akin to learning to wiggle your ears, I don't know. But that's what always stuck with me.

So, while it's sad that so much of the participants in the pop culture of my youth are passing away with alarming regularity, I'm glad so many are making it into their 80s and beyond. They deserve it. RIP, Mr. Madden.

[Excerpt]

Dave Madden, of ‘The Partridge Family,’ Dies at 82

Dave Madden, a comic actor who played the child-hating agent on the hit 1970s sitcom “The Partridge Family,” died on Thursday in Florida. He was 82. He died at a hospice center near his home in the Jacksonville area, his niece Mary Frances Miller said. . .

Read more at: New York Times