Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Hangin' With Mr. Cooper: Cast Photo

Hangin' with Mr. Cooper aired from September 1992 until August 1997 on ABC.

Tall, gangly Mark Curry starred in this black, nineties variation on Three's Company. Mark Cooper ( Curry) was a former NBA player who, when his career faltered, moved back to his old high school in Oakland, California, to become a coach. Sharing his house ( and the rent) were two beautiful women , old friend Robin ( Dawnn Lewis), a music teacher , and sexy Vanessa ( Holly Robinson), who worked for a brokerage firm. Their relationship was platonic , so stories revolved around their dating misadventures as well as Mark's experiences in his new career as a teacher. A loose ,easygoing prankster, he created trouble everywhere. A suitable foil arrived in the second season in the person of formidible principal P.J. Moore ( Nell Carter). Adding to the fun at the house ( which Mark and Vanessa had just bought) was cousin Geneva ( Saundra Quarterman) who moved in ( replacing Robin) with her forthright little daughter, Nicole ( Raven- Symone).

Others who moved through the light, bright little stories included fun-loving neighborhood kid Tyler ( Marquise Wilson), rival coaches Rickett and Corley ( Roger E. Mosley, Ron Canada), college buddy Steve ( Steve White), and assorted students of whom Earvin ( Omar Gooding) was the most frequently seen.

In the fall of 1995, Geneva became principal at Oakbridge High School, making her Mark's boss as well as his housemate. Mark was increasingly attracted to Vanessa ( as were most of the rest of Oakland's eligible males) and proposed more than once, but it took her a while to warm up to him. When the series did not return in the fall of 1996, it appeared that viewers would never find out if they got together, but in an unusual series of original episodes run during the summer of 1997 they were engaged. The last episode, on August 30, 1997, was supposed to be their wedding day-but at the end they mearly waved goodbye to viewers, without having taken their vows.

An interesting bit of trivia is that the house in which Mr. Cooper "hung" was originally that of the East Coast Seavers on Growing Pains; in the first episode , Jason Seaver ( Alan Thicke) himself showed up to wish them well. Subsequently, the set was changed without explanation.

A Review from Enteratinment Weekly

TV Review
Hangin' with Mr. Cooper (Hangin' with Mr. Cooper

C By Ken Tucker

This variation on Three's Company — guy and two gals share an apartment — is lifted into the category of Just Barely Watchable due to the skills of its stars. As the guy, stand-up comic Mark Curry isn't the silly satyr that John Ritter was on Company; he's a clever verbal cutup, a solid, naturalistic actor, and, with his soft pudding face and long, spider-limbed body, he goes against the grain of conventional sitcom leading men. As for his costars, A Different World's Dawnn Lewis is the no-nonsense member of this trio, delivering her straight lines with dry humor, while Holly Robinson (21 Jump Street) is required to compete with her own body, showcased in a succession of tiny, slinky outfits designed to provoke Curry's comic lust. Robinson responds to him with the amusing drop-dead sarcasm he deserves.

Curry plays Mr. Cooper, a substitute teacher plagued by wisecracking students (they're all bland brats). It's only when the three stars bounce off each other — flirting, jiving, and putting each other on — that Hangin' With Mr. Cooper is worth hanging around for. C

An Article from Entertainment Weekly
Published on September 11, 1992

Pop Culture News
FACE TO WATCH: HOLLY ROBINSON
HANGIN' WITH MR. COOPER
By Alan Carter

So what if everyone says Hangin' With Mr. Cooper is a rip-off of Three's Company? ''If we're going to be as successful as that show,'' says the voluble Holly Robinson, ''they can make fun of us all they want.'' Making fun herself of comments that she is simply taking over where Suzanne Somers left off, she quips, ''I do plan on marketing the black version of the Thighmaster.'' Actually, she may not have time. On top of a budding musical career (she and costar Dawnn Lewis recorded Cooper's theme), she'll play Diana Ross in the fall ABC miniseries The Jacksons: An American Dream-doing her own vocals. And she'll need hours to squirm into the snug frocks she'll wear as Cooper's upwardly mobile secretary Vanessa. ''I don't have a problem being the show's T& A,'' she says, ''because black women are rarely shown this way.'' A child of the biz (her mom, Delores, is a talent manager, and her dad, Matthew, played Sesame Street's Gordon and was a Cosby Show producer), Robinson has studied at the Sorbonne and is fluent in French, Italian, and Spanish. On the romantic front, she is no longer engaged to actor Brian Robbins (Head of the Class) and is, for the record, dating again. Robinson is best known for starring as a gun-toting undercover officer on Fox's hit 21 Jump Street. But since the show revolved around Johnny Depp, some people have forgotten her. On one audition, she says, she was told, '''Sorry, but we just don't see you holding a gun.' I thought, 'What? Excuse me?''' She got the same doubtful reaction when she asked to try comedy: ''We know you can break up female gangs and fire a gun. But can you be funny?'' Robinson plans to have them eating their words-while they laugh.

An Article from The New York Times on Cast Changes on certain TV shows during the fall of 1993 including Hangin' with Mr. Cooper.

TELEVISION; New Season, Old Cast, Room for One
More

By ANITA GATES
Published: October 31, 1993

Nobody in the "Murphy Brown" cast died this year or walked out after a contract dispute. Still, when the season premiere rolled around, there was a brand-new face on the team. In television seasons past, series usually acquired new characters as replacements, especially when the youngest child in the cast was aging dangerously out of cuteness range. But series have other needs, and sometimes they can be met only by new blood, as at least four shows have recently decided. ANITA GATES "Murphy Brown"

He's boyishly handsome. He wears denim jackets and camouflage pants and sometimes a touch of Don Johnson stubble. He's Scott Bakula, portraying a veteran foreign correspondent named Peter Hunt, and just weeks ago a Serbian guard was holding a gun to his head while the world watched via satellite. Now he's part of the "F.Y.I." television team, where Murphy (Candice Bergen) and her colleagues admit to feeling a little threatened.

Why is Peter Hunt here? Maybe Murphy needed a little sexual tension in her life. If so, she's getting it from someone who may have as over developed a sense of entitlement as she does. When viewers first saw Peter, he was at Murphy's desk using her phone, without even having been introduced.

This character is also someone she can spar with. "I barely touched you," says Murphy, after a collision in the parking lot. Peter answers, "Then why did my air bag inflate?" "L.A. Law"

She's blond, beautiful, smart, impeccably dressed, ice-princess cool and very direct, a combination of Grace Kelly, Faye Dunaway and . . . oh . . . Tammy Faye Bakker. Yes, "L.A. Law" has just introduced prime time's first fundamentalist Christian sex symbol, Jane Halliday (played by Alexandra Powers).

Why is she here, this stranger from Harvard Law School and Bob Jones University, joining McKenzie, Brackman as its newest associate? See "sexual tension," above. Arnie Becker (Corbin Bernsen), the firm's resident satyr, hasn't had a real romantic challenge in ages. Viewers can tell he's interested because, during her job interview, he begins reciting the 23d Psalm. Later, when Jane tells him over a business lunch that she's a virgin and plans to stay that way until her wedding night, he maintains control until she leaves, then breathes the word virgin to himself and visibly shudders. "Hangin' With Mr. Cooper"

She's big, black and beautiful. She's Nell Carter, playing Peaches, or P. J., Moore, the new principal at the Oakland high school where Mark Cooper (Mark Curry) is the gym teacher, perennial substitute and leading iconoclast.

The two were friends long ago, but that may not help him now. Within five minutes of her entrance, Mr. Cooper has insulted her several times ("What brings you to the 'hood? Is Jenny Craig doing a commercial?" Then, insisting that he hadn't meant to criticize her beehive hairdo: "No, the black Doris Day look is you.").

According to network press materials, the new character is here "to increase the pressure" in Mr. Cooper's already complicated life. He shares a home with two beautiful women and a 9-year-old child. In Ms. Carter's first episode, she sang "Twist and Shout" at a local hangout while Mr. Curry danced, in drag, with Sherman Hemsley. "Barney and Friends"

He's a bright orangey yellow with huge freckles and a green stomach. He wears high-top sneakers and a baseball cap. He's BJ, the third and newest dinosaur on "Barney and Friends," which has a target audience age of 2 to 6.

BJ is Baby Bop's big brother. BJ is being introduced because the show's creators wanted a sibling relationship to work with (Barney and Baby Bop are just good friends). The new character is described by a series spokeswoman as "your very stereotypical boy."

That he is. He has his first starring role in an episode called "An Adventure in Make-Believe." The plot: "A beautiful princess awaits a hero to show her out of the make-believe jungle." BJ becomes that hero.

A 2007 Article about Mark Curry from USA TODAY

Mark Curry: Laughs kept him from suicide
Published February 14, 2007

NEW YORK (AP) — Comedian Mark Curry, who starred in the 1990s sitcom Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, says that if it wasn't for some of his comic friends he probably would have committed suicide last spring after a freak accident landed him in the hospital with second-degree burns.
Appearing on The Montel Williams Show set to air Thursday, Curry, 42, said he suffered burns over 18% of his body after a falling can of spray starch ruptured and sparked a fire in his California home.

"It was so bad ... that pain was so excruciating that I just threw it out," said Curry, recalling the moment when he woke up from a three-day, medically induced coma.

"I wanted to kill myself and, by the fourth day, I said, 'I can't do this.' I felt less than a man. I couldn't even look at my own body. I saw my hand with the peeling skin and threw up, and I didn't look at myself again."

He then decided to hoard his pain medication and commit suicide by overdosing on it, he said. But Curry, who also appeared on TV's Fat Actress and The Drew Carey Show, said he changed his mind after talking to some funny friends, like Sinbad and Bill Cosby.

"They made me laugh, and that helped a lot," he said.

For Mark Curry's Homepage go to http://www.markcurry.net/