Joyce DeWitt remembers the last evening she spent with John Ritter as an unexpectedly precious piece of time. The two Three’s Company costars were both in New York in August 2003, only weeks before Ritter died. A returned telephone call led to dinner with Jim Belushi, turning a chance overlap in their schedules into a reunion she still values.
In a recent interview, DeWitt described how close she had come to leaving for a movie before Ritter called. At the time, it was simply an evening with friends. Its significance changed after his sudden death the following month.
An ordinary plan became a lasting memory
DeWitt’s recollection of the New York dinner places the meeting at an Italian restaurant in the Village. She had learned that Ritter was in town and left him a message. His call came back before she set out for Lincoln Center, leaving enough time to make other plans.
The account is powerful because it does not depend on either actor knowing what was coming. Nothing about the arrangement suggested a farewell. Belushi joined them, they enjoyed the evening, and only later did the meal become the final occasion DeWitt and Ritter had spent together.
Ritter died on September 11, 2003, at 54. He had been working on 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter. His death from an aortic dissection abruptly ended a career that still included an active television series and other projects.
A partnership built around comic timing
Their shared professional history began much earlier. Three’s Company ran on ABC from 1977 to 1984, with DeWitt as Janet Wood and Ritter as Jack Tripper. Suzanne Somers played Chrissy Snow in the original central trio, whose shared apartment in Santa Monica supplied the setting for the comedy.
The Television Academy’s history of the series places it within the tradition of farce, built around misunderstandings, innuendo and physical comedy. The premise required characters to misread one another while the audience understood more of what was happening.
That kind of work depends on performers knowing where the next line, movement or interruption will land. DeWitt has described an immediate physical understanding with Ritter, remembering how naturally they could anticipate one another. Her account of their partnership gives a practical explanation for the rhythm viewers saw on screen.
The show also gave Ritter his defining early television role. The Television Academy’s account of his career records his 1984 Emmy for Three’s Company, followed by work including Hooperman, Hearts Afire and his later family sitcom. His stage career included a Broadway run in Neil Simon’s The Dinner Party.
Remembering him through work that continues
Ritter’s legacy also reaches beyond performance. The John Ritter Foundation for Aortic Health, established by his widow Amy Yasbeck, works to increase understanding of thoracic aortic aneurysm and dissection through research, education and advocacy.
The organization describes support for patients and families, professional education and research intended to improve recognition and care. Its work gives the public memory of Ritter a practical direction, connecting affection for the actor with information about the condition that caused his death.
For DeWitt, the dinner in New York remains a more intimate part of the same memory. The television partnership can be revisited through episodes, and the foundation continues its public work. The evening itself belongs to the people who shared it: a few hours that became irreplaceable precisely because they had seemed so ordinary.
