This Guy Was the Real-Life Inspiration for Norm on ‘Cheers’
In a California bar where everybody knows your name, there was a friendly tippler parked at the rail. And just like in the classic sitcom Cheers, the guy holding court and nursing a frosty mug was named Norm.
The journalistic detectives at the San Bernardino Sun recently dug through old newspaper articles to discover Norm’s connection to their neck of the woods in Redlands, California. It wasn’t a far-fetched scavenger hunt — Glen and Les Charles, the two brothers who co-created Cheers, went to school at the University of Redlands. Les, who graduated in 1971, frequented a local tavern/pizza parlor called the Gay 90s, where he also worked as a bartender. The seeds of a sitcom idea were being planted.
“Les Charles has acknowledged his memories of the place — including his specific recollection of a Norm-type barfly — found their way into scripts,” according to an AP story published in 1993.
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The Sun asked its readers if they had any idea who the real-life inspiration for the “Norm-type barfly” could be, and within a week, the paper had answers. The mystery lush was most likely a fellow by the name of Norman Baffrey, at least according to reader Michael Tacchia.
Guy DeRoos, who eventually bought Gay 90s, was a customer at the time Les Charles was pouring cold beers. He remembers Baffrey as “kind of heavyset and he had a place at the end of the bar where he’d always hold forth. He always wore a coat and tie, just like Norm.”
Two local librarians did a deep dive and confirmed Tacchia’s suspicions. They uncovered a joint interview with the Charles brothers, published in a 1984 issue of The Sun, in which they explained that they chose to set a sitcom in a bar because of the range of personalities who might hang out there, either as bar staff or regulars.
After all, said Glen, bars in Boston “are very neighborhood, social-type establishments.”
When they populated their fictional watering hole, the Charles brothers based them on “people, and composites of people, we had known.”
For example, “there was a guy who was there all night, every night, and every beer he had was his last beer,” remembered Les. “So we put that in.”
Once George Wendt landed the role, he made it his own, said Les. “The character’s a lot more George than that guy.”
“That guy,” Norman Baffrey, worked for San Bernardino’s Parks and Recreation Department (another sitcom reference!) when he wasn't enjoying a cold one with friends at Gay 90s. He passed away in 1994 after a stroke.
“I’ve been told it’s me, so I guess it’s my claim to fame,” the real Baffrey, then 61 years old, told the Sun in 1993. “I used to be quite heavy, and I vaguely remember (Les Charles) working behind the bar.”
“Obviously,” Baffrey said, “he remembered me.”
