In the 1980s, Penny got work as an extra performer in TV advertisements for a nearby department store and an Atlanta-based United Way campaign.
Following her retirement from the university in 1990, Penny devoted more time to performing.
Bob Penny’s cause of death: How did Bob Penny die?
Huntsville, Alabama Professor at a college in Alabama and actor Bob Penny, who played supporting parts in “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Forrest Gump” among other films, passed away at age 87.
An obituary published by the Huntsville-based Laughlin Service Funeral Home states that Penny passed away on Christmas Day. The cause of death wasn’t revealed.
Penny, a poet who was born in Anniston in 1935, spent thirty years teaching English at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, mostly teaching poetry and prose, according to AL.com.
“Then the movies began to come,” Penny told AL.com in 2008. “I was really lucky. I had these very small roles, but they sure helped pay the mortgage.”
Penny appeared in more than 30 movies and TV series. He was credited as a “crony” in the 1994 film “Forrest Gump,” and played a bumbling, small-town lawyer in “Sweet Home Alabama,” released in 2002.
