Rodney Dangerfield died

[langeweile]

MSNBC.com
Rodney Dangerfield dead at 82
Comic had undergone heart surgery in August

Reuters
Updated: 8:52 p.m. ET Oct. 5, 2004


LOS ANGELES - Rodney Dangerfield, the goggle-eyed comic famed for his self-deprecating one-liners and signature phrase “I can’t get no respect,� died Tuesday at age 82, his publicist said.

Dangerfield, who became a pop culture sensation with a string of broad film comedies starting with “Caddyshack� in 1980, died at 1:20 p.m. PT at the UCLA Medical Center, where he had undergone heart valve replacement surgery in August, spokesman Kevin Sasaki said in a statement.

Several of Dangerfield’s old friends, including comedians Jim Carrey, Roseanne, Andrew Dice Clay, Louie Anderson and Bob Saget, had paid hospital visits to the man who helped launch their careers at his Manhattan nightclub.

Dangerfield’s wife, Joan, had remained by his side around the clock since his operation.

Copyright 2004 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6187136/

 

[papasmerf]

May the LORD find pity upon his soul

 

[B470]

rest in peace Rodney

 

[papasmerf]

Take my wife,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,please

 

[The Baroness]

ah shit...

 

[superquad1968]

Nuts. I hope St. Peter is giving him the respect he is/was due now.

 

[papasmerf]

How come I can not show a tear here?

 

[because]

"when i was your age i used to haul 50 pounds of ice up and down the stairs."
"so what?"
"so what? so let's dance"


"Hey everybody, we're all gonna get laid!"

 

[shinyam]

Rest in peace, Rodney.

 

[antaeus]

This guy made me laugh, his whole style, everything he said went right to my funny bone. Just Rodney standing there with his nervous quiver made me laugh. He had the best one liners in every movie. Some of my faves:

I used to be a baby, now I'm a baby photographer (Easy Money)
No cerveza, only champagne (forgot title, with Adrienne Barbeau)
The regular guy look! Pants with room to reach in and scratch (Easy Money).

His performance as the hideous, flabby, abusive father in Natural Born Killers was amazing, even if only a cameo.

Simpsons rerun Sunday night had Rodney as Monty Burns' long lost sun.

Yeah, apparently alot of comics got their breaks in his club.

Also, his wife was an internet retail flower shop pioneer, supposedly the first in America.

He was a comic who didn't swear, that I know of, didn't need off-colour or sensational topics to be funny.


antaeus

 

[danmand]

I saw an interview with him on TV, where he was talking about cloning himself. llet the new Rodney come!

 

[Berlin]

RIP Rodney.

.....

 

[shinyam]

Heeeere's Rodney...


And we were poor too. Why, if I wasn't born a boy, I'd have nothing to play with!

I tell you, with my doctor, I don't get no respect. Well, I told him I've swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills. He told me to have a few drinks and get some rest.

I tell ya when I was a kid, all I knew was rejection. My yo-yo, it never came back!

When I was a kid I got no respect. The time I was kidnapped, and the kidnappers sent my parents a note they said, "We want five thousand dollars or you'll see your kid again."

Some dog I got too. We call him Egypt because he leaves a pyramid in every room.

With my dog I don't get no respect. He keeps barking at the front door. He don't want to go out. He wants me to leave.

What a dog I got. His favorite bone is in my arm!

Last week I saw my psychiatrist. I told him, "Doc, I keep thinking I'm a dog." He told me to get off his couch.

I worked in a pet store and people kept asking how big I'd get.

My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met.

I'll tell ya, my wife and I, we don't think alike. She donates money to the homeless, and I donate money to the topless!

One night I came home. I figured, let my wife come on. I'll play it cool. Let her make the first move. She went to Florida.

I asked my old man if I could go ice-skating on the lake. He told me, "Wait til it gets warmer."

My doctor told me to watch my drinking. Now I drink in front of a mirror. I drink too much. Way too much. My doctor drew blood. He ran a tab.

When I was born the doctor came out to the waiting room and said to my father, "I'm very sorry. We did everything we could...but he pulled through."

I come from a stupid family. During the Civil War my great uncle fought for the west!

My father was stupid. He worked in a bank and they caught him stealing pens.

My mother had morning sickness after I was born.

My mother never breast fed me. She told me that she only liked me as a friend.

My father carries around the picture of the kid who came with his wallet.

When I played in the sandbox the cat kept covering me up.

I could tell that my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and a radio.

One year they wanted to make me poster boy... for birth control.

I remember the time I was kidnapped and they sent back a piece of my finger to my father. He said he wanted more proof.

My uncle's dying wish was to have me sitting on his lap. He was in the electric chair.

Once when I was lost I saw a policeman and asked him to help me find my parents. I said to him, "Do you think we'll ever find them?" He said, "I don't know kid. There are so many places they can hide."

I remember I was so depressed I was going to jump out a window on the tenth floor. They sent a priest up to talk to me. He said, "On your mark..."

When my old man wanted sex, my mother would show him a picture of me.

I had a lot of pimples too. One day I fell asleep in a library. I woke up and a blind man was reading my face.

My wife made me join a bridge club. I jump off next Tuesday.

Last week my tie caught on fire. Some guy tried to put it out with an ax!

 

[shinyam]

I met the surgeon general. He offered me a cigarette.

One time I went to a hotel. I asked the bellhop to handle my bag. He felt up my wife!

This morning when I put on my underwear I could hear the Fruit of the Loom guys laughing at me.

I'm a bad lover. Once I caught a peeping tom booing me.

My wife only has sex with me for a purpose. Last night she used me to time an egg.

It's tough to stay married. My wife kisses the dog on the lips, yet she won't drink from my glass!

My wife isn't very bright. The other day she was at the store, and just as she was heading for our car, someone stole it! I said, "Did you see the guy that did it?" She said, "No, but I got the license plate."

Last night my wife met me at the front door. She was wearing a sexy negligee. The only trouble was, she was coming home.

A girl phoned me and said, "Come on over. There's nobody home." I went over. Nobody was home!

A hooker once told me she had a headache.

I went to a massage parlor. It was self service.

If it weren't for pick-pocketers, I'd have no sex life at all.

I was making love to this girl and she started crying. I said, "Are you going to hate yourself in the morning?" She said, "No, I hate myself now."

I knew a girl so ugly that she was known as a two-bagger. That's when you put a bag over your head in case the bag over her head breaks.

I knew a girl so ugly, they use her in prisons to cure sex offenders.

I knew a girl so ugly, I took her to the top of the Empire State building and planes started to attack her.

I knew a girl so ugly, the last time I saw a mouth like hers it had a hook on the end of it.

I knew a girl so ugly, she had a face like a saint--a Saint Bernard!

I was tired one night and I went to the bar to have a few drinks. The bartender asked me, "What'll you have?" I said, "Surprise me." He showed me a naked picture of my wife.

During sex my wife always wants to talk to me. Just the other night she called me from a hotel.

My marriage is on the rocks again. Yeah, my wife just broke up with her boyfriend.

One day as I came home early from work, I saw a guy jogging naked. I said to the guy, "Hey buddy...why are you doing that for?" He said, "Because you came home early."

I went to see my doctor... Doctor Vidi-boom-ba. Yeah...I told him once, "Doctor, every morning when I get up and look in the mirror I feel like throwing up. What's wrong with me? He said, "I don't know, but your eyesight is perfect."

I told my dentist my teeth are going yellow. He told me to wear a brown necktie.

My psychiatrist told me I'm going crazy. I told him, "If you don't mind, I'd like a second opinion." He said, "All right. You're ugly too!"

I was so ugly, my mother used to feed me with a slingshot!

When I was born the doctor took one look at my face, turned me over and said, "Look, twins!"

 

[shinyam]

This is from CNN:

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Rodney Dangerfield, the bug-eyed comic whose self-deprecating one-liners brought him stardom in clubs, television and movies and made his lament "I don't get no respect" a catchphrase, died Tuesday. He was 82.

Dangerfield, who fell into a coma after undergoing heart surgery, died at 1:20 p.m., said publicist Kevin Sasaki. Dangerfield had a heart valve replaced August 25 at the University of California, Los Angeles, Medical Center.

Sasaki said in a statement that Dangerfield suffered a small stroke after the operation and developed infectious and abdominal complications. But in the past week he had emerged from the coma, the publicist said.

"When Rodney emerged, he kissed me, squeezed my hand and smiled for his doctors," Dangerfield's wife, Joan, said in the statement. The comic is also survived by two children from a previous marriage.

As a comic, Dangerfield -- clad in a black suit, red tie and white shirt with collar that seemed too tight -- convulsed audiences with lines such as: "When I was born, I was so ugly that the doctor slapped my mother"; "When I started in show business, I played one club that was so far out my act was reviewed in Field and Stream"; and "Every time I get in an elevator, the operator says the same thing to me: `Basement?"'

In a 1986 interview, he explained the origin of his "respect" trademark:

"I had this joke: 'I played hide and seek; they wouldn't even look for me.' To make it work better, you look for something to put in front of it: I was so poor, I was so dumb, so this, so that. I thought, 'Now what fits that joke?' Well, 'No one liked me' was all right. But then I thought, a more profound thing would be, 'I get no respect."'

He tried it at a New York club, and the joke drew a bigger response than ever. He kept the phrase in the act, and it seemed to establish a bond with his audience. After hearing him perform years later, Jack Benny remarked: "Me, I get laughs because I'm cheap and 39. Your image goes into the soul of everyone."

Dangerfield had a strange career in show business. At 19 he started as a standup comedian. He made only a fair living, traveling a great deal and appearing in rundown joints. Married at 27, he decided he couldn't support a family on his meager earnings.

He returned to comedy at 42 and began to attract notice. He appeared on the Ed Sullivan show seven times and on "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson more than 70 times.

After his standout film role in "Caddyshack," he began starring in his own movies.

He was born Jacob Cohen on November 22, 1921, in Babylon on New York's Long Island. Growing up in the borough of Queens, his mother was uncaring and his father was absent. As Philip Roy, the father and his brother toured in vaudeville as a pantomime comedy-juggling act, Roy and Arthur. Young Jacob's parents divorced, and the mother struggled to support her daughter and son.

The boy helped bring in money by selling ice cream at the beach and working for a grocery store. "I found myself going to school with kids and then in the afternoon I'd be delivering groceries to their back door," he recalled. "I ended up feeling inferior to everybody."

He ingratiated himself to his schoolmates by being funny; at 15 he was writing down jokes and storing them in a duffel bag. When he was 19, he adopted the name Jack Roy and tried out the jokes at a resort in the Catskills, training ground for Danny Kaye, Jerry Lewis, Red Button, Sid Caesar and other comedians. The job paid $12 a week plus room and meals.

 

[shinyam]

In New York, he drove a laundry and fish truck, taking time off to hunt for work as a comedian. The jobs came slowly, but in time he was averaging $300 a week.

He married Joyce Indig, a singer he met at a New York club. Both had wearied of the uncertainty of a performer's life.

"We wanted to lead a normal life," he remarked in a 1986 interview. "I wanted a house and a picket fence and kids, and the heck with show business. Love is more important, you see. When the show is over, you're alone."

The couple settled in Englewood, New Jersey, had two children, Brian and Melanie, and he worked selling paint and siding. But the idyllic suburban life soured as the pair battled. The couple divorced in 1962, remarried a year later and again divorced.

In 1993, Dangerfield married Joan Child, a flower importer.

At age 42, he returned to show business. He remembered in 1986:

"It was like a need. I had to work. I had to tell jokes. I had to write them and tell them. It was like a fix. I had the habit."

Even during his domestic years, he continued filling the duffel bag with jokes. He didn't want to break in his new act with any notice, so he asked the owner of New York's Inwood Lounge, George McFadden, not to bill him as Jack Roy. McFadden came up with the absurd name Rodney Dangerfield. It stuck.

Dangerfield's bookings improved, and he landed television gigs. After his ex-wife died, he took over the responsibility of raising his two children. He decided to quit touring and open a New York nightclub, Dangerfield's, so he could stay close to home. A beer commercial and the Carson shows brought him national attention.

His film debut came in 1971 with "The Projectionist," which he described as "the kind of a movie that you went to the location on the subway." He did better in 1980 with "Caddyshack," in which he held his own with such comics as Chevy Chase, Ted Knight and Bill Murray.

Despite his good reviews, Dangerfield claimed he didn't like movies or TV series: "Too much waiting around, too much memorizing; I need that immediate feedback of people laughing."

Still, he continued starring in and sometimes writing films such as "Easy Money," "Back to School," "Moving," "The Scout," "Ladybugs" and "Meet Wally Sparks." He turned dramatic as a sadistic father in Oliver Stone's 1994 "Natural Born Killers."

In 1995, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences rejected Dangerfield's application for membership. A letter from Roddy McDowall of the actors branch explained that the comedian had failed to execute "enough of the kinds of roles that allow a performer to demonstrate the mastery of his craft."

The ultimate rejection, and Dangerfield played it to the hilt. He had established his own Web site ("I went out and bought an Apple Computer; it had a worm in it"), and his fans used it to express their indignation. The public reaction prompted the academy to reverse itself and offer membership. Dangerfield declined.

"They don't even apologize or nothing," he said. "They give no respect at all -- pardon the pun -- to comedy."

 

[shinyam]

You have my respect, Rodney...

 

[MuffinMuncher]

Rodney would have wanted you to make that tribute much shorter.

 

[jwmorrice]

My god. Struck down in his prime. How tragic!

jwm

 

[Scarey]

I had a feeling his death was coming....but it still stinks on ice.iIve got a VHS tape of his act from 86 i think....it also features the late Sam kinison.Time to dust it off and give it a play.For a man who went looking for respect his whole life..he'll never know how much he was actually given