Los Angeles – Ruth Buzzi, who jumped to fame as the Gladys Bittery and Bittery Fair in the innovative Sketch Comedy Series “Rowan AND Martin’s laugh ”and made more than 200 appearances on television during a 45 -year -old race, died at age 88.
Buzzi died Thursday at his home in Texas, says his agent Mike Eisenstadt. Alzheimer’s had diagnosed him and was in hospice care. Shortly before her death, her husband, Kent Perkins, had published a statement on Buzzi’s Facebook page, thanking her many fans and telling them: “She wants you to know that she probably had more fun doing those programs than you had.”
Buzzi won a Golden Globe and was twice nominated for Emmy for the NBC show that was executed from 1968 to 1973. It was the only regular to appear in the six seasons, including the pilot.
He was first seen by the creator and producer of “Laugh-In” George Schlatter playing several characters in “The Steve Allen Comedy Hour”.
Schlatter had auditions for “Laugh-In” when he received a photo by Buzzi mail in his Ormphby costume, sitting on a mesh garbage cannon. The character was covered with monotonous brown with his bun covered by a knotted ball in the middle of his forehead.
“I think I hired her for my passion for Gladys Ormphby,” he wrote in his 2023 memoirs “still laughing at comedy.” “I must admit that the trunk and the curly socks lit my fire. My favorite Gladys line was when he announced that the day of the Christmas party of the office, they sent him home early.”
Gladys’s character used his bag as a weapon against anyone who bother her, hitting people in his head. In “Laugh-In”, its most frequent goal was the dirty and old character of Art Johnson, Tyrone F. Horneight.
“Gladys embodies the past, the oppressed, those taken by seated, the fighter,” Buzzi told Connecticut Post in 2018. “Then, when he defends himself, he speaks by all those who have been marginalized, reduced to a sexual object or abused in another way. And that is almost all at some time or another.”
Buzzi took his act to the roasts of Celebrities Dean Martin in Las Vegas, where he hit his bag in the heads of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Lucille Ball, among others.
His other recurring characters in “Laugh-In” included Flicker Farkle; Buzzi busy, a Hollywood gossip columnist; Doris Swizzler, a regular cocktails that got drunk with her husband Leonard, played by Dick Martin; and a inconsiderate hostess.
“I never assumed my work, nor did I assume that I deserved more credit or attention or more salary than anyone,” Buzzi told The Connecticut post. “I was delighted to drive down to NBC every day as an actor used with a job to do.”
Buzzi remained a friend of the years with the co-star of “Laugh-In”, Lily Tomlin and Jo Anne Worley.
Born Ruth Ann Buzzi on July 24, 1936, in Westerly, Rhode Island, was the daughter of Angelo Buzzi, a stone sculptor known nationally.
