Posted on 04/06/2017 1:57:43 PM PDT by NRx
Don Rickles, the acidic stand-up comic who became world-famous not by telling jokes but by insulting his audience, died on Thursday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 90.
The cause was kidney failure, said a spokesman, Paul Shefrin.
For more than half a century, on nightclub stages, in concert halls and on television, Mr. Rickles made outrageously derisive comments about people’s looks, their ethnicity, their spouses, their sexual orientation, their jobs or anything else he could think of. He didn’t discriminate: His incendiary unpleasantries were aimed at the biggest stars in show business (Frank Sinatra was a favorite target) and at ordinary paying customers.
His rise to national prominence in the late 1960s and early 1970s roughly coincided with the success of “All in the Family,” the groundbreaking situation comedy whose protagonist, Archie Bunker, was an outspoken bigot. Mr. Rickles’s humor was similarly transgressive. But he went further than Archie Bunker, and while Carroll O’Connor, who played Archie, was speaking words someone else had written — and was invariably the butt of the joke — Mr. Rickles, whose targets included his fellow Jews, never needed a script and was always in charge.
One night, on learning that some members of his audience were German, he said, “Forty million Jews in this country, and I got four Nazis sitting here in front waiting for the rally to start.” He said that America needed Italians “to keep the cops busy” and blacks “so we can have cotton in the drugstore,” and that “Asians are nice people, but they burn a lot of shirts.” He might ask a man in the audience, “Is that your wife?” and, when the man answered yes, respond: “Oh, well. Keep your chin up.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Loved him. Always made me laugh. R.I.P., Don Rickles.
RIP Crazy Guy.. You were a lot of fun
Sorry to see him go. He was original and brave in an era where many comedians (not all) were sheep and followed the herd. RIP Don.
Special snowflakes of today could not handle his kind of humor. They would cry racist.
Listen,you hockey puck!
Kids today would be “triggered” by his ascerbic wit.
Snowflakes.
Sad to know we lost a legend
I saw him live. We got sat up front. I think it was a setup. I’m tall and big, and he looked at me and said I should put a window on my face and become a building. Loved Rickles.
Unless it was a black or Hispanic male comedian saying it, or just about any female comedian, in which case no problem. White male comedians are pretty much limited to trashing white males.
He was wonderful. Rest in peace, Mr. Rickles.
Early life
Rickles was born Donald Jay Rickles in the New York City borough of Queens on May 8, 1926,[1] to Max Rickles (1897–1953), who emigrated in 1903 with his parents Joseph and Frances Rickles (Richters) from Kaunas, Lithuania (then in the Russian Empire), and Etta (Feldman) Rickles (1901–1984), born in New York to immigrant parents from the Austrian Empire. His family was Jewish and spoke Yiddish at home. Rickles grew up in the Jackson Heights area.
After graduating from Newtown High School, Rickles enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served during World War II on the motor torpedo boat tender USS Cyrene (AGP-13) as a seaman first class. He was honorably discharged in 1946. Two years later, intending to be a dramatic actor, he studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and then played bit parts on television. Frustrated by a lack of acting work, Rickles began performing stand-up comedy in clubs in New York, Miami, and Los Angeles. He became known as an insult comedian when he responded to his hecklers. The audience enjoyed these insults more than his prepared material, and he incorporated them into his act. When he began his career in the early 1950s, he started calling ill-mannered members of the audience “hockey pucks”.
Wikipedia
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/d/don_rickles.html
Great story. Thanks!
Don Rickles with his father before shipping out for service in WWII. March 1943.
One of the best and a type of humor that would be forbidden in today’s PC world. Amazingly, he was left of center politically.
Sad and shocking news since I haven’t been watching TV. As Don said, “I kid because I love.”
The current generation can’t understand that.
“Yeah, I make fun of blacks, and why not? I’m not a black.”
“Asians are nice people, but they burn a lot of shirts.”
“Who picks your clothes - Stevie Wonder?”
It’s incredible how good-looking some people were when they were young and thin.
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My husband and I saw him in Las Vegas. He was so funny.
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