May 25, 2008

Good night, Dick.

Dick Martin has died.
“My life has been divided into three parts in the show-business world: nightclubs, television, and then I was a director for 30 years of television shows. And I think the most fun I ever had was nightclubs. I loved nightclubs.”
And we loved you on television. "Laugh-In" came on in 1968, and you were more of an early-60s Playboy-type guy. But no matter. "Laugh-In" was a jumble, and you were part of it, the dumb guy in an old-fashioned comedy team stuck into a trendy new show that everyone watched back then.

20 comments:

vbspurs said...

RIP. He was great in the Lucy Show too.

Look at Dean Martin, Howard Cosell (!), and Dick Martin in this skit.

That's Dick wearing a Lyle Waggoner moustache.

Cheers,
Victoria

Ron said...

Hey, that clip cuts out just when the Golddiggers show up! Damn it!

"Is he really colored?", yow, how things have changed!

I miss drunk humor...

Ruth Anne Adams said...

Flicker Farkel just gave him the Fickle Finger of Fate Award.

Kevin said...

How much does it cost to maintain this site?

Ron said...

Ruth Anne, ya done cracked me up with that one!

Don't slug me with your handbag...

rhhardin said...

Ruth Ginsberg, with the hairnet, started on Laugh In.

A lot of Supreme Court Justices began there.

vbspurs said...

OT with respect to poor Dick Martin:

Recount is on HBO now at 9-11 PM EST. Just a heads up, guys.

My DVD-R isn't recording, so I have to watch it live...

Cheers,
Victoria

blake said...

I've heard it's basically about the too good and pure Dems being unwilling to sink to the Reps level to keep them from stealing the election from St. Al.

I'm not exactly waiting with bated breath.

DADvocate said...

He was so funny just the sight of him made me laugh. "Laugh In" was a great show.

rcocean said...

Dick Martin was a funny William F. Buckley.

reader_iam said...

Laugh-in was one of the few TV shows my parents watched regularly. It was also one of the few we kids (me, in early elementary school, and my brothers, a little more than twoyears younger) watched with them. My dad's theory--outright spoken, at the time and since--was that it wasn't a problem so long as we didn't get some of the more adult allusions and implications.

I had far more grasp of both a poker face and an innocent blank face as a kid than I did in later years. Dad and I have laughed about this, a lot, many times, since then.

I kid you not.

reader_iam said...

(My parents only **thought** I tuned out what adults said, or that I didn't pretty much hear, listen to and suck up everything they said.

Ultimately, the deliciously cosmic turn-about-is-fair-play moment is theirs. Because while my child is, on balance, more like his father than me, one of the ways in which he is an absolute chip off his mom ... is in this exact area. You have no idea how much enjoyment this engenders. At my expense, which is exactly perfect.)

vbspurs said...

Dick Martin was a funny William F. Buckley.

My God, yes! That's who Dick Martin reminded me of, Rocean.

I was thinking RFK, but only in the teeth area. Also a bit of Neil Kinnock.

(Blake, yes, it was an awful special. First half-hour, okay. Then it was too partisan for words)

Cheers,
Victoria

blake said...

Reader-- great story

Victoria-- didn't HBO just hire James Baker or Howard Baker or some other high level Dem to write/develop projects?

Tiresome.

rhhardin said...

The original was ``Say good night, Dick,'' I think.

Bissage said...
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Bissage said...
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Bissage said...

Many years ago I was a lonely little kid watching “Laugh-In” with my parents and I’m sure 99% of it went right over my head.

I really, really liked it but I can't say why except to say I felt as if there was a place for me in that colorful, disjointed, high-spirited world.

And it’s only now, decades later, I realize Dick Martin was the first and only person on TV I ever really, really liked. I mean I liked him personally as if he were my kindly, funny-man uncle living in the real world or something.

I guess it was a passing phase.

And I’m left feeling a little sad to hear that he’s died now realizing I haven’t even so much as thought about Dick Martin for decades.

Perhaps that’s just as well. In my maturity I’d have to see him in a whole new light. I’d have to see him as little more than an attenuated Quagmire -- disappointingly earnest or timid by comparison.

(I doubt even the most naïve of lonely little kids could actually feel avuncular affection for Quagmire.)

Bissage said...

Good grief! That last comment of mine was kind of sad wasn’t it?

It’s as if my mother never confessed to me that Dick Martin is my real father.

She said she met him at one of those fancy Manhattan cocktail parties with guests like Leonard Bernstein and Pauline Kael and Paddy Chayefsky.

She was working for the caterer. The party was in full-swing when Dick Martin jumped up on a coffee table and smashed a copper pot with his penis.

The enthusiastic crowd cheered and applauded.

Mom was delighted.

How could she say no?

vbspurs said...

Blake wrote:

didn't HBO just hire James Baker or Howard Baker or some other high level Dem to write/develop projects?

Ah, not Jim Baker surely. Maybe James Carville? I'm guessing as to the name, as I genuinely hadn't heard that piece of news. :)

And Bissage, LOL! To both posts.