By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Comic performer Ruth Buzzi, who played a counterpoint to the 1960s sexual revolution for laughs as the frumpy, hairnet-wearing, handbag-swinging spinster on U.S. prime-time television hit “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In,” has died at age 88.
Buzzi succumbed to complications from Alzheimer’s disease at her ranch home near Fort Worth, Texas, on Thursday, 10 years after she was diagnosed, her longtime Los Angeles-based agent Mike Eisenstadt said in a statement.
“Her husband of almost 48 years, Kent Perkins, expressed to me that she was making people laugh just a few days ago,” Eisenstadt said in an email message to Reuters on Friday.
Born and raised in New England, Buzzi moved to California after high school to study acting and joined the Pasadena Playhouse for the Performing Arts, alongside future Oscar winners Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman. She went on to an entertainment career spanning 60 years.
She was best known for her work on “Laugh-In,” a groundbreaking NBC ensemble comedy hour that premiered in the summer of 1968, helping to define the pop culture of the era and launching the careers of several stars, including Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin.
Buzzi devised a series of sketch comedy characters on the show. Gladys Ormphby, her most famous, was a scowling, irascible spinster who wore drab brown dresses and a hairnet with a spider-like knot in the center of her forehead. Sitting on a park bench, she would react to the approaches of a dirty old man played by Arte Johnson by mercilessly walloping him with her handbag when he muttered come-ons to her.
The Gladys and Tyrone bits offered a satiric contrast to the era’s sexually permissive vibe celebrated on the show, which ran until 1973. The Gladys character became so popular that she began appearing elsewhere on prime time, and it became a badge of honor for a celebrity to be thrashed by Buzzi.
Appearing on one of several televised celebrity “roasts” hosted by actor-singer Dean Martin, Buzzi encountered the heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali. As Gladys, the diminutive Buzzi ranted about Ali interfering in her relationship with her boyfriend, then threateningly pointed her index finger at him.
“If you want to make something of it, I want you to meet me out in the parking lot, and we’ll have it out, man to man,” Buzzi tells him, unleashing dozens of rapid-fire handbag hits to the head and shoulders of the bemused champion, who took it all in good humor.
At another roast, Buzzi as Gladys tells Martin: “Look at you, sitting there so calm and cool, when last night you were yearning for my body.” Martin responds: “That wasn’t yearning, it was yawning,” precipitating a handbag assault, with entertainment legend Frank Sinatra looking on and laughing.
“No, it didn’t hurt,” Buzzi told interviewer Nick Thomas in 2016. “It looked vicious, but it was just a felt purse lined and filled with old pantyhose and cotton. I was able to swing it with all my might and it still wouldn’t hurt anyone, although it looked great and sounded great with a ‘thud’ when it landed.”
Buzzi earned three prime-time Emmy Award nominations in the 1970s – for “Laugh-In” and “The Dean Martin Show” – and two daytime Emmy nods in the 1980s and ’90s, including one for her work on the acclaimed children’s show “Sesame Street.” She won a 1973 Golden Globe award for “Laugh-In.”
Buzzi perfected a portfolio of zany characters.
“My favorite character to play was actually ‘Doris Sidebottom,’ the sloppy drunk,” Buzzi said. “I also had fun with ‘Busy Buzzi,’ the gossip columnist, and my hooker character, ‘Kim Hither.'”
In addition to guest appearances on various variety shows and sitcoms over the years, Buzzi occasionally played supporting roles in films such as “Freaky Friday”, “The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again” and “The North Avenue Irregulars.”
(Reporting and writing by Will Dunham in Washington; Additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Edmund Klamann)
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