This is topic Rodney Dangerfield passes at 82 in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.


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Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 10-05-2004, 07:16 PM:
 
Rodney Dangerfield who tapped an enduring rich vein of comedy gold when he created his stage persona as a middle-aged everyman who gets no respect, died today at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA. He was 82.

RIP

Thanks for the Laughs
 
Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 10-05-2004, 07:23 PM:
 
Harold Ramis, director of Caddyshack, once said that Rodney had never worked in a film prior to that and he had no idea what to do. Harold told Rodney to just deliver the lines as if doing his standup act, while hitting his marks, and not worry about anything else. It worked for him.

RIP Rodney Dangerfield.
 
Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 10-05-2004, 07:42 PM:
 
Sad news. A very funny guy who had a lot more respect than he claimed.
 
Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 10-05-2004, 07:48 PM:
 
One of my favorite Rodney moments was a classic set on the old Johnny Carson Tonight Show. Johnny would show this frequently in clip shows. Rodney just came out and hit nothing but home runs, batting each joke right out of the park. One of the funniest things I've ever seen.

I'll remember him by thinking of the Triple Lindy.

Bye Rodney...you always had my respect.
 
Posted by Richard Greco (Member # 2032) on 10-05-2004, 09:16 PM:
 
A definite loss. I remember his appearance on Home Improvement. Absolutely funny.
 
Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-05-2004, 09:41 PM:
 
Very sad to hear. I always liked Rodney and found him funny and entertaining.
 
Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-05-2004, 10:46 PM:
 
Rodney was the king of the one liners. Dangerfield was one of the few comedians who could make me laugh so hard my stomach muscles would spasm in pain.

"Whoa, the last time I saw a mouth like that it had a hook in it."

"Wear a hat like that and you'll get a free bowl of soup."
 
Posted by Dean Kollet (Member # 1789) on 10-05-2004, 10:49 PM:
 
RIP Rodney

I always loves his routines, especially the cheesy one-liners.
My all time favorite..

"I get no respect, I bought my son an bow and arrow set for Christmas, and he bought me a shirt with a target on the front"
 
Posted by Ken Layton (Member # 133) on 10-06-2004, 12:00 AM:
 
My all-time facvorite Dangerfield movie is Back To School. It's soooo funny. RIP Rodney.
 
Posted by Brent Neal Jones (Member # 1048) on 10-06-2004, 01:57 AM:
 
The saddest part is worse than his loss; the cause of death. Poor practice of anesthesia, another one of those 1% they claim that never come back around that occur so "rarely" that it's hardly a concern for the average citizen. [Mad]

Rodney, you will be missed. You were an icon of what comedy is really about, class. R.I.P.
 
Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-06-2004, 12:33 PM:
 
Very sad indeed. I have two of his albums (No Respect and Rappin' Rodney) and both are hilarious. I also remember his appearances with Carson. The Carson people should put out a DVD of just those appearances!

"My wife wants to have sex in the back seat of the car and she wants me to drive!"
 
Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 10-06-2004, 08:48 PM:
 
My favourite...


“I could tell that my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and a radio”.
 
Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 10-07-2004, 02:20 PM:
 
XM Comedy played one of his albums last night, and I laughed just as hard as I did when I first heard it years ago.

"I asked a cab driver, 'Where can I get some action?' He took me to MY house!"

"The other night, I saw a guy running outside of my house... naked! I said to him, 'How come?' He said, 'Cause you came home early!'"

In interviews, he seemed like a humble, unassuming man. Poor Rodney. He will always be king.
 
Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-07-2004, 06:23 PM:
 
Those two jokes are from the NO RESPECT album from 1980. Last I checked, it was still available on CD. Well worth looking for!
 
Posted by Jennifer Pan (Member # 2035) on 10-08-2004, 02:37 AM:
 
[Frown] He will be missed.
 
Posted by Nate Lehrke (Member # 1460) on 10-08-2004, 03:34 AM:
 
I loved Rodney Dangerfield as Larry Burns in season 8 of the Simpsons.

-

"Mr. Burns' long-lost illegitimate son, Larry, shows up and wants just a little "respect." Mr. Burns initially welcomes Larry, but rejects his son when he turns out to be a total idiot."

Sad news indeed.
 
Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 10-08-2004, 07:15 PM:
 
[Frown]
 
Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 10-08-2004, 07:23 PM:
 
Many times under-appreciated, but ALWAYS a professional and a very funny man!

My top favorites films that would NOT have played without him:

Caddyshack (1980)
Back to School (1986)
Ladybugs (1992)

RIP Rodney! Hope to see you "up" there some day!

>>> Phil
 
Posted by Robb Johnston (Member # 239) on 10-08-2004, 11:14 PM:
 
One of the sad ironies is that on Tuesday, the Philadelphia Daily news had put a photo on the beginning of the sports pages of the recently fired Larry Bowa with Dangerfield's Face photoshopped onto Bowa's body with the headline "No Respect, I tell ya." I wonder how that editor felt when he died later that day.
 
Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 10-09-2004, 11:46 AM:
 
His was one of those timeless routines--you knew every punchline, and yet you still laughed every time. Classic!

My favorite Rodney cameo: As himself in the music video for Billy Joel's Tell Her About It.

May God bless you Rodney.
 
Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 10-10-2004, 05:12 PM:
 
This commentary from Roseanne Barr appeared in today's Los Angeles Times. Given that I know only her on-screen persona, I didn't think she'd have something like this in her.

In a City Full of Beautiful People, Dangerfield Could Stop Traffic
By Roseanne Barr

Over the years, the world has seen more than a few comedians who've built their acts around being abused, put-upon and world-weary — just like the average Joe.

It's been a comic tradition forever to kvetch (even if you're not Jewish) and moan about steadily getting the short end of the stick. After all, who hasn't had a lifetime of bad breaks, insults heaped on injuries and absurdities to complain about? You know the drill. There's the proverbial fat and/or frigid wife; the insulting, unappreciative boss; the meddling mother-in-law; dumb hubby and the army of rude, condescending kids, clerks, cranks, jerks and other aggravating extras in the tragicomic passion play of life.

Getting us to laugh at it all to keep from crying has been a humorist's well-worn path for decades, but one guy did it better than anybody.

To me, Rodney Dangerfield was the greatest stand-up comic, joke writer and master of timing who ever lived. What's more, he took care of people (including a generation of younger comics). He never sold out in any way just to get his picture taken on a red carpet somewhere. He shook people's hands in the street and tried to make them laugh, always.

He also had the best pot. "It's tough to make it straight, kid," he would say. He had the funniest man in the world, Joe Ancis, living with him until he died, because Joe was too psychologically damaged to be able to live in a germ-infested world on his own. His housekeeper was almost too old to clean the apartment in New York, but she was with him until the end. His sensitivity for people sometimes translated into long bouts of depression.

Some people can make up jokes all day long that make people laugh, and it seems easy. But it's not. A joke is like a song or a novel; it has to be crafted. Very few people can make you feel that you are being lifted while you laugh. To do it, you need to show your personal sensitivity, expose your underbelly, and stand there in all your naked glory, allowing people to see you as The Fool. Lucy could do it better than anyone else on TV, and Chaplin could do it better than anyone else in film.

But Rodney could do it alone on a stage, with no props, no cameras, no crews, no writers, no synthesizers, beatboxes nor anything else. Rodney could do it with just his eyes. When you looked into those two spooky things, you were hooked, and there was no way out. You knew you were going to hear the truth now, the truth from a guy who looked goofier than you looked and still made it big.

"I don't get no respect." Every time he said that, he got cheers. I first got close to Rodney while we were both staying at the Pritikin Weight Loss Center, back in 1988. We would sneak out together at night to eat clams and drink and smoke, and then head over to the Comedy Store, where Rodney would try out some of his new jokes. We "younger" comics would stand there slack-jawed and in awe, how in less than a second he would own the audience. To watch Rodney work was to be reassured that you weren't the only one who felt you were getting screwed, set up and knocked down and made to feel small just about everywhere you turned. Rodney took the experience of getting your butt solidly kicked down the road of life and turned it into an exercise in empathy and perseverance and compassion. Jack Benny once told Rodney, "My act is about being 39 and cheap, but your image speaks to everyone's soul."

Rodney didn't just look like the heart-attack-waiting-to-happen that he portrayed onstage. He had loads of serious health issues as he aged. He knew about the fragile nature and impermanence of life. Onstage and sometimes off, Rodney's eyes would dart back and forth as if he were just waiting for the unexpected to pounce at any second, and from out of nowhere. He told doctors, when he was about to go into surgery: "Don't worry too much, Doc; if I don't make it, I'll never know it!"

My favorite Rodney story is the time we went walking in Venice, and he didn't want to walk all the way to the crosswalk, so he just darted out into the middle of a very, very busy street. I said, "We're gonna get killed!" and he said, "No, we're not, kid, I'm a draw." Then, like Moses, he walked on and the traffic parted. People honked at first, but then they caught a glimpse of old Rodney, waving and smiling, and they started to honk and yell, "We love you, Rodney!" There isn't much that can stop traffic in Los Angeles at lunchtime. "OK, I love you too," he was yelling back.

Rodney died surrounded by close friends, his children and Joan — a wife who loved him. With Jerry Springer playing on the TV above his head, I got a smile from him a week before he died, and I will have that grateful memory for the rest of my life. But my heart aches when I think how much we will miss that voice now, just when we — Jane and Joe Average — are more voiceless, more disposable and more powerless than we maybe have ever been before. We have no one now to respect us quite like he did.
 
Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 11-19-2004, 02:33 PM:
 
Posted in memory of Rodney,who will live forever in our hearts.

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

"I went to a hooker,and she told me,'Not on the first date.'"

"My wife does a lot of charity work. She handles all the policemen's balls."

"I went to a nude beach, and they told me it wasn't polite to point."

"At the nude beach I saw a 100-pound man with 50-pound testicles. He old me he was sick. I told him, 'You're not sick.
You're half-nuts.'"

"I come from a stupid family. During the civil war my great uncle fought
for the west!"

"My mother had morning sickness after I was born."

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

"I stuck my head out the window and got arrested for mooning."

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

"They say, 'Love thy neighbor as thy self.' What am I supposed to do? Jerk him off too?

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

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

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

"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."

"I went to see my doctor - you know him, Dr. Vinny Boom Batz. I told him,"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.""

"My psychiatrist told me I'm going crazy. I told him, 'If you don't mind I'd like a second opinion, ok,your ugly too.""

"My wife and I were happy for 20 years.Then we met."

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

"I tell ya I get no respect from anyone. bought a cemetery plot. The guy said,'There goes the neighborhood!'"

"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."

"Every time I get in an elevator,the operator says the same thing to me: Basement?'"

"When my parents got divorced,there was a custody fight over me. ...and no one showed up."

"When I was 3 years old,my parents got a dog.I was jealous of the dog,so they got rid of me."

"When we got married,the first thing my wife did was put everything under both names - hers and her mother's."

"With my wife,I don't get no respect.The other night there was a knock on the front door.My wife told me to hide in the closet."

"With my wife, I get no respect. I fell asleep with a cigarette in my hand. She lit it." [Big Grin]

Rodney Dangerfield 1921 - 2004

More Rodney [Smile]

I don't get no respect. I joined Gambler's Anonymous. They gave me two to one I don't make it.

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.

What a childhood I had. My parents sent me to a child psychiatrist. The kid didn't help me at all.

When I was a kid I got no respect. My uncle's dying wish - he wanted me on his lap. He was in the electric chair.

With girls I get no respect. A belly dancer told me I turned her stomach. [Big Grin]

[ 11-26-2004, 08:27 PM: Message edited by: Bob Maar ]
 




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