Ruth Buzzi, wielding a vicious wallet to resist male progression, is both real and imagined, one of the most memorable characters in “Roven & Martin's Laugh,” a psychedelic-era television comedy “The Bag of Robbery” who died Thursday on a ranch near her ranch. She is 88 years old.
Her agent Michael Eisenstadt said the cause was a complication of Alzheimer's disease, which was diagnosed 10 years ago.
Ms. Buzzi has had a long career with her elastic, expressive faces and gifts, both vocal and physical gifts. She has played numerous roles in summer stocks. In the 1966 musical “Sweet Charity”, appearing once on Broadway, there have been three-party credits (Good Fairy/Lady as a Hat/Hotelman); performing on TV shows; appearing in many sitcoms; parts in movies, including “The Weird Friday”, the 1976 Identity Magazine comedy and “The Apple Dumpling Gang Ride Again”, which was the 1979 Disney West loopy.
However, throughout her career, she firmly lacked the lasting appeal of the engaging “laughter” character Gladys Ormphby, an alumni, delicate codgerette and battle-ax class, dressed in a drab brown cardigan, long skirt, drooping stockings and a rubber net, high-striped between her forehead.
Gladys' regular appearances on the show – NBC Primetime Fixtures from 1968 to 1973 – usually in short plays involving Tyrone, who is a typical dirty old man (Arte Johnson), who is a little too close and breathing too much, breathing a little too suggestive, making him a little too suggestive, commented, and the provocative Gladys comes to wallop with her wallet.
In an era when social morality was rapidly and rapidly declining, Gladys seemed interested in sex and was interested in the same way, a vivid and interesting representation of the chaos that the sexual revolution ruled an older, more conservative generation.
Ms. Buzzi has held dozens of roles in “Laugh-In” as part of the ensemble, which includes Goldie Hawn, Lily Tomlin, Judy Carne, Gary Owens, Jo Ann Worley and Henry Gibson, as well as the comedy team of Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. But her Gladys is also living outside the show and appearing elsewhere.
Early on, many of them sacrificed Gladys' family life at the expense of humor, the kind of joke that women's appearance is barely tolerant today. In the early 1970s, Ms. Buzzi was a guest of the “Dean Martin Show” and while at Gladys, she wanted to complain, she wanted to go with The Star, who sat on a stool on his tuxedo. Next is a short play focusing on her flat sternum.
“Listen, Dean, I've seen what you did to the prompt card girl before.” “And I don't understand why I can't be a prompt card girl. You said she doesn't have one thing I don't have.”
Mr. Martin replied that he could not say “but I can say two.”
Ms. Buzzi later appeared on “Sesame Street” – as the cartoon voice of character Suzie Kabloozie, the owner of a second-hand store and occasionally a kid-friendly version of Gladys. She also expressed the cartoon version of Gladys (like Arte Johnson's Arte Johnson) on the animated series “Loose Pants and nitwits.”
Ms. Buzzi appeared in the more ribbed veins as Gladys on several TV celebrity barbecue hosted by Mr. Martin, waving her purse, as she beat Sunlight from the likes of Frank Sinatra and Muhammad Ali.
Ruth Ann Buzzi was born on July 24, 1936 in Westerly, RI, to Angelo and Rena (Macchi) Buzzi. Her father was a stonemason and a monument manufacturer. Ruth grew up in nearby Stonington, Connecticut, where she was a high school cheerleader.
She spent three years at the Pasadena Playhouse in California and made her professional performance debut in San Francisco in 1956, appearing in Rudy Vallee in the script Jenny Kisking Me.
In addition to stage and television work, she has produced dozens of commercials, especially as the voice of grandma Goodwich, which serves sugar-crunchy grains in a series of animation spots, with the character Sugar Bear.
Her TV productions include guest performances in the comedy series – which include “Monkees”, “Lucy Here” and “Alice”, and even occasionally dramatic.
She also appeared on the sitcom “The Girl” in the late 1960s as the centerpiece Marlo Thomas (Marlo Thomas is a single city young woman with Marly Tyler Moore).
Ms. Buzzi retired a few years ago and moved to Texas with her husband, Kent Perkins, where they raised horses and cattle on the ranch. They got married in 1978 and he survived. An earlier marriage ended in divorce. Complete information about survivors is not immediately available.
In an interview with The New York Times in 1969, Ms. Buzz traced the origins of Gladys Ormphby to Agnes Gooch, the inappropriate secretary of the 1956 drama “Antie Mame.” (Broadway’s musical adaptation, “Mame,” Ms. Buzzi discovered her discovery.)
Ms. Buzz said: “About eight years ago, I wanted to take some new photos, so I thought it was wise to read a bunch of dramas and try to find characters I could do. I read 'Autie Mame' and came across this character called Agnes Gooch. schlump exist. '
“I think that’s a great word, and this part is fun, so I asked myself what it would be like to be a person Schlump- Rotten posture, feet, loose stockings, constipation speech. So I tried it and then split my hair in the middle – The worst You can do things with a face like me – and make it very flat with a hair net. But by mistake, I put on the web sidewaysthis makes that little knot there, you know? ”
She continued: “Anyway, I took the photos and about two years later I had to play Agnes Gooch in my summer stock. I wasn't as extreme as I do now, but the audience went crazy. So I thought, I thought, “Boy, I have to keep the character, change her name to something, and turn her into something.” '”””””””””””
Ash Wu contributed the report.
