Wherever Don Rickles has taken his act, let’s hope they have thick skins.
The acid-tongued comedian dubbed “The Merchant of Venom” and “Mr. Warmth,” died Thursday of kidney failure at home in Los Angeles. He was 90.
Rickles, who should have trademarked the term “politically incorrect,” made his mark in the 1960s and ’70s by insulting virtually everyone. Frank Sinatra, a favorite target, seemed to relish Rickles’ barbs on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show and numerous Dean Martin celebrity roasts.
By the time Rickles appeared at Morristown’s Mayo Performing Arts Center last September, he had mellowed. Like an old grizzly bear.
When the evening’s host, Regis Philbin, scanned the audience to acknowledge a nonagenerian birthday girl, Rickles helpfully suggested: “The 96-year-old is on a gurney.”
Rickles was cuddlier than a grizzly, insisted Philbin, former host of Live! with Regis and Kelly and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
“He’s just a teddy bear. He can’t do enough for you” offstage, he told MorristownGreen.com before that performance.
The show consisted mostly of outrageous–and outrageously funny–video clips from Rickles’ career, which also included film roles in Run Silent, Run Deep; Casino; Toy Story, and a string of beach blanket movies.
Some of Rickles’ comments that night suggested he hoped posterity would be kinder to him than he had been to the human race. Pity whoever is charged with chiseling his epitaph.
“Over the years, the Good Lord has been good to me, in the sense that people caught on. There was no hatred in my soul, and what I do is absolutely a joke, unless you live under a rock. I take the attitude of laughing about ourselves,” Rickles said.
“And so sure, not everybody walks out and says, ‘He was great.’ That’s not true. I’m sure people say, ‘I don’t find his humor funny, I don’t like to be insulted.’ Hey, it’s not an insult. It’s a put-on about all of us. And I can’t please everybody. But I try!”
When current comics asked for his opinion of their work, Rickles told them: “Come to me when you’re 90, and we’ll see how well you did.”
The Mayo Performing Arts Center thinks Rickles did just fine; General Manager Ed Kirchdoerffer called him an “all-time great.”
“The world is a little less funny today,” he said.
A DON RICKLES SAMPLER
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When you enter a room, you have to kiss his ring. I don’t mind, but he has it in his back pocket. (On Frank Sinatra)
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“Make yourself at home, Frank. Hit somebody.” (To Sinatra)
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“Eddie Fisher married to Elizabeth Taylor is like me trying to wash the Empire State Building with a bar of soap.”
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“Oh my God, look at you. Anyone else hurt in the accident?”
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“Who picks your clothes — Stevie Wonder?”
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“Is that your wife? Oh, well. Keep your chin up.”
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“I was nice to the people in the Philippines for the two and a half years I was there, because I knew eventually I’d have to kiss up to them so my grandchildren could have toys.”
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“No matter where you go in this world, you will always find a Jew sitting in the beach chair next to you.”
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“Italians are fantastic people, really. They can work you over in an alley while singing an opera.”
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“Asians are nice people, but they burn a lot of shirts.”
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“You know, every night when I go out on stage, there’s always one nagging fear in the back of my mind. I’m always afraid that somewhere out there, there is one person in the audience that I’m *not* going to offend!” –Sources: jokes4us.com, NY Daily News, NY Times
