D ick Martin dies at 86. :(

D.ick Martin, the zany half of the comedy team
whose “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In” took television by storm in the
1960s, making stars of Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin and creating such
national catch-phrases as “Sock it to me!” has died. He was 86.

Martin,
who went on to become one of television’s busiest directors after
splitting with Dan Rowan in the late 1970s, died Saturday night of
respiratory complications at a hospital in Santa Monica, family
spokesman Barry Greenberg said.
“He
had had some pretty severe respiratory problems for many years, and he
had pretty much stopped breathing a week ago,” Greenberg said.
Martin had lost the use of one of his lungs as
a teenager, and needed supplemental oxygen for most of the day in his
later years.

He was surrounded by family and friends when he died just after 6 p.m., Greenberg said.

Ground-breaking comedy

“Laugh-in,”
which debuted in January 1968, was unlike any comedy-variety show
before it. Rather than relying on a series of tightly scripted
song-and-dance segments, it offered up a steady, almost
stream-of-consciousness run of non-sequitur jokes, political satire and
madhouse antics from a cast of talented young actors and comedians that
also included Ruth Buzzi, Arte Johnson, Henry Gibson, Jo Anne Worley
and announcer Gary Owens.
Presiding
over it all were Rowan and Martin, the veteran nightclub comics whose
standup banter put their own distinct spin on the show.
Like
all straight men, Rowan provided the voice of reason, striving to
correct his partner’s absurdities. Martin, meanwhile, was full of
bogus, often risque theories about life, which he appeared to hold with
unwavering certainty.
Against
this backdrop, audiences were taken from scene to scene by quick,
sometimes psychedelic-looking visual cuts, where they might see Hawn,
Worley and other women dancing in bathing suits with political slogans,
or sometimes just nonsense, painted on their bodies. Other times,
Gibson, clutching a flower, would recite nonsensical poetry or Johnson
would impersonate a comical Nazi spy.

'You bet your sweet bippy'

“Laugh-In”
astounded audiences and critics alike. For two years the show topped
the Nielsen ratings, and its catchphrases — “Sock it to me,” “You bet
your sweet bippy” and “Look that up in your Funk and Wagnall’s” — were
recited across the country.
Stars
such as John Wayne and Kirk Douglas were delighted to make brief
appearances, and even Richard Nixon, running for president in 1968,
dropped in to shout a befuddled sounding, “Sock it to me!” His
opponent, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, was offered equal time but
declined because his handlers thought it would appear undignified.
Rowan
and Martin landed the show just as their comedy partnership was
approaching its zenith and the nation’s counterculture was expanding
into the mainstream.
The
two were both struggling actors when they met in 1952. Rowan had sold
his interest in a used car dealership to take acting lessons, and
Martin, who had written gags for TV shows and comedians, was tending
bar in Los Angeles to pay the rent.
Rowan, hearing Martin was looking for a comedy partner, visited him at the bar, where he found him eating a banana.
“Why are you eating a banana?” he asked.
“If you’ve ever eaten here, you’d know what’s with the banana,” he replied, and a comedy team was born.
Although their early gigs in Los Angeles’ San
Fernando Valley were often performed gratis, they donned tuxedos for
them and put on an air of success.

“We were raw,” Martin recalled years later, “but we looked good together and we were funny.”
They gradually worked up to the top night spots in New York, Miami and Las Vegas and began to appear regularly on television.

The
novelty of “Laugh-In” diminished with each season, however, and as
major players such as Hawn and Tomlin moved on to bigger careers,
interest in the series faded.
After
the show folded in 1973, Rowan and Martin capitalized on their fame
with a series of high-paid engagements around the country. They parted
amicably in 1977.
“Dan has diabetes, and his doctor advised him to cool it,” Martin told The Associated Press at the time.
Rowan, a sailing enthusiast, spent his last years touring the canals of Europe on a houseboat. He died in 1987.

New role as TV director

Martin
moved onto the game-show circuit, but quickly tired of it. After he
complained about the lack of challenges in his career, fellow comic Bob
Newhart’s agent suggested he take up directing.
He
was reluctant at first, but after observing on “The Bob Newhart Show,”
he decided to try. He would recall later that it was “like being thrown
into the deep end of the swimming pool and being told to sink or swim.”
Soon
he was one of the industry’s busiest TV directors, working on numerous
episodes of “Newhart” as well as such shows as “In the Heat of the
Night,” “Archie Bunker’s Place” and “Family Ties.”
Born into a middle-class family in Battle Creek, Mich., Martin had worked in a Ford auto assembly plant after high school.
After
an early failed marriage, he was for years a confirmed bachelor. He
finally settled down in middle age, marrying Dolly Read, a former bunny
at the Playboy Club in London. Survivors include his wife and two sons,
actor Richard Martin and Cary Martin.
At Martin’s request there will be no funeral, Greenberg said.
Martin
lost the use of his right lung when he was 17, something that never
bothered him until his final years, when he required oxygen 18 hours a
day.
Arriving for
a party celebrating his 80th birthday, he fainted and was treated by
doctors and paramedics. The party continued, however, and he cracked,
“Boy, did I make an entrance!”