Rodney Dangerfield (born Jacob Cohen, November 22, 1921 – October 5, 2004), was an American comedian, and actor, known for the catchphrases "I don't get no respect!," "No respect, no respect at all... that's the story of my life" or "I get no respect, I tell ya" and his monologues on that theme. He is also famous for his 1980s film roles, notably in Easy Money, Caddyshack and Back To School.
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Dangerfield was born on Long Island in the town of Deer Park, the son of Jewish parents, the vaudevillian performer Phil Roy (Philip Cohen) and Dotty Teitelbaum. His ancestors came to the United States from Hungary. He would later say that his father "was never home—he was out looking to make other kids," and that his mother "brought him up all wrong."
At the age of 15, he got his start writing jokes for standup comics, and started performing himself at the age of 20 under the name Jack Roy. He struggled financially for nine years, at one point performing as a singing waiter until he was fired, and also working as a performing acrobatic diver before giving up show business to take a job selling aluminum siding to support his wife and family. He later said that he was so little known then that "at the time I quit, I was the only one who knew I quit!"
In the early 1960s he started down what would be a long road toward rehabilitating his career as an entertainer, still working as a salesman by day. He divorced first wife Joyce in 1961 and returned to the stage, but still with minimal success. He fell in debt about $20,000 by his own estimates, and couldn't get booked. As Rodney would later joke, "I played one club...it was so far out, my act was reviewed in Field & Stream."
He came to realize that what he lacked was an "image"—a well-defined on-stage persona that audiences could relate to and that would distinguish him from similar comics. Returning to the East Coast, after being shunned by the premier comedy venues, he began to develop a character for whom nothing goes right.
He took the name Rodney Dangerfield, which had been used as the comical name of a faux cowboy star by Jack Benny on his radio program at least as early as the December 21, 1941, broadcast and later as a pseudonym by Ricky Nelson on the TV program The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. The Benny character, who also received little or no respect from the outside world, served as a great inspiration to Rodney when Dangerfield was developing his own comedy character. The "Biography" program also tells of the time Jack visited Rodney backstage after one of Rodney's performances. During this visit Jack complimented Rodney on developing such a wonderful comedy character and style. However, Jack Roy retained his legal name, as he mentioned from time to time. During a question-and-answer session with the audience on the album No Respect, Rodney joked that his real name was Percival Sweetwater.
Fate intervened on Sunday March 5, 1967 when The Ed Sullivan Show needed a last-minute replacement for another act. Dangerfield became the surprise hit of the show.
Dangerfield began headlining shows in Las Vegas and made frequent encore appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. He became a regular on The Dean Martin Show and appeared on The Tonight Show a total of 35 times. In 1969 Rodney Dangerfield teamed up with longtime friend Anthony Bevacqua to build Dangerfield's. Rodney now had a venue in which to perform on a regular basis, without having to constantly travel. The club became a huge success. Dangerfield's has been in continuous operation for over 40 years. Dangerfield's was the venue for several HBO shows which helped popularize many standup comics, including Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Carrey, Tim Allen, Roseanne Barr, Robert Townsend, Jeff Foxworthy, Sam Kinison, Bill Hicks, Rita Rudner, Andrew Dice Clay, Louie Anderson, and Bob Saget.
His comedy album, No Respect, won a Grammy Award. One of his TV specials featured a musical number, "Rappin' Rodney", and the associated video became an early MTV hit.
Dangerfield's career peaked during the early 1980s, when he began acting in comedy movies. His appearance in Caddyshack led to starring roles in Easy Money and Back To School.
Throughout the 1980s, Dangerfield appeared in a series of commercials for Miller Lite beer, including one where various celebrities who had appeared in the ads were holding a bowling match. After he was told "All we need is one pin, Rodney", Dangerfield's ball was shown going down the alley and bouncing off the pins, knocking down none of them.
One of Dangerfield's more memorable performances was in the 1980 golf comedy Caddyshack, in which he played a nouveau riche developer who joined a golf club and began shaking up the establishment of the club's old guard. His role was initially only a cameo appearance, but because he, Chevy Chase and Bill Murray (who also appeared in the movie) were so deft at improvisation, their roles were greatly expanded, much to the chagrin of some of their castmates .
In a change of pace from the comedy persona that made him famous, he played an abusive father in Natural Born Killers in a scene for which he wrote or rewrote all of his own lines.
Dangerfield was rejected for membership in the Motion Picture Academy in 1995 by the head of the Academy's Actors Section, Roddy McDowall. After fan protests the Academy reconsidered, but Dangerfield then refused to accept membership.
Dangerfield appeared in an episode of The Simpsons titled "Burns, Baby Burns" wherein he played a character who is essentially a parody of his own persona, Mr. Burns' son Larry Burns. He also appeared as himself in an episode of Home Improvement.
Dangerfield also appeared in the 2000 Adam Sandler film Little Nicky, playing Lucifer, the father of Satan (Harvey Keitel) and grandfather of Nicky (Sandler).
He was recognized by the Smithsonian Institution, which put one of his trademark white shirts and red ties on display. When he handed the shirt to the museum's curator, Rodney joked, "I have a feeling you're going to use this to clean Lindbergh's plane."
Dangerfield played an important role in comedian Jim Carrey's rise to stardom. In the 1980s, after watching Carrey perform at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles, Rodney signed Carrey to open for his Las Vegas show. The two would tour together for about two more years.
He was twice married to Joyce Indig, with whom he had a son, Brian, and a daughter, Melanie. A woman named Cody Bitter claims that Rodney proposed to her and she turned him down respectfully. The truth is she proposed he put her on the Tonight Show. He turned her down. Respectfully. She then dated his manager hoping it would make him jealous. It didn't. From 1993 to his death, he was married to Joan Child, who was instrumental in setting up his Internet site. He and comic Sam Kinison were also very good friends.
The confusion of Dangerfield's stage persona with his real-life personality was a conception that he long resented. While Child described him as "classy, gentlemanly, sensitive and intelligent," people who met the comedian nonetheless treated him as the belligerent loser whose character he adopted in performance. In 2004 Dangerfield's autobiography, It's Not Easy Bein' Me: A Lifetime of No Respect but Plenty of Sex and Drugs (ISBN 0-06-621107-7) was published. The book's original title was My Love Affair With Marijuana, a reference to his smoking material of choice for 60 years.
In 2001 Dangerfield had a mild heart attack while backstage at the Tonight Show. During Dangerfield's hospital stay, the staff was reportedly upset that he smoked marijuana in his room. But he was back at the Tonight Show a year later, performing on his 81st birthday. On April 8, 2003, Dangerfield underwent brain surgery to improve blood flow in preparation for heart valve-replacement surgery on August 24, 2004. Upon entering the hospital, he uttered another characteristic one-liner when asked how long he would be hospitalized: "If all goes well, about a week. If not, about an hour and a half."
In October 2003, the Orlando Sentinel, and numerous other media outlets as well, reported that Rodney met with members of the Raelian religion (See Raëlism) to discuss cloning himself. Joan Child, who was rumored to be a member of the religion, appeared with Rodney on television to discuss the meeting.
In September 2004, it was revealed that Dangerfield had been in a coma for several weeks. Afterward, he began breathing on his own and showing signs of awareness when visited by friends. However, on October 5, 2004, he died at the UCLA Medical Center, from complications of the surgery he had undergone in August. He was a month and a half short of his 83rd birthday. Dangerfield was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. His headstone reads, "Rodney Dangerfield... There goes the neighborhood.”
Joan held an event in which the word "respect" had been emblazoned in the sky, while each guest was given a live Monarch butterfly for a Native American butterfly-release ceremony led by Farrah Fawcett.
The George Lopez sitcom's episode "Leave it to Lopez" was dedicated in the memory of Rodney Dangerfield.
UCLA’s Division of Neurosurgery named a suite of operating rooms after him and gave him the “Rodney Respect Award”, which his wife presented to Jay Leno on October 20, 2005. It was presented on behalf of the David Geffen School of Medicine/Division of Neurosurgery at UCLA at their 2005 Visionary Ball.
Saturday Night Live ran a short sketch of Dangerfield (played by Darrell Hammond) at the gates of heaven. Saint Peter mentions that he heard Dangerfield got no respect in life, which prompts Dangerfield to spew an entire string of his famous one-liners. After he's done, he asks why Saint Peter was so interested. Saint Peter replies, “I just wanted to hear those jokes one more time” and waves him into heaven.
On September 10, 2006, Comedy Central aired a special titled Legends: Rodney Dangerfield which commemorated his life and legacy. Featured comedians included Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Jay Leno, Ray Romano, Roseanne Barr, Jerry Seinfeld, Bob Saget, Jerry Stiller, Kevin Kline and Jeff Foxworthy.
In 2007, it was reported that a Rodney Dangerfield tattoo is among the most popular celebrity tattoos in the United States.
In The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on 29 May 2009, Leno credited Dangerfield with the style of joke Leno had been using for the past few years. The format of the joke is that the comedian tells a sidekick how bad something is—in this case, guitar player Kevin Eubanks—and the sidekick sets up the joke by asking just how bad that something is.. Eubanks has now been replaced by Ricky Minor.
Impressed by Dangerfield's role in Caddyshack, Europet's design manager Allen Shuemaker brought forth the idea of creating a line of animal chew toys modeled after the comedian. The line had a short run in 1989 and, in recent years, have become highly desirable by a small group of collectors.
Rodney Dangerfield
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