Rip Taylor
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| Rip Taylor | |
|---|---|
| Born | Rip Taylor January 13, 1934 Washington D.C., U.S. |
| Official website | |
Rip Taylor is an actor and comedian.
Contents |
[edit] Comic trademarks
Taylor is known for his high-voiced yells, zany hair (which is a toupée), and bushy handlebar moustache over a perpetual toothy grin. He always enters a venue tossing handfuls of confetti from a paper bag onto his audience and laughing hysterically, while the band plays his theme song, "Happy Days Are Here Again."
Taylor's comedic style includes horrible puns, often in conjunction with props (for example, holding up a plastic fish full of holes and exclaiming "Holy Mackerel!") and miming along to novelty records (including the works of Spike Jones). If he gets little or no reaction following one of his jokes, he stops for a moment and yells at the audience: "I don't dance, folks! This is it!" Or, "Hello? Can you people hear me?"
Rip's original stand-up persona did not include the trademark moustache, toupee, and loud suit. Instead he appeared clean-shaven in an ordinary business suit. His early years followed the conventional path of a stand-up comic: nightclub and TV appearances, with a strictly verbal monologue: just jokes, no special material or props. (Sample joke: "[Tonight's emcee] is a very honest man. He worked in a bath house for two years, and never once took a bath.") Rip soon realized that he needed a gimmick, something that would distinguish him from the other stand-ups. He hit upon an everything-happens-to-me routine, where he would recount all the terrible things that bothered him, and deliver each punchline with a sobbing wail. A typical appearance was on the Jackie Gleason show: Rip walked on-camera with prop crutches, moaning about the bad drivers he just encountered. Soon Rip Taylor was being billed as "The Crying Comedian." During this period he appeared, as himself, as one of the eligible bachelors on The Dating Game -- punctuating his answers with sobs.
A much more successful gimmick started quite by accident in 1969 at Merv Griffin's show. Rip tore up a script on stage and threw the pieces in a fit of pique. The outburst got a huge audience reaction, prompting the comedian to assault the crowd with confetti at every performance; to wit, when he made his entrance on any given show he would randomly toss handfuls of confetti at audience members from a huge sack before ultimately slinging the entire contents of the sack at the audience- or whoever happened to be nearby. When asked how much confetti he used, he once jested in an interview that "three nuns are tearing it for me 24 hours a day."
[edit] Television
Rip Taylor was a frequent celebrity guest panelist on game shows such as Hollywood Squares, To Tell the Truth, and The Gong Show, and substituted for the equally flamboyant Charles Nelson Reilly on The Match Game. He became a regular on Sid & Marty Krofft's Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, playing Sheldon, a sea-genie who lived in a conch shell. He also hosted a short-lived send-up of beauty pageants called The $1.98 Beauty Show created by Gong Show producer/host Chuck Barris, in 1978. Taylor appeared as a celebrity on the slot-machine version of Match Game. On one episode of Super Password, gameplay went awry after another celebrity guest, Patty Duke, inadvertently gave away the password and host Bert Convy lost control of the show. Rip reacted to the craziness by ripping off his toupee (something he claimed to have never done on network television before),[1] resulting in hysterical laughter from all in the studio.
Taylor has been doing movies, television, and voice-over work for some 40 years, though is probably best remembered for appearing in Cheech and Chong's Things Are Tough All Over, where he picks them up in the middle of nowhere driving a convertable full of props. Rip then proceeds to drive them to Las Vegas and telling jokes the whole way and sending Chong into tears from laughter. His classic appearance as a celebrity guest at the funeral/roast of a very dull man in the cult comedy classic Amazon Women on the Moon is well remembered. In 2005, Taylor appeared as himself on an episode of ABC TV's The George Lopez Show as well as in the motion picture Wayne's World 2 (1993). Taylor guest-starred as chef "Rappin' Rip" in four episodes of an earlier ABC sitcom featuring Lopez, Life With Bonnie. Taylor has been a frequent co-star with Debbie Reynolds in her live shows in Las Vegas, Reno, and Lake Tahoe. Taylor also appeared as himself on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace (1998). Taylor also voiced Fester Addams in the second Addams Family cartoon; as well as playing a wacky, but memorable villain named Wizard Glick in the final episode of The Monkees TV series in 1968.
Taylor is also an accomplice of the Jackass crew and their friends. In 1995, he performed the intro for the Bloodhound Gang's Use Your Fingers album, and in 2002, he appeared in the final scene of Jackass: The Movie, wielding a pistol that, when fired, released a sign that read "The End." (Taylor's section of the film was originally considerably longer, and ended with him complaining about the heat, and fanning himself with his toupee. This footage was included on the DVD of the film.) He did the same thing at the ending of Jackass: Number Two. In the credits of the 2005 remake of The Dukes of Hazzard (starring Johnny Knoxville), Rip shows up in the blooper reel.
He recently guest starred in The Suite Life of Zack and Cody episode "Loosely Ballroom" as Leo. He is also in some episodes of The Emperor's New School, as the voice of the Royal Record Keeper. He was also recently in the Jetix animated series Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go!
[edit] Rip Taylor in Washington
Prior to becoming famous, Taylor was a page in the U.S. Senate.
In 2006, Taylor returned to the nation's capital as the grand marshal of Washington D.C.'s Capital Pride.[2]
[edit] References
- ^ YouTube video of Super Password Taylor, in a fit of mock frustration, shouted "That's not fair!" and pulled off his toupee
- ^ Washington Blade Online
