A farewell to the unsung heroine of ‘Laugh-in'
The show was a rapid-fire blend of one-liners, blackouts, vaudeville shtick,
What made the show work -- which it often did, though certainly not always -- wasn't the hit-or-miss writing. It was the up-for-pretty-much-anything ensemble. Over the course of six seasons, there were more than 40 regulars. Two became stars: Goldie Hawn and
Buzzi, as her perfect-attendance record might suggest, had a special place in the ensemble. She cut a distinctive feature, with a big chin, even bigger grin, and seemingly endless energy. Think of her as the missing comedic link between Imogene Coca and Madeline Kahn, with Kate McKinnon off in the far distance.
Advertisement
Born in Westerly, R.I., Buzzi was head cheerleader at Stonington (Conn.) High School. She must have wielded a mean set of pom-poms. She headed west to study at the Pasadena Playhouse, where Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman were among her classmates. Buzzi did lots of stage and television work. The most notable was the original production of the Broadway musical 'Sweet Charity.' The most important, though, was a school production of 'Auntie Mame,' where Buzzi played the title character's secretary, Agnes Gooch. Gooch became the inspiration for Buzzi's Gladys Ormphby on 'Laugh-In.'
Gladys has a place in the sad sack hall of fame. She's slumped in posture and frowning in expression. She wears a formless cardigan and shoes so sensible they seem almost senseless. With hair pulled back in a bun, and that bun covered by a hairnet, she clutches a handbag even drabber than she is. Gladys is a Beckett character, if Beckett's were outfitted by Goodwill.
But wait, Gladys has one source of solace: plopping down on a park bench and being alone with her thoughts (such as they are). But wait further, always,
always
waiting to afflict her is Arte Johnson's Tyrone, a mumbly, mustachio'd old man. Tyrone doesn't see Gladys as Miss Gooch. He sees her as Helen of Troy. Gladys, of course, wants nothing to do with him. So always,
always
she resorts to the one weapon in her arsenal: that handbag. She wallops the old guy with ferocity and gusto (and pleasure?). This is primo folie à deux, mutual assured destruction of the slapstick sort.
Advertisement
The gag never got tired. Like Gladys, it wasn't so much ageless as something existent outside of time. After 'Laugh-In' was canceled, Gladys even started popping up on Dean Martin's celebrity roasts. Among those on the receiving end of her handbag were Martin, Frank Sinatra, and Muhammad Ali. Rope-a-dope may have worked with George Foreman.
Buzzi won a Golden Globe and two Emmy nominations for her work on 'Laugh-In.' But her hometown bestowed a more fitting honor. Westerly has a park bench dedicated to her.
Mark Feeney can be reached at
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Los Angeles Times
an hour ago
- Los Angeles Times
Tony Awards: Hollywood A-listers brought the spotlight to Broadway, but stage thespians carried the day
Broadway finally got its groove back. The 2024-25 season was the highest-grossing season on record and the second-highest in terms of attendance. Hollywood A-listers, such as George Clooney in 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' and Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal in 'Othello' got in on the action, raising Broadway's media profile along with its ticket prices. Two Emmy-winning alums of HBO's 'Succession,' Sarah Snook in 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' and Kieran Culkin in 'Glengarry Glen Ross,' have been treading the boards, as has Netflix's 'Stranger Things' standout Sadie Sink in 'John Proctor Is the Villain.' And though the experience seems to have been memory-holed, Robert Downey Jr. made a respectable Broadway debut in September in Ayad Akhtar's too-clever-by-half AI drama, 'McNeal.' On Sunday, the Tony Awards paid homage to the astonishing array of acting talent that drew audiences back to the theater. But it wasn't star power that determined the evening's prizes. It was boldness — unadulterated theatrical fearlessness — that carried the day. The ceremony, held at Radio City Music Hall amid the art deco splendor of old New York, was presided over by Tony-winner Cynthia Erivo, a natural wonder of the theatrical universe. One of the turbo-powered stars of the blockbuster screen adaptation of 'Wicked,' she was the ideal host for a Broadway year that owed its success to the unique ability of high-wattage stage performers to forge a singular connection with audiences. Viewers watching the ceremony on CBS were offered a glimpse of the cyclonic energy she can generate in a bubbly opening number celebrating the nominees. It didn't matter that most watching from home hadn't seen the shows name-checked in the specially composed novelty song. The vivacity of the art form broke through the screen courtesy of Erivo's capacity to blast through any barrier with her truthful virtuosity. Will Aronson and Hue Park's 'Maybe Happy Ending' was the evening's big winner, picking up six Tonys, including best musical. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' 'Purpose,' which received the Pulitzer Prize for drama this year, was chosen as best play in a season showcasing a refreshingly wide range of ambitious playwriting. Anna D. Shapiro's sharply-tuned production of Jonathan Spector's 'Eureka Day,' a bitingly funny satire on the vaccine debate, won for play revival. And Jamie Lloyd's radical reworking of 'Sunset Blvd.' took the prize for musical revival. All in all, it was a strong season for directing. Michael Arden won for his exquisitely humane staging of the futuristic robot musical, 'Maybe Happy Ending.' And Sam Pinkleton was honored for his wild and whirling synchronization of Cole Escola's 'Oh, Mary!' As a critic, I don't usually have to pay for theater tickets, but I got a taste of the ludicrousness when charged $500 to see Washington and Gyllenhaal in a flaccid revival of 'Othello.' Apparently, I got off cheaply compared to a friend who paid even more for a worse seat on the same night. But the price-gouging didn't dent my appreciation for a season that reminded me of the privilege of being in the room where the theatrical magic happens. (Yes, even 'Othello' had its intermittent rewards.) Communing with audiences in the presence of gifted stage performers is one of the last bastions of community in our screen-ridden society. I was grateful that CNN made the agonizingly timely 'Good Night, and Good Luck' available to a wider public, presenting Saturday night's performance live. But watching Clooney and company on TV wasn't the same as being in the Winter Garden with them during the performance. It wasn't simply that the camerawork profoundly altered the visual storytelling. It was that at home on my couch I was no longer enclosed in the same shared space that brought history back to the present for a charged moment of collective reflection. The Tony Awards honored those actors who embraced the immediacy of the theatrical experience and offered us varieties of performance styles that would be hard to find even in the more obscure reaches of Netflix. Cole Escola, the first nonbinary performer to win in the lead actor in a play category, accepted the award for their fiendishly madcap performance in 'Oh, Mary!' — a no-holds-barred farcical display of irreverence that ignited a firestorm of hilarity that threatened to consume all of Broadway. Snook won for her lead performance in 'The Picture of Dorian Gray,' a multimedia collage of Wilde's novel that had the protean 'Succession' star playing opposite screen versions of herself in what was the season's most aerobically taxing performance. Francis Jue, who delivered the evening's most moving and politically pointed speech, won for his shape-shifting (and age-defying) featured performance in the revival of David Henry Hwang's 'Yellow Face.' And Kara Young, who won last year in the featured actress in a play category, repeated for her heightened artistry in 'Purpose,' the kind of extravagant performance no screen could do justice to. Nicole Scherzinger, who was honored as best lead actress in a musical for her portrayal of Norma Desmond in a bracing revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Sunset Boulevard,' demonstrated the power of theater to seize hold of us when she performed 'As If We Never Said Goodbye' on the telecast. In her Broadway debut, Scherzinger, who came to fame with the Pussycat Dolls, faced stiff competition from Audra McDonald, the six-time Tony winner starring in 'Gypsy.' No performance moved me more this season than McDonald's harrowing portrayal of Rose. In George C. Wolfe's revival, the character is a Black woman struggling not just with her frustrated dreams of stardom displaced onto her children but with the injustice of history itself. McDonald was given the impossible task of performing 'Rose's Turn' on the telecast, her character's Lear-like cri de cœur in song. She delivered, as she always does, but again I wish audiences at home could experience the broken majesty of this number in context at the Majestic Theatre, where theatergoers have been rising up in unison, wiping away tears, to express their gratitude for McDonald's sacrificial generosity. Darren Criss, an alum of 'Glee,' received his first Tony for endowing an outdated robot with a sophisticated taste for jazz with a deft physical life and diffident (yet unmistakable) humanity. His lead performance in 'Maybe Happy Ending' (perfectly in sync with that of his impressive co-star, Helen J Shen) is as responsible for the musical's unexpected success as Arden's staging and Dane Laffrey and George Reeve's Tony-winning scenic design. Natalie Venetia Belcon, the heart and soul of 'Buena Vista Social Club' along with the band, was honored for her featured performance in the musical that tells the story of Cuban musical style that defied history to seduce the world. And Jak Malone, who was responsible for the evening's second most riveting speech, won for his gender-blurring featured performance in'Operation Mincemeat: A New Musical.' These performances, by names you probably don't know all that well, embraced the special properties of an art form that is larger than life and all the more acutely exposed for being so. It takes enormous skill and dedication to find the delicacy in such theatrical grandeur. These artists know that flamboyance needn't preclude subtlety, and that stardom neither guarantees nor bars revelation. Actors from all ranks are clearly hungering for the kind of substance and freedom that the stage can uniquely provide. Off-Broadway has been filled with marquee talents connecting with audiences whose main interest is potent work. Patsy Ferran, starring opposite Paul Mescal in the Almeida Theatre production of 'A Streetcar Named Desire' at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theater, was, hands down, the best performance I saw all year. Andrew Scott in 'Vanya' at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, Adam Driver in Kenneth Lonergan's 'Hold on to Me Darling' also at the Lortel, Lily Rabe in Mark O'Rowe's adaptation of Ibsen's 'Ghosts' at Lincoln Center Theater's Mitzi E. Newhouse and Nina Hoss and Adeel Akhtar in the Donmar Warehouse production of 'The Cherry Orchard' at St. Ann's Warehouse left me feeling, as only theater can, more consciously alive and connected. The speeches at the Tony Awards, for the most part, skirted politics. This reticence was surprising given what we're living through. But there's something deeply political when we gather to look in the mirror that artists hold before nature. The politics are implicit, and this year Broadway reminded us that our humanity depends upon this ancient, timeless art.
Fox News
an hour ago
- Fox News
Hailey Bieber Enjoys Summer Vibes as Justin Bieber Shares Cryptic Posts
Broadway met Hollywood in a dazzling collision of star power at the 2025 Tony Awards. Romeo Beckham is turning heads in Paris after his recent split. Plus, Hailey Bieber is soaking up the sun in bikini bliss while Justin raises eyebrows with cryptic posts about love. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit FOX News Radio
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Emmy experts debate Comedy Series race: ‘Hacks' will compete against ‘a bunch of new kids on the block'
Last year's Best Comedy Series winner, Hacks, is back in the running for more Emmy gold, but several new contenders are hoping to stop it in its tracks, including The Studio, Nobody Wants This, and The Four Seasons. Four top Emmy experts — Variety's Clayton Davis, The Hollywood Reporter's Scott Feinberg, Indiewire's Marcus Jones, Deadline's Pete Hammond — debate the race with moderator and Gold Derby editor-in-chief Debra Birnbaum in our latest slugfest video (watch above). "We are almost certainly going to see the return of last year's somewhat surprise winner, Hacks, and then The Bear, which had been widely predicted to win," says Feinberg. "I think we'll see Only Murders in the Building and Abbott Elementary back, and Shrinking. There's a bunch of new kids on the block, most prominently The Studio, which I think is in, as is Nobody Wants This from Netflix. So, I think in a way, we're talking about those seventh and eighth slots that are still up for grabs. You could see returning contenders What We Do in the Shadows and Poker Face, or some new options including English Teacher and The Four Seasons." More from GoldDerby Marlon Wayans on laughing through tragedy in 'Good Grief' and why social media has made comedy 'toxic' Tony Talk: Dissecting those shocking wins for 'Purpose,' Nicole Scherzinger, Darren Criss, and more Behind the scenes at the Tony Awards: From Darren Criss to Andrew Lloyd Weber, backstage at Broadway's biggest night Netflix Jones says that Netflix has a "big issue" with too much product. "Nobody Wants This is the most popular, and I do think that's probably going to be nominated. But there's such a crash between The Four Seasons, A Man on the Inside, and The Residence." He also brings up the "Étoile factor," claiming that Prime Video is "pushing that and trying to do a play of craft love" to help the show get in. "They were the first streamer to win this category, and so I wouldn't put it past them to take it to the finish line." (Note: This was recorded before news of Étoile's cancellation broke late Friday) Davis thinks there is a "clear top five" of shows that feel "locked": Hacks, The Bear, Only Murders, Abbott Elementary, and The Studio. However, "right now at the moment," he feels like The Studio is "the one to beat." He worries whether Shrinking will get in this year since it "really underperformed" the last time it was eligible. As for the Netflix shows, Davis believes Nobody Wants Us and The Four Seasons are going to be the streamer's "top performers." Apple TV+ In terms of out-of-the-box choices, Birnbaum wonders if "all of the press" for The Rehearsal's second season might work "for it or against it." Ultimately, for niche shows, it may come down to how many people have actually seen them. "When you go to events, [the voters] are overwhelmed by the amount of shows that they have to watch," she explains. "So, I think name recognition gets you half the battle." Hammond agrees this is a "tough category" and suggests that the 2023 champion, The Bear, will be nominated, but won't return to the winner's circle. "The Bear is over in terms of winning. I don't see it winning again. The reason Hacks won, in addition to being a great show, is a lot of people just don't feel The Bear belonged in that category." He adds, "It's a very good show. There's no question about that. But I don't think it's going to win." Which Emmy expert do you agree with the most? Be sure to make your predictions and join the Emmy discussion in our TV forum. SIGN UP for Gold Derby's free newsletter with latest predictions Best of GoldDerby Marlon Wayans on laughing through tragedy in 'Good Grief' and why social media has made comedy 'toxic' Minha Kim 'confronted all new emotions that I had never anticipated' in Season 2 of 'Pachinko' 'Étoile': Exclusive 4-part conversation with creators, star Luke Kirby, cinematographer, and choreographer Click here to read the full article.
