Dan Rowan, Dick Martin
Rowan & Martin
Television Category Star
- Ceremony was on April 2, 2002
Dick Martin
Last half of Laugh-In' duo dies
Ву Вов Thomas Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — Dick 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 catchphrases 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.
Born into a middle-class family in Battle Creek, Martin had worked in a Ford auto assembly plant after high school.
"Laugh-in," which debuted in January 1968 and folded in 1973, was unlike any comedy-variety show before it. Rather than relying on 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 included Ruth Buzzi, Arte Johnson, Henry Gibson, Jo Anne Worley, and announcer Gary Owens.
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!" Rowan spent his last years touring the canals of Europe on a houseboat. He was 65 when he died in 1987.
Martin went on to direct numerous episodes of "Newhart" as well as such shows as "In the Heat of the Night," "Archie Bunker's Place" and "Family Ties."
Survivors include his wife, Dolly Read, and sons, actor Richard Martin and Cary Martin.
