Rodney Dangerfield - Biography

Last Editor: mistellelo				Rodney Dangerfield Biography -   Name : Rodney Dangerfield Birth name : Jacob Cohen Date of Birth : November 22, 1921 Place of Birth : Babylon, New York, U.S. Died : October 5, 2004 Place of death : Los Angeles, California, U.S. Nationality : American Profession : Actor Height : 5' 10"

Rodney Dangerfield Trivia -

N/A

Rodney Dangerfield Detailed Biography -

Rodney Dangerfield (November 22, 1921 – October 5, 2004), born Jacob Cohen, was an American comedian and actor, best known for the catchphrase "I don't get no respect" and his monologues on that theme. He was born in Long Island in the town of Babylon, the son of vaudevillian Phil Roy (Philip Cohen). 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." As a teenager, he got his start writing jokes for standup comics; he became one himself at 19 under the name Jack Roy. He struggled financially for nine years, at one point performing as a singing waiter (he was fired), 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, still working as a salesman by day. 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. He took the name Rodney Dangerfield, a pseudonym which had been used by Ricky Nelson on the TV program The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Possibly coincidentally, Jack Benny, in several episodes of his radio show, makes reference to a fictitious comedian named 'Rodney Dangerfield' - implied as being a completely unknown/bad actor. However, Jack Roy remained his legal name, as he mentioned from time to time. Fate intervened one Sunday night in New York, when The Ed Sullivan Show needed a last-minute replacement for another act. This live, weekly talent show, hosted by the very influential Sullivan, could make or break a show-business career. The middle-aged, husky Dangerfield, with his pessimistic monologue, was a contrast to the younger, trendier comics usually seen on the Sullivan show, and this alone gave him a novelty value. His success was assured when he told his very first "no respect" joke: "I don't get no respect. I played hide-and-seek, and they wouldn't even look for me." Dangerfield would also tell conventional jokes in his act: "I grew up in a tough neighborhood. Tough neighborhood! Teachers would get notes from parents saying, 'Please excuse Johnny for the next 5 to 10 years!'" Dangerfield became the surprise hit of the show. Finally established as a reliable stand-up comedian, he would write thousands more of these self-deprecating jokes for the rest of his life. 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 70 times. He bought a Manhattan nightclub in 1969 in order to remain near his children after their mother died. "Dangerfield's" was the venue for an HBO show which helped popularize many stand-up comics, including Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Carrey, Tim Allen, Roseanne Barr, Jeff Foxworthy, Sam Kinison, Rita Rudner, Andrew Dice Clay, and Bob Saget. His comedy album No Respect won a Grammy Award. One of his TV specials featured a musical number, "Rappin' Rodney," which soon became one of the first MTV music videos. His career peaked during the early 1980s, when he became a movie star. His appearance in Caddyshack led to starring roles in Easy Money and Back To School. He played an abusive father in Natural Born Killers in a scene where he wrote his own lines. Most of his later pictures, unfortunately, were mild B-movies that depended on the Dangerfield name. Ladybugs cast him as a girls' athletic coach; Rover Dangerfield featured Rodney as an animated dog; My 5 Wives was a marital farce; The Fourth Tenor was an operatic parody. None of these latter-day attempts were as successful as his earlier films. In 1994, Rodney Dangerfield won an American Comedy Award for lifetime creative achievement. He was also recognized by the Smithsonian Institution, which put one of his trademark white shirts and red ties on display. When asked about the honor, he joked that the museum was using his shirt to clean Charles Lindbergh's plane. He was married twice to Joyce Indig - from 1949 to 1962, and again from 1963 to 1970 - with whom he had a son named Brian and a daughter named Melanie. From 1993 to his death he was married to Joan Child, who was instrumental in setting up his Internet site. 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"(yet he can make his eyes go big and small within seconds) , 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 the drug he smoked daily for 60 years. In 1995, his application for membership in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was rejected. At the time, he commented on how then-president of AMPAS, Roddy McDowall, who acted in a monkey suit in the Planet of the Apes series of films, possibly felt that Dangerfield was not dignified enough to join the organization. AMPAS would later offer membership, an offer he declined. Rodney Dangerfield lived in his later years under his legal name "Jack Roy," which he used in some of his skits, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where he raised his two children. The family owned at least one dog, which father or daughter (or both) would walk regularly. Only in Manhattan could a man like Rodney "hide in plain sight" while strolling to the New York Health and Racquet Club in his robe on a warm summer morning. The sight of his touring bus parked outside his apartment building (which was not a co-op or condo, but a rental) in the middle of the night was always a sight to see as well. Chris Rock once remarked that he was in Catch A Rising Star one night when "Rodney showed up in his robe." Rock said, "He must have lived down the block" -- and he wasn't far off, as it was only a a block-and-a-half. Dangerfield's was less than a mile from home, a place he could be found most anytime he wasn't touring. Despite his stage persona, he was generally well-respected in his daily life, very private and to himself, but polite if engaged. What you saw on stage was pretty much what you got in real life, less the gags: an obviously well-grounded family man who raised very well-grounded children. 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 one-liner of the type for which he was known: When asked how long he would be hospitalized, he said, "If all goes well, about a week. If not, about an hour-and-a-half." In September 2004, it was revealed that Dangerfield, then aged 82, had been in a coma for several weeks. Afterward, he had been breathing on his own and had been showing signs of awareness when visited by friends. However, on October 5, 2004, he died at the UCLA Medical Center, where he had undergone the surgery in August. He was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. In keeping with his "No Respect" persona, his headstone reads simply, "Rodney Dangerfield - There goes the neighborhood." . Joan Child 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. When Johnny Carson died on January 23, 2005, a correspondent from CNN called Dangerfield's longtime publicist, Kevin Sasaki, and asked whether Dangerfield would be available to share comments on the air about Carson. Sasaki replied "Unless CNN had a new way of linking up to the afterlife via satellite, that would be impossible." Farrah Fawcett is sculpting a life-size bronze statue of Dangerfield, which will be placed in Pierce Brothers Memorial Park. He will be the first celebrity ever to have this done. UCLA's Division of Neurosurgery has named a suite of operating rooms after him and given him the "Rodney Respect Award" which his wife presented to Jay Leno on October 20, 2005, on behalf of the David Geffen School of Medicine/Division of Neurosurgery at UCLA at their 2005 Visionary Ball. Comedy Central aired a special titled Legends: Rodney Dangerfield on September 10, 2006, which commemorated his life and legacy. Featured comedians included Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Ray Romano, Roseanne Barr, Jerry Seinfeld, Bob Saget, Jerry Stiller, Kevin Kline and Jeff Foxworthy. Northern Irish rock band The Dangerfields are named in tribute to him. Since the 1980s, his name has been a frequently-used metaphor for someone who gets no respect, such as "Ringo was always the Rodney Dangerfield of the Beatles". In 2007 it was reported that a Rodney Dangerfield tattoo is among the most popular celebrity tattoos in the United States, generally by people in their late 20s or early 30s who got the tattoo in the 1990s.