Ruth buzzi, comedic actress who gained fame on 'laugh-in,' dies

Ruth Buzzi, who rose to fame as the frumpy and bitter Gladys Ormphby on the groundbreaking sketch comedy series _Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In_ and made over 200 television appearances

during a 45-year career, has died. She was 88. Buzzi died Thursday at her home in Texas, says her agent Mike Eisenstadt. She had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and was in hospice care.

Shortly before her death, her husband, Kent Perkins, had posted a statement on Buzzi’s Facebook page, thanking her many fans and telling them: “She wants you to know she probably had more

fun doing those shows than you had watching them.” Buzzi won a Golden Globe and was a two-time Emmy nominee for the NBC show that ran from 1968 to 1973. She was the only regular to appear in

all six seasons, including the pilot. She was first spotted by _Laugh-In_ creator and producer George Schlatter playing various characters on _The Steve Allen Comedy Hour_. Schlatter was

holding auditions for _Laugh-In_ when he received a picture in the mail of Buzzi in her Ormphby costume, sitting in a wire mesh trash barrel. The character was clad in drab brown with her

bun covered by a hairnet knotted in the middle of her forehead. “I think I hired her because of my passion for Gladys Ormphby,” he wrote in his 2023 memoir _Still Laughing: A Life in

Comedy_. “I must admit that the hairnet and the rolled-down stockings did light my fire. My favorite Gladys line was when she announced that the day of the office Christmas party, they sent

her home early.” The Gladys character used her purse as a weapon against anyone who bothered her, striking people over the head. On _Laugh-In_, her most frequent target was Arte Johnson’s

dirty old man character Tyrone F. Horneigh. “Gladys embodies the overlooked, the downtrodden, the taken for granted, the struggler,” Buzzi told _The Connecticut Post_ in 2018. “So when she

fights back, she speaks for everyone who’s been marginalized, reduced to a sex object or otherwise abused. And that’s almost everyone at some time or other.” Buzzi took her act to the _Dean

Martin Celebrity Roasts_ in Las Vegas, where she bashed her purse on the heads of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Lucille Ball, among others. “Ruth Buzzi brought a singular energy and charm

to sketch comedy that made her a standout on _Laugh-In_ and the _Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts_. Her characters, especially the unforgettable Gladys Ormphby, captured the delightful absurdity

of the era,” said Journey Gunderson, executive director of the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, New York.