Dick Shawn was an American actor and comedian. He played a wide variety of supporting roles and was a prolific character actor. During the 1960s he played small roles in madcap comedies, usually portraying caricatures of counter culture personalities, such as deadbeat son Sylvester Marcus in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and the hippie actor Lorenzo Saint DuBois in The Producers.
He performed his stand-up comedy act for over 35 years in nightclubs around the world. His award-winning one-man stage show, The Second Greatest Entertainer in the Whole Wide World, was sometimes performed with a unique opening. When the audience entered the theater, they saw a bare stage with a pile of bricks in stage center. When the play began, Shawn emerged from the pile of bricks. The startling effect of this required complete concentration and breath control because the slightest movement of the bricks could ruin the surprise appearance. In addition to roles in more than 30 movies and seven Broadway productions, Shawn made television appearances, toured often, and periodically performed a one-man show that mixed songs, sketches, and pantomime. He was a speaker at the Friars Club Roasts in Los Angeles and New York. At one of the X-rated roasts that had overdosed on tasteless routines by previous speakers, Shawn walked up to the microphone, took a long pause, and "vomited" pea soup onto himself and other speakers at the dais. His TV appearances included The Ed Sullivan Show, TV movies, sitcoms, dramas including St. Elsewhere and Magnum, P.I., and a music video for "Dance" by the hair metal bandRatt. In the UK he appeared in Sunday Night at the London Palladium in 1958. Amongst his roles in anthology TV series, he starred in an Amazing Stories episode "Miss Stardust", directed by Tobe Hooper, about a bizarre intergalactic beauty pageant, and played the Emperor in The Emperor's New Clothes in Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre. He filled in for vacationing Johnny Carson as guest host on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson on January 1, 1971, which saw the last cigarette commercial on American television aired on TV, one minute before the cigarette ads were banned.
Personal life
Shawn married Rita Bachner in 1946, and they had four children: Amy, Wendy, Adam, and Jennifer. He had one grandchild, Rachel Travolta. He was a longtime resident of Englewood, New Jersey.
Death
On April 17, 1987, during a performance at University of California, San Diego's Mandeville Hall—which included his portrayal of a politician reciting such campaign clichés as "If elected, I will not lay down on the job"—Shawn suffered a fatal heart attack and collapsed face-down on the stage. The audience initially assumed that it was part of his act; but after he had remained motionless on the stage for several minutes, a stage hand examined him and asked if a physician was present. After CPR had been initiated, the audience was asked to leave the auditorium, but most remained, still assuming that it was all part of Shawn's act. Many began leaving—still unsure of what they had witnessed—only after paramedics arrived. A notice in the following day's San Diego Union newspaper announced that Shawn had indeed died during the performance. He was 63 years old. Shawn was interred at Hillside Memorial Park, a Jewish cemetery in Culver City, California.
