Ruth Bazzi passed away Thursday at a ranch near Fort Worth in one of the most memorable characters in “Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In” and one of the characters in both real and imagined. She was 88 years old.
Her agent, Michael Eisenstadt, said the cause was a complication of Alzheimer's disease, which was diagnosed 10 years ago.
With both her elastic, expressive face and voice and body, Bazzi had a long performance career because of her caricatures. She played countless roles on stage in summer stocks. The 1966 musical “Sweet Charity” made her appearance on Broadway once with Tripartite credits (as a good fairy/woman with a hat/receptionist). Performed at a TV variety show. He has appeared as a guest star on many sitcoms. And there were minor parts to the film, including “Freaky Friday,” the 1976 Identity-Swap comedy, “The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again,” and Loopy 1979 Disney Western.
However, her career had no enduring appeal of her clearly attractive “laughing” character Gladys Ormbie, Combination School Marm, delicate Koraett and Battle Axe, with a brown cardigan with a knot in the middle of her forehead, a long skirt, egrett, a monotonous cardigan with a hairnet, a long skirt, egrett and a hairnet.
The Gladys regular appearances on the show – the NBC Primetime fixture from 1968 to 1973 – was generally a skit involving Tyrone, the typical dirty old man (Arte Johnson).
At a time when social practices were rapidly forbidden, Gladys, who was interested in sex and rebelled equally with it, was a vivid, cheerful, cheerful representative of the chaos that reigned among a more conservative generation, who was amazed by the sexual revolution.
Ms. Bazzi played dozens of roles in dozens of skits in “Laughter” as part of an ensemble that includes Goldie Horn, Lily Tomlin, Judy Kahne, Gary Owens, Joe Anne Wally and Henry Gibson. However, her Gladys has lived her life outside of the show, and has guest appearances elsewhere.
Early on, many of them involved humor at the expense of Gladys's family nature. In the early 1970s, Bazzi was a guest on the “Dean Martin Show” and at one point as Gladys, she went on set with a complaint that she wanted to lodge along with the star sitting on a tuxedo stool. Below is a skit focused on her flat chest.
“Listen, Dean, I saw what you did with the girl on the cue card before,” Gladys said. “And I don't know why I can't become a cue card girl.
Martin replied that he could not name it, “But I can give two names.”
Bazzi later appeared on Sesame Street. As the voice of the character Susie Ca Brussie's cartoon, as the owner of the recycled paper, and sometimes as the child-friendly version of Gladys. She also announced the cartoon version of Gladys along with Arte Johnson as a toned down Tyrone in the animated series “Buggy Pants and Knit Wit.”
More in the rib vein, Bazzi appeared as Gladys in several aired celebrity roasts hosted by Martin.
Ruth Anne Bazzi was born on July 24, 1936, in Westerly, Lordly, to Angelo and Lena (McKi). Her father was a stone sculptor and a monument maker. Ruth grew up in Stonington, near Connecticut, where he was a high school cheerleader.
She spent three years as a student at Pasadena Playhouse in California, and in 1956 she made her professional acting debut in San Francisco.
In addition to her stage and television productions, she has produced dozens of commercials. Especially as the voice of Grandma's Goodwich in a series of animation spots in Sugar Crisp Serial featuring the character Sugar Bear.
Her television productions include guest appearances in the comedy series.
She also appeared in the sitcom “That Girl” several times in the late 1960s as Anne Marie, a friend of the central character (Marlo Thomas as the city's young woman, Marlo Moore).
Bazzi retired from show business a few years ago and moved to Texas with her husband, Kent Perkins, where she raised horses and cows on the ranch. They married in 1978 and he survived her. His previous marriage ended with divorce. Full information about the survivors was not immediately available.
In an interview with the New York Times in 1969, Bazzi traced the origins of Gladys Olmpubee to Agnes Gooch, the character of the 1956 Misfit secretary, Aungie Mame. (The Broadway musical adaptation, “Mame,” came after Bazzi discovered it.)
“About eight years ago,” Bazzi said. “I wanted to take new photos, so I thought it would be wise to read a lot of plays and try to find characters that could be.
“I thought it was a great word, and the part was really funny, so I asked myself what kind of person would look like rotten posture, drug feet, baggy stockings, speech-like constipation. So I gave it a try. Know?”
She continued: “Anyway, I took a photo, and about two years later, I was able to play Agnes Gooch in a summer stock. I didn't do her to the extreme as Gladys now, but the audience laughed.
Ash Wu contributed the report.
