Actor/Comedian Alan Sues [Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In] 1926-2011

[Zoneboy]

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Alan Sues, an actor whose loud, clownish comedic style made him an invaluable cast member on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In,” one of the top-rated shows on television in the late 1960s, died on Thursday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 85.

The cause appeared to be a heart attack, Michael Michaud, a friend and administrator for Mr. Sues, said.

On “Laugh-In,” Mr. Sues was part of an ensemble cast in a comedy-sketch show that prefigured “Saturday Night Live” And launched the careers of stars like Goldie Hawn, Lily Tomlin and Flip Wilson.

Mr. Sues played Uncle Al the Kiddies’ Pal, a consistently hung-over children’s entertainer; Big Al, an effeminate sportscaster more obsessed with ringing a bell than announcing the day’s action; and a drag imitation of the cast member JoAnne Worley. He first performed on the show in 1968 as a manic fan who accosts Rowan and Martin with a 30-second recap of a “Laugh-In” episode.

“Laugh-In” combined vaudeville routines, topical and physical humor and jokes in a rapid, stream-of-consciousness format. Episodes began with banter by the hosts, the comedy of team of Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, that quickly devolved into a cavalcade of psychedelic sight gags, sketches and bikini-clad dancers punctuated by catchphrases like “Sock it to me!” and “You bet your sweet bippy.”

The show, which first appeared as a special in 1967 and ran until 1973, satirized the 1960s counterculture and featured show business guests like Diana Ross as well public figures like the Rev. Billy Graham and Richard M. Nixon, who, appearing while running for president and trying to shed a stiff image, drew laughs and a few gasps when he asked, “Sock it to me?”

He tended to perform with over-the-top flamboyance on the show, displaying stereotypically gay mannerisms. What he did not disclose was that he was gay, Mr. Michaud said, fearing that to tell the truth about his sexual orientation would have ended his career.

“It wasn’t because he was ashamed of being gay; it was because he was surviving as a performer,” Mr. Michaud said in a telephone interview, adding that Mr. Sues’ was actually an inspiration to many gay viewers.

“Many gay men came up to him and said how important he was when they were young because he was the only gay man they could see on television,” Mr. Michaud said.

Mr. Sues, who left the show in 1973 before its last season, said his success on “Laugh-In” left him typecast as a wacky comedian.

“When I first started out,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1993, “I did a lot of straight dramatic roles, but after ‘Laugh-In,’ audiences wouldn’t accept me in anything but a comedy.”

Alan Grigsby Sues was born March 7, 1926, in Ross, Calif., to Peter and Alice Murray Sues. His father raised racehorses, requiring him to move the family frequently, uprooting Alan and his brother, John, from one school after another. He served in the Army in Europe during World War II.

After the war he used veteran’s benefits to pay for acting lessons at the Pasadena Playhouse, where he performed during the late 1940s before moving to New York in 1952. He made his Broadway debut in 1953 in Elia Kazan’s “Tea and Sympathy.” He met and married a dancer and actress while the play was running.

When the production ended in 1955, he and his wife, Phyllis Sues, started a Vaudevillian nightclub act in Manhattan, then took it on the road across the country. Characters he developed for the act would appear in “Laugh-In.”

After he and his wife were divorced in the late 1950s, Mr. Sues settled in California, where he appeared in “The Twilight Zone” and other television shows and films like “The Americanization of Emily” in 1964.

Later in the ’60s he joined Jo Anne Worley in the Off Broadway musical comedy revue “The Mad Show.” His performance caught the attention of the producer George Schlatter, who cast him in Edie Adams’s Las Vegas act and then “Laugh-In,” which he was also producing.

Mr. Sues was in New York when he learned Mr. Schlatter wanted to work with him.

“When I heard that he wanted to talk to me, I called him in Los Angeles,” Mr. Sues was quoted as saying in the book “From Beautiful Downtown Burbank: A Critical History of Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, 1968-1973. “His secretary said he was on the other line, so I said, ‘Well, tell him I’m in a phone booth and it’s filling with water.’ ”

After “Laugh-In,” Mr. Sues appeared in an original one-man play, “No Flies on Me,” in 1993; television shows like “Punky Brewster” and “Sabrina the Teenage Witch”; and a popular commercial for Peter Pan peanut butter in the early 1970s.

Returning to Broadway in 1975, he had a successful dramatic turn playing Moriarty in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s revival of William Gillette’s “Sherlock Holmes.”

Mr. Sues, who lived in West Hollywood, is survived by a sister-in-law, Yvonne Sues. His brother, John, died several years ago.

[ThomasE]

I didn't even know he died last month. How could I have missed this? RIP Mr. Sues. You were hilarious on Laugh-In.

[catlover79]