Buddy Hackett

A Brooklyn comic with a thick New York accent, a heavy frame he turned into material, and a nightclub act filthy enough that television had to keep him on a leash: Buddy Hackett spent his career being two performers at once. The stage version was raunchy. The screen version sold Disney tickets.

His run of good film parts is tighter than people remember. Marcellus Washburn in The Music Man (1962) is the best of them, a supporting turn with real warmth in a musical that could easily have flattened it. Benjy Benjamin in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) put him inside one of the largest comic ensembles ever assembled and he holds his own. Tennessee Steinmetz in The Love Bug (1968) made him a fixture for a generation of children. Before all that came God's Little Acre (1958) and a segment of The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962).

What he was actually best at is harder to film. Hackett did not deliver a joke so much as loiter beside one, letting an anecdote wander until the audience stopped waiting for the punchline and started laughing at the wandering. That is why the television record here is mostly game shows and variety hours: What's My Line?, The Steve Allen Show, The Dean Martin Show, Donny & Marie, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour and a great many nights with Johnny Carson. Those appearances were the real act.

Scuttle in The Little Mermaid (1989) gave him a second life with children who had never seen him, and he came back for the sequel. Scrooged, Paulie and a run on the sitcom Action followed. He died in 2003.