Dangerfield dies at 82

Oct 06, 2004 by Ian Evans

Rodney Dangerfield, whose comic persona complained, “I don’t get no respect”, died Tuesday at the age of 82. He recently fell into a coma after heart surgery. Dangerfield had joked about going into hospital. The comic said, “If things go right, I’ll be there about a week, and if things don’t go right, I’ll be there about an hour and a half.”

Dangerfield had tried his hand at comedy when he was younger, then gave it up to work as an aluminum siding salesman. When he was 40 he took to the stage again and this time he hit it big. He opened his own Manhattan comedy club, Dangerfield’s, in the late 1960s. The club became a launching ground for many young comics like Tim Allen, Roseanne Barr, Jim Carrey, Sam Kinison, Jerry Seinfeld, Rita Rudner and Louie Anderson.

Dangerfield also appeared in movies like Caddyshack and Easy Money before stunning many with a dramatic role in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers.