You Bet Your Sweet Bippy, This Ain’t No Laugh-In Matter
Dick Martin of Laugh-In passed away on Saturday night. The show went off the air before I was born, but I used to watch re-runs on Nick-at-Nite, before the late night half of Nickolodeon network went ’80’s. Many a Conservative remembers that Richard Nixon went on the show to deliver the deadpan “Sock it to me.” When reading the news of Mr. Martin’s passing I was suprised to find out that he was born in Battle Creek, Michigan.
TV’s ‘Laugh-in’ comic Dick Martin dies at 86
May 24, 2008, 11:51 PM ESTLOS ANGELES (AP) — Dick Martin, the zany half of the comedy team whose “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In” took television by storm in the 1960s, making stars of Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin and creating such national catch-phrases as “Sock it to me!” has died. He was 86.
Martin, who went on to become one of television’s busiest directors after splitting with Dan Rowan in the late 1970s, died Saturday night of respiratory complications at a hospital in Santa Monica, family spokesman Barry Greenberg said.
“He had had some pretty severe respiratory problems for many years, and he had pretty much stopped breathing a week ago,” Greenberg said.
Martin had lost the use of one of his lungs as a teenager, and needed supplemental oxygen for most of the day in his later years.
He was surrounded by family and friends when he died just after 6 p.m., Greenberg said.
[....]
“Laugh-In” astounded audiences and critics alike. For two years the show topped the Nielsen ratings, and its catchphrases— “Sock it to me,” “You bet your sweet bippy” and “Look that up in your Funk and Wagnall’s” — were recited across the country.
This is where I get my oft used phrase, “You bet your sweet bippy.”
Stars such as John Wayne and Kirk Douglas were delighted to make brief appearances, and even Richard Nixon, running for president in 1968, dropped in to shout a befuddled sounding, “Sock it to me!” His opponent, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, was offered equal time but declined because his handlers thought it would appear undignified.
Rowan and Martin landed the show just as their comedy partnership was approaching its zenith and the nation’s counterculture was expanding into the mainstream.
Born into a middle-class family in Battle Creek, Mich., Martin had worked in a Ford auto assembly plant after high school. [more here]
“I hear governor Reagan is really worried about earthquakes in California. He’s afraid Berkley might shift even further to the left…”
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