Rip Taylor was an American comedian and actor.
His comedy career started when he joined the U.S. Army and started to perform in clubs around the world where he developed a signature bit where he would cry and beg for the audience to laugh.
Throughout the ’70s and ’80s, he performed his stand-up act on The Merv Griffin Show, The Dean Martin Show, Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, among many other shows. Taylor also made regular appearances as a celebrity panelist on The Hollywood Squares, To Tell the Truth, Match Game, and as a judge on The Gong Show. That show’s host and creator, Chuck Barris, was so impressed by Taylor that he offered him the position of host of The $1.98 Beauty Show. Each episode of the show, which aired from 1978 to 1980, would end with Taylor offering a bouquet of rotten vegetables and $1.98 in coins to the winner while saying, “You win the prize, you take the cake. You get the crown and a dollar ninety-eight.”
He appeared on stage in Anything Goes, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Sugar Babies, where he took over for Mickey Rooney. He portrayed Fagin in Oliver! and Captain Hook in Peter Pan. Taylor also wrote and performed an autobiographical one-man play called It Ain’t All Confetti, referring to Taylor’s penchant for showering his audiences with confetti.
He played himself in Wayne’s World 2 and in the Jackass movie franchise, appearing in Jackass: The Movie, Jackass Number Two, and Jackass 3D.
Taylor died October 6, 2019, in Beverly Hills, California. He was 88.
