The Definitive Guide to Comedy
Manjunath Naidu, an Indian stand-up comedian born in Abu Dhabi, collapsed and died onstage during a performance over the weekend in Dubai. Naidu was only 36. Known by friends as Mango (he jokingly signed a Facebook post in March with “MANGO 🍍🍍 (ps where the hell is the mango emoji …
Rip Torn was not a comedian, per se. Torn was a Texan, though, true and through. Born Elmore Rual Torn, Jr. on Feb. 6, 1931 in Temple, Texas, by Thelma Mary (Spacek) and Elmore Rual Torn, Sr., who gave their son the nickname of “Rip,” which was his daddy’s nickname, …
Aspiring TV comedy writers have a new career path open to them, thanks to the new Eunetta T. Boone Comedy Writer’s Scholarship, established by the Disney Channel. Finalists will be chosen for the scholarship from the general pool of applicants to the Walt Disney Television Writing Program. Boone, the executive …
One star was painfully absent from this year’s Still Laugh-In tribute on Netflix, and that’s because Arte Johnson was in too much pain and sickness to attend. Johnson died today. He was 90. He had previously beaten back non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but a few years ago came down with bladder and …
Sammy Shore, the stand-up comedian who founded The Comedy Store in West Hollywood with his wife Mitzi in 1972 before giving her complete ownership in their divorce two years later, has died. Shore was 92. He was surrounded by his current wife and family in his home in Las Vegas …
Tim Conway, simply one of the funniest individuals to perform on television, has died after a long illness. Conway was 85. Born in 1933 outside of Cleveland, Thomas Daniel “Tim” Conway began his career as a radio disc jockey at Bowling Green University, where he studied in the 1950s before …
English stand-up comedian Ian Cognito died Thursday night while performing a gig onstage in the town of Bicester, suffering a fatal heart attack. Cognito was 60. In this clip of Cognito from 2012, when he was 53, he joked about his declining health, aging, and followed a rape joke by …
Brody Stevens was bombing, but all of the comedians were howling. I could’ve been talking about a show last week, or last year, but this was also the case the first time I saw Steven Brody Stevens perform live, onstage at the weekly open mics at Seattle’s Comedy Underground in …
Comedic actress and director Penny Marshall has died. Marshall was 75. She died peacefully Monday night in her Hollywood Hills home, from complications due to diabetes. You might not have guessed the kid sister of Garry Marshall would grow up to be an icon. But just as the lyrics to …
The comedian Coolaide, a Detroit native who performed on BET’s ComicView and Bill Bellamy’s Who’s Got Jokes? and was touring with Lil Duval, died earlier this month after living with cancer for the past five years. As Coolaide himself said in a recent video message before he died: “Take advantage …
