Rip Taylor

Rip Taylor was born Charles Elmer Taylor in Washington, D. C. on January 13, 1934. As a young man he entered show business as a stand-up comedian, diligently playing second- and third-rate burlesque theaters and nightclubs. His original stand-up persona did not include the trademark moustache, toupee, and loud suit. Instead he appeared clean-shaven in an ordinary business suit. His early years followed the conventional path of a stand-up comic: nightclub tours and TV appearances, with a strictly verbal monologue: just jokes, no special material or props. (Sample joke: "[Tonight's emcee] is a very honest man. He worked in a bath house for two years, and never once took a bath.") Rip soon realized that he needed a gimmick, something that would distinguish him from the other stand-ups. He hit upon an everything-happens-to-me routine, where he would recount all the terrible things that bothered him, and deliver each punchline with a sobbing wail. A typical appearance was on the Jackie Gleasonshow: Rip walked on-camera with prop crutches, moaning about the bad drivers he just encountered. Soon Rip Taylor was being billed as "The Crying Comedian." During this period he appeared, as himself, as one of the eligible bachelors on The Dating Game -- punctuating his answers with sobs.

A much more successful gimmick started quite by accident in 1969 at Merv Griffin's show. Rip tore up a script on stage and threw the pieces in a fit of pique. The outburst got a huge audience reaction, prompting the comedian to assault the crowd with confetti at every performance; to wit, when he made his entrance on any given show he would randomly toss handfuls of confetti at audience members from a huge sack before ultimately slinging the entire contents of the sack at the audience- or whoever happened to be nearby. When asked how much confetti he used, he once jested in an interview that "three nuns are tearing it for me 24 hours a day."

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