Ruth Buzzi, the comedian and actress best known for her portrayal of the sharp-tongued, purse-wielding Gladys Ormphby on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In,” has passed away at 88.
Her agent, Mike Eisenstadt, said that Buzzi passed away Thursday at her home in Texas after battling Alzheimer’s and receiving hospice care.
Shortly before her death, her husband, Kent Perkins, shared a message on Facebook, asking fans to share pictures, memories, and cherished moments from her career.
Buzzi’s career spanned 45 years, including stage performances and over 200 television appearances. She won a Golden Globe and was a two-time Emmy nominee for “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In,” which ran from 1968 to 1973. She was the only regular to appear in all six seasons, including the pilot.
Buzzi was first spotted by “Laugh-In” creator and producer George Schlatter when she was playing various characters on “The Steve Allen Comedy Hour.”
Schlatter saw a picture of her dressed as Gladys Ormphby, sitting in a wire mesh trash barrel, clad in drab brown with her bun covered by a hairnet knotted in the middle of her forehead. That image made a deep impact.
“I must admit that the hairnet and the rolled-down stockings did light my fire,” Schlatter wrote in his 2023 memoir “Still Laughing: A Life in Comedy.”
“My favorite Gladys line was when she announced that the day of the office Christmas party, they sent her home early.”
The Gladys character used her purse as a weapon against anyone who bothered her. Her most frequent target was Arte Johnson’s dirty old man character Tyrone F. Horneigh.
“Gladys embodies the overlooked, the downtrodden, the taken for granted, the struggler,” Buzzi told The Connecticut Post in 2018. “So when she fights back, she speaks for everyone who’s been marginalized, reduced to a sex object or otherwise abused. And that’s almost everyone at some time or other.”
Buzzi took her act to the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts in Las Vegas, where she bashed her purse on the heads of entertainment legends like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Lucille Ball, among others.
“I never took my work for granted, nor assumed I deserved more of the credit or spotlight or more pay than anyone else,” Buzzi told The Connecticut Post. “I was just thrilled to drive down the hill to NBC every day as an employed actor with a job to do.”
Love, Peace, and Laughter
Ruth Ann Buzzi was born on July 24, 1936, in Westerly, Rhode Island. Her father, Angelo, was a renowned stone sculptor who ran a gravestone and monument business in Stonington, Connecticut.Buzzi enrolled at the Pasadena Playhouse at age 17 and earned her Actors’ Equity union card during her summer break while touring in a musical and comedy act with singer Rudy Vallee.
With her degree from the College of Theatre Arts in hand, Buzzi moved to New York, where she was immediately hired for a lead role in an off-Broadway musical revue—the first of 19 such shows. But it was just the beginning.
In 1964, she landed her television break on “The Garry Moore Show,” playing Shakundala the Silent, a bumbling magician’s assistant to Dom DeLuise’s character Dominic the Great.
Her varied TV career included appearances on “The Entertainers,” “That Girl,” “The Lost Saucer,” and Lucille Ball’s final sitcom “Life With Lucy,” as well as cameos in music videos with “Weird Al” Yankovic and the B-52’s.
As a voice actor, she took on hundreds of appearances in cartoon series including “The Smurfs,” “Pound Puppies,” “Berenstain Bears,” and “The Angry Beavers.” She was Emmy-nominated for her six-year run as shopkeeper Ruthie on “Sesame Street.”
On the big screen, Buzzi appeared in films such as “Freaky Friday,” “Chu Chu and the Philly Flash,” “The North Avenue Irregulars,” and “The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again.”
She was also part of the original Broadway cast of “Sweet Charity” with Gwen Verdon in 1966.
Buzzi married actor Kent Perkins in 1978. The couple moved from California to Texas in 2003 to live on a ranch near Stephenville.
Buzzi retired from acting in 2021 and suffered a series of strokes the following year. Her husband told The Dallas Morning News in 2023 that she had dementia.
