Comedian rose from Borscht Belt to Carson

Mangled words with great extinction

Norm Crosby, a comedian who mangled words with great extinction, drawing standing ovulations for more than four decades with his fractured English, scrambled syntax and marvellous malapropisms, died Nov. 7 in Los Angeles. He was 93, but his work, as he might have said, was sure to live on in posterior.

As a novice comedian in the 1950s, Crosby developed his act using material he saw on The Ed Sullivan Show, borrowing from comedians such as Red Buttons, Buddy Hackett and Jan Murray. It wasn't quite stealing, he later said, but was far from original.

He began developing a series of deliberately mixedup phrases: “President Johnson declared war on puberty” and “singers sing from their diagrams.”

Crosby went on to perform on the Borscht Circuit before moving on to Las Vegas and TV programs hosted by Garry Moore, Mike Douglas, Dinah Shore, Merv Griffin, Ed Sullivan and Glen Campbell.

He was also a regular on the Johnny Carson and Dean Martin shows. He once praised Martin as someone with “a certain inner flux … There's an aura of marination that radiates out of him … Men don't have the kind of apathy for women like Dean does.”

Crosby was at many of Martin's celebrity roasts, lampooning figures such as Sen. Barry Goldwater (“a man of depth, of perversion … his rise to fame was vitriolic”) and Kirk Douglas (“he should be raised to a pinochle”).

He also appeared on game shows such as Liar's Club and Hollywood Squares, and hosted The Comedy Shop, a showcase for veteran comedians such as Don Rickles and Jim Nabors and relative newcomers such as Jay Leno, Brad Garrett, Michael Keaton and Nathan Lane.

Crosby lent his talents to charitable causes, co-hosting Jerry Lewis's annual Labour Day telethon. As spokesman for the Better Hearing Institute, it was more personal: He had developed a hearing problem while in the Coast Guard, subjected to the noise from anti-sub depth charges.

Crosby drew on his hearing problems for material. On a Tonight Show appearance he told Carson that he had a “wonderful new hearing aid” and was asked, “What kind?”

He replied without missing a beat: “About a quarter to 11.”

Norm Crosby