Don Rickles, aggressively caustic comedian dubbed ‘Mr. Warmth,’ dies at 90
LOS ANGELES — Don Rickles was just another little-known comic working a small club in Miami Beach in the 1950s when Frank Sinatra came in with his entourage.
“Make yourself comfortable, Frank — hit somebody,” said Rickles as the notoriously moody singer paused, and then broke into laughter.
Without missing a beat, Rickles hit the accelerator. “Frank, believe me, I’m telling you this as a friend: Your voice is gone.”
Using insult as his weapon of choice and a quick, knowing smirk as his defense, Rickles delighted audiences from sold-out Vegas showrooms to late-night TV to Hollywood roasts with a brand of aggressively caustic humor that targeted everyone from unknown “hockey pucks” to big-name celebrities.
Everyone was fair game for Rickles.
Rickles, who continued to headline lounges and concert halls well into his 80s, died Thursday at his home in Los Angeles as a result of kidney failure, his publicist, Paul Shefrin, said. He was 90.
Rickles rocketed into the spotlight after comics like Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl had softened America to a riskier brand of humor, and helped opened the gates for the edgy, harsh-as-sandpaper acts of Sam Kinison and others who would follow.
Age didn’t seem to slow Rickles or mellow his humor, as a Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter discovered during a Rickles performance in 1998 at the Desert Inn when the “King of Zing” was 72.
To the strains of a bullfight trumpet fanfare as the curtain rose and a spotlight trained on center stage, Rickles unexpectedly burst through a side door and immediately began pelting his audience with insults as he made his way to the stage.
“Sit up,” he said to one audience member.
“Who picks out your clothes, Ray Charles?” he said to another.
“Look at the old broad,” he said. “I’m workin’ a home here!”
Well into the era of political correctness, Rickles continued his trademark jabs at everything from audience members’ weight problems to their ethnicities.
“There’s a real Italian; you can smell the oil right here,” he said onstage at the Stardust in Las Vegas in 2006, when he was 80. “There’s a definite odor in this area. Like a Polack gone bad . ...
“Hey, lady, this is what you’re gonna hear. If you’re waitin’ for Billy Graham to come in and make a kid walk again, forget about it.”
Sinatra, who took to affectionately calling Rickles “Bullethead,” became one of the comic’s biggest boosters.
While Rickles was having drinks at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas some time later, his date for the evening excitedly noticed that Sinatra had arrived and was seated in a roped-off section with some celebrity friends. After his date said she didn’t believe that he knew Sinatra, Rickles excused himself and secretly went over to Sinatra’s table.
Whispering to the legendary singer, Rickles asked if he’d do a favor for him to impress the woman he was with: Just come over and say, “Hello, Don.”
Ten minutes later, a beaming Sinatra ambled over to Rickles’ table and said, “Don! How the hell are you?”
Rickles looked at him and in a loud voice said, “Not now, Frank! Can’t you see I’m with somebody?”
As he wrote in “Rickles’ Book,” his 2007 memoir: “Everyone stopped talking. Everyone stared at us. Time stopped. And then, God bless him, Frank fell down laughing.”