BOB SAGET’S BIG FILTHY HEART
In the late 1980s, comedian Bob Saget became a household name on the ABC sitcom “Full House,” playing Danny Tanner, an earnest, widowed father of three. That persona followed him as he also took the helm of “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” providing strictly familyfriendly commentary.
But Saget — who was found dead in an Orlando hotel room on Sunday at the age of 65 — was also famous in showbiz circles and among comedy fans for his raunchy stand-up act and bawdy sense of humor. He loved to shock audiences expecting dad jokes with expletives and off-color material about sex and drugs.
“I saw Bob on HBO’s Rodney Dangerfield special 30 years ago,” Doug Ellin, the creator of “Entourage,” told The Post.
“He was this comic that was kind of dirty, and then he did ‘Full House.’ ”
Around 2004, before he even met Saget, Ellin scripted a hyperbolic version of the comic as a washed-up, hooker-loving womanizer living in a one-bedroom apartment for his HBO hit.
“We had lunch and he said, ‘I’ll do anything you say except for play broke. Hookers or drugs? Yeah, that’s fine. But I don’t want to be broke.’
“There was no sensitivity to anything else, but being successful was important to him,” said Ellin, who called Saget “gracious, sweet and incredibly smart.”
The role on a Season Two episode of “Entourage” — and Saget’s 2005 turn in the filthy comedy documentary “The Aristocrats,” about a long-running dirty joke infamous among comedians — took a jackhammer to his sitcom-dad image, both shocking and endearing fans, especially a younger audience.
“I remember when ‘The Aristocrats’ came out — people couldn’t believe Bob Saget was talking that way,” his friend and fellow comedian Gilbert Gottfried told The Post. “But for the people who knew him, you can’t believe he talked any other way.”
In his 2014 memoir, “Dirty Daddy: The Chronicles of a Family Man Turned Filthy Comedian,” he wrote of his frustration of being typecast and asked mentor and stand-up legend Dangerfield for advice.
“I told him I was sick of only doing ‘family stuff ’ and wanted to move into edgier comedy but I was concerned it was too late because people have a way of branding you with what they perceive you to be,” Saget wrote.
In 1998, while promoting the movie “Dirty Work,” which he directed, Saget told Howard Stern how he shocked live audiences while doing standup.
“I’m like filthy right now . . . All I want to do is curse and fall down, because I’ve been on 8 o’clock television so long. It’s like comedy Tourette’s. That’s what I’m like though.” he wrote.
“I was even filthy while I would do the shows,” Saget said of filming “Full House” and “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”
“I would get onstage and curse and stuff and people’s hair would, like, burn. ‘Children of the Corn,’ their eyes would roll back. ‘It’s Michelle’s daddy, no!’ ”
‘I guess we got high’
Born in Philadelphia, Saget moved to Norfolk, Va., then to Encino, Calif., and back to a Philly suburb, where he graduated high school. He wrote how he planned to become a doctor. But one teacher, Mrs. Zimmerman, intervened, telling him, “Do not become a doctor. You need to make movies and perform and write. You need to make people laugh.”
He changed his major at Temple University to documentary filmmaking and then hit the comedy circuit.
In 1987, he landed his big break on “Full House,” alongside friends John Stamos and Dave Coulier, the latter of whom’s impressive flatulence Saget regularly referenced in his memoir.
Behind the scenes, the trio cracked raunchy, juvenile jokes and even raided the prop closet to do whippits while the crew filmed scenes for the birthday party of Michelle Tanner (played in alternating stints by twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen).
“I grabbed Dave and John and we went into the prop room backstage and locked the door . . . I swung open the refrigerator, and behold! Six cans of whipped cream. Reddi-wip,” Saget wrote.
“Nitrous oxide is dangerous. Can cause brain damage . . . Dave and John followed my lead and we inhaled the little bit of air still left in the cans that were meant for Michelle’s birthday cake scene.
“I guess we got high, don’t think so though. It was hard to tell, ‘cause we were in a hurry and whipped cream started squirting everywhere.”
But Saget wasn’t really one for getting high. He admitted to trying cocaine, but wrote, “I’m antidrugs, except the ones I take for cholesterol, anxiety, a sleep disorder and tranquilizing animals.”
In 1982, he married high-school sweetheart Sherri Kramer. They went on to have three daughters, Jennifer, Aubrey and Lara. But the pair divorced in 1997, and Saget told Stern, “We weren’t happy together.”
He added: “The last couple years of our marriage I was more of a flirter than I’d ever been in my life . . . it wasn’t about me be
ing famous, it was about me being an idiot.”
He admitted to Stern that he dated women as young as their 20s. In 2018, he married TV host Kelly Rizzo, 23 years his junior.
For many years, he leaned into the bachelor life and engaged in risky behavior by drinking and driving.
“I was a fool. One of those idiots who brags to people while intoxicated, that he can drive better when he’s drunk,” he wrote. “I repeatedly committed a sin against humanity: drinking and driving . . . I was divorced, dumb, sometimes drunk and the luckiest asshole in the world for not doing anything that wound up hurting anyone.”
In 2003, Saget blacked out while driving and rolled up on a curb. He quit drinking and driving cold turkey after a cop pulled him over for speeding on the Pacific Coast Highway, a trip he was making to retrieve his youngest daughter’s stuffed bunny she left behind at her mother’s home. The cop let him off with a warning.
“To this day, I’m appreciative of his compassion,” Saget said.
Family tragedy
Compassion was a virtue that also helped define Saget, whose family hardships and tragedies influenced his work.
At 21, he won a Student Academy Award for a black-and-white short, “Through Adam’s Eyes,” which followed his 7-year-old nephew’s facial reconstruction surgery.
He lost his sister Andi at age 34 to a brain aneurysm. In 1994, sister Gay died, at 44, of scleroderma, a rare disease that results in the hardening of body tissue.
Two years later, Saget directed a television movie on ABC called “For Hope” about a woman stricken with the then-largely unknown disease in the prime of her life. It was loosely based on his family’s experience and helped raise awareness for the destructive condition.
He joined the board of the Scleroderma Research Foundation and threw charity events that drew comedy A-listers like Robin Williams, Billy Crystal and Jimmy Fallon.
“That charity meant so much to him, and it was a beautiful event every year,” said Ellin, whom Saget roasted for the TV producer’s 46th birthday.
Saget also wrote that losing sisters and several uncles — he told Stern that three of his uncles died of heart attacks before the age of 40 — made him “obsessed with death” at a young age.
“As you now know, many of my relatives died young,” he wrote in his memoir. “I never pictured myself making it past my fifties.”
“I know he was 65, but he just seemed so young,” said Ellin.
And although he shed many of his Danny Tannerisms, he reprised his role in the 2016 Netflix reboot, “Fuller House.”
By all accounts, he was devoted to both his on-screen and real-life daughters. “He had a very good relationship with his daughters,” said Gottfried, adding that he was also protective of the Olsen twins.
TV writer Alan Zweibel first met Saget in 1986 while working on “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show,” noting he was “very sensitive” and “ended every conversation with ‘I love you.’ ”
“Saget loved his role on ‘Full House.’ He loved every second of it — because he got to be a dad,” Zweibel told The Post. “His e-mail address was Bobbydaddy.”
At the time of his death, Saget was on a 22-city comedy tour.
A devastated Gottfried spoke to his friend just a week ago.
“He certainly seemed happy,” Gottfried said. “He was happy about going out on the road more and having a direct connection with the audience. He was happy with how the previous show went. We said, ‘I love you.’ ”