Comic would close out his wild act in smashing fashion
Gallagher, who became one of the most recognizable comedians of the 1980s for an outrageous act that always concluded with him smashing a watermelon with a sledgehammer, died Friday at his home in Palm Springs, California. He was 76.
His death was confirmed by his longtime former manager, Craig Marquardo, who said the cause was organ failure after “numerous heart attacks” over the course of Gallagher’s life.
The self-proclaimed “Wizard of Odd,” Gallagher — his first name was Leo, although for many years he refused to reveal it — said his job was to “yell at the world.” To the thousands of his front-row fans who were honored, or at least not visibly offended, by being splattered with cantaloupes, cottage cheese and all manner of other groceries, Gallagher offered himself as an exuberant release from life’s strains.
In a 1984 interview with The Miami Herald, he spoke of people’s worries about money, family and responsibilities.
“If you make fun of it, the people laugh,” he said. “They release the tension and are somehow healed — a bit.”
In addition to reaching the rarefied position of going by just one name like Cher or Madonna, Gallagher was the star of more than a dozen one-man specials on Showtime and a series of Budweiser commercials, including one in which he used a watermelon as a bowling ball. He played more than 100 concert dates a year for more than 30 years, obliterating more than 15,000 melons.
Adorned with a
mustache, shoulder-length hair and, for much of his career, a cap or beret, he wrote his own jokes and traveled with 15 footlockers of props, among them a “handgun” that fired plastic hands.
Gallagher named his celebrated sledgehammer the Sledge-O-Matic, a play on the Veg-O-Matic, the gadget for slicing and dicing fruits and vegetables in one stroke that was ballyhooed in countless television commercials in the 1960s and ’70s. His message: “Why don’t you hit it with a hammer if you want it in little pieces?”
Much of Gallagher’s humor was based on wordplay. (“I don’t know why they say you have a baby. The baby has you.” “If pro is the opposite of con, is progress the opposite of Congress?”) But he also prided himself on being outrageous and even offensive, defying political correctness. (Deaf people, he said, should be required to live near airports.)
Many people, especially in his later years, felt his jokes about racial groups, gay people and women crossed a line.
In 2011, Gallagher was a guest on his fellow comedian
Marc Maron’s podcast but walked out when Maron asked him about such jokes. Some critics agreed that his act had gone too far. But he never toned it down.
Leo Anthony Gallagher Jr. was born in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on July 24, 1946. He lived in Ohio until he was around 10, when his family moved to Tampa, Florida. His father owned a roller-skating rink, and young Leo became a regional skating champion.
His rise to fame was slow but steady. In the early 1970s he became a regular at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles. He appeared on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” in 1975. Two years later he was featured on the HBO “Young Comedians Special.” His first Showtime special, “Gallagher: An Uncensored Evening,” aired in 1980.
Gallagher announced his retirement from the road after suffering two heart attacks in 2012, but he later toured until the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Gallagher was twice divorced. In addition to his brother Ron, his survivors include his son, Barnaby; his daughter, Aimee Gallagher; and two grandchildren.