STAND-UP COMEDIAN, TV HOST, EMMY-WINNING ACTOR
LOUIE ANDERSON • 1953-2022
Louie Anderson, the genial stand-up comedian, actor and television host who won an Emmy Award for his work on the series “Baskets” and two Daytime Emmys for his animated children’s show, “Life With Louie,” died Friday in Las Vegas. He was 68.
His death, at a hospital, was confirmed by his longtime publicist, Glenn Schwartz, who said the cause was complications of diffuse large B cell lymphoma, a form of blood cancer.
In an entertainment career that spanned more than four decades, Anderson had a self-deprecating style that won him legions of fans, among them Henny Youngman and Johnny Carson, whose early support catapulted him to stardom.
In 1981, Anderson was among the top finishers at a comedy competition hosted by Youngman, who subsequently hired him as a writer.
Anderson made his national television debut on “The Tonight Show” with Carson in 1984, and, as comedians say, he killed. The routine was heavy on jokes about his own weight (which topped 300 pounds at times), and he had the audience roaring from his opening deadpan line: “I can’t stay long. I’m in between meals.”
Afterward, Carson brought him out for a second bow, a rarity for comics and especially for ones making their debut.
He went from earning $500 a week for his stand-up work to making twice that in one night, he said. And film and television work started coming his way, including small roles in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” (1986) and “Coming to America” (1988). In 1987 Showtime broadcast a comedy special that captured him in performance at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.
“In an age when comedians rely on desperation measures to establish a performing identity — think of Howie Mandel indulging in infantile screaming or Sam Kinison feigning a nervous breakdown — Mr. Anderson has developed a low-keyed act that could fit comfortably into the category of family entertainment,” John J. O’Connor wrote in reviewing that show for The New York Times.
That would be his bread and butter for his whole career, although he took it in interesting directions. “Life With Louie,” which ran from 1994 to 1998 and won him Daytime Emmys in 1997 and 1998 as outstanding performer in an animated program, was a savvy children’s show that also had an adult following; its title character, a child, dealt with an assortment of problems at home and on the playground.
On “Baskets,” an acclaimed comic drama that ran from 2016 to 2019 and starred Zach Galifianakis, Anderson, in drag, played the mother of twin brothers played by Galifianakis. Anderson was nominated for the supporting actor Emmy for the role three times, winning in 2016.
Louis Perry Anderson was born March 24, 1953, in St. Paul, Minn. He graduated from high school in St. Paul and had a job counseling troubled youths when his career path changed as a result of a dare.
“I went out one night with some guys from work and we saw a couple of comedians,” he recounted in a 1987 interview with The Post-Standard of Syracuse, N.Y. “I remarked that neither one of them was very funny, and everybody began telling me to get up there myself if I thought I could do it better.
“The joke kind of escalated over time,” he continued, “and finally one night, I did get up onstage. Once I did, I discovered that I liked it a lot. I have been doing it ever since.”