# Was Don Rickles Ever Funny?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-don-rickles-ever-funny/140629
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [December 5, 2002, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-don-rickles-ever-funny/140629 "2002-12-05T04:12:45Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2002, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-don-rickles-ever-funny/140629/1 "2002-12-05T04:12:45Z")
Other than in the _Toy Story_ movies? He’s shilling for trashbags, doing his Constipated Old Man[sup]TM[/sup] routine, and I just don’t find it funny. In fact, other than in the _Toy Story_ movies I have **never** found him to be funny. Is he like Buddy Hackett who sucked in most of the comedic roles he’s been given, but is hysterical in stand up? Or is he just one of those folks who somehow manages to have a career inspite of how untalented he is?
---
### Author:  [@FallenAngel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FallenAngel)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2002, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-don-rickles-ever-funny/140629/2 "2002-12-05T05:22:58Z")
I’m not certain, but I think he was a standup in the Red Fox era, and was considered pretty funny, particularly as an innovator in the “insult” comedy genre.
I did like a lot of his stuff in the Dean Martin roasts, and his old TV show CPO Sharky was one of my favorites. Granted, I was five or six years old when it was on, and I haven’t seen it since, but I liked it back then.
---
### Author:  [@FallenAngel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FallenAngel)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2002, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-don-rickles-ever-funny/140629/3 "2002-12-05T05:26:22Z")
and for the love of all that’s evil, I **CANNOT BELIEVE** I just wasted my 666 post on this topic.
---
### Author:  [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2002, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-don-rickles-ever-funny/140629/4 "2002-12-05T05:29:00Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by FallenAngel \*
> \*\*and for the love of all that’s evil, I **CANNOT BELIEVE** I just wasted my 666 post on this topic. \*\*
ROTFLMAO!!!
---
### Author:  [@Muad\_Dib](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muad_Dib)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2002, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-don-rickles-ever-funny/140629/5 "2002-12-05T06:41:15Z")
The man’s comedy comes from a different era. He is from a “Take my wife… Please!” 1950’s comedy. Bob Newhart is one of the comedians who really changed all of that. He said that the best way to describe the difference between the stand-up comedy of then and now is that then you could steal someone’s act and no one would care. It is not that it was not considered immoral, but that the “acts” were all mainly one-liners and throw-away jokes. Any one could do them and they were not at all personalized. However, if you were to take something from Bill Cosby, or Robin Williams, it would not work because it would not sound right. The comedy is to connected to the comedians lives and personalities. Newhart used to tell funny stories about growing up Catholic, Someone else could not really take that without people caring. It is Newhart’s. It sort of belongs to him in a way that most of the comedy before did not.
---
### Author:  [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2002, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-don-rickles-ever-funny/140629/6 "2002-12-05T06:48:34Z")
Don’t quite get your point, **Muad’Dib**. I find the Marx brothers funny, I find Laurel and Hardy funny, I find Henny Youngman funny, I do not find Rickles funny at all.
---
### Author:  [@I\_am\_Sparticus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_am_Sparticus)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2002, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-don-rickles-ever-funny/140629/7 "2002-12-05T07:26:19Z")
Well, before Rickles, Groucho was a big insult comic. Groucho’s thing was innuendo. Rickles and his generation shocked the hell out of a very genteel 50s and 60s lounge going world by being absolutely awfully rude and in a Vegas club he was really outrageous for the day. But what he does has been incorporated into most comedy acts today. He will still blow you away live with his ridicule routine it is so insulting, and you don’t really see it on TV appearances. My folks hate, hate, hate Rickles. I don’t really care for it because it lacks any self-deprecation at all, but it is really a matter of personal comedy tastes. I didn’t find Henny Youngman funny in the slightest. Sometimes Rickles surprises me and gets a chuckle. A guilty chuckle.
---
### Author:  [@Muad\_Dib](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muad_Dib)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2002, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-don-rickles-ever-funny/140629/8 "2002-12-05T07:31:49Z")
I also don’t like Rickles because he tends to have a racsist edge to his insults. I don’t know if he is actually racsist, or if he is just a product of his times, but I saw him perform live once and I was very uncomfortable. So was the rest of the audiance, you could tell it was a forced laughter, trying to be polite to this man they were told is a legend.
---
### Author:  [@MyFootsZZZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MyFootsZZZ)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2002, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-don-rickles-ever-funny/140629/9 "2002-12-05T07:47:28Z")
Rodney Dangerfield sucks too
---
### Author:  [@PhiloVance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhiloVance)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2002, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-don-rickles-ever-funny/140629/10 "2002-12-05T08:01:12Z")
I remember hearing a recording of Newhart’s “The Driving Instructor”, wherein he plays a very nervous driving instructor (easy for him) teaching an equally nervious and jumpy woman. That was hilarious. Of course I watched both his TV shows. 🙂
I have to agree, I find Rickles and Dangerfield both boorish and obnoxious.
---
### Author:  [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2002, 8:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-don-rickles-ever-funny/140629/11 "2002-12-05T08:31:24Z")
I haven’t seen any of his stuff in a long time, but used to find him really funny. I love a good insult comic, and he was the King of that sort of schtick, once upon a time. Yeah, his stuff was incredibly racist, but he’d go out of his way to include every imaginable minority one way or another, which helped take the edge off. But, like I said, I haven’t seen any of his routines in years and years, and I might be more sensitive to that sort of thing than I was when I was fifteen.
---
### Author:  [@Muad\_Dib](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muad_Dib)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2002, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-don-rickles-ever-funny/140629/12 "2002-12-05T08:53:35Z")
That is the word I was looking for! **schtick**! He came from an era where comedians did not have acts, they had schticks, and people now-a-days don’t find that nearly as funny.
---
### Author:  [@Cholo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cholo)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2002, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-don-rickles-ever-funny/140629/13 "2002-12-05T12:15:40Z")
I’ve always liked Rickles. Then again, I like comedians who push the envelope…Carlin, Hicks, Kinison, Schimmel…etc. etc. Rickles was the KING of the Dean Martin roasts.
By the way, I liked Rickles in “Kelly’s Heroes”.
---
### Author:  [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2002, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-don-rickles-ever-funny/140629/14 "2002-12-05T13:19:51Z")
I found his act’s coda (pious words to the effect that he intended to hurt no one, that he has great love for people everywhere, etc) particularly lame.
---
### Author:  [@riserius1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/riserius1)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2002, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-don-rickles-ever-funny/140629/15 "2002-12-05T13:34:11Z")
Don Rickles’ _schtick_ ,if you must refer to it that way, was “insult comedy”. That is, he insulted people. People in his audience, people sharing the stage with him; anything goes, no one is safe. The neat thing is that, within that context, he was a master improv artist. He was absolutely brilliant as far as taking people’s faults and weaknesses and utterly playing on them. Admittedly, that could be an acquired taste, depending on your sensitivity. It should be noted that several latter-day comedians, i.e.,Kinison, Williams, Clay, etc. have dabbled in “insult comedy”, but they had other “bits” to fall back on, and unlike Rickles(who would apologize at the end of every performance and thank the crowd profusely for being good sports), seem to genuinely feel much contempt for their respective audiences.
Rickles’ various sitcom appearances were extremely toned down, to the point where it would be very difficult to see where the humor was. If you can catch some of his Tonight show appearances in reruns you’ll get a much better picutre of why this guy was so brilliant.
Besides, anyone who could insult Frank Sinatra the way HE did and live to tell the tale has got to be doing something right!
Chris W
---
### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2002, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-don-rickles-ever-funny/140629/16 "2002-12-05T13:38:41Z")
It’s true, Rickles in his prime could get you laughing at the same time you were regretting it with his machine-gun insult style.
But if you ever get a chance, watch the “Blooper” tapes of him and Don Adams in outtakes froim “Get Smart” – they break each other up so many times they couldn’t get a good “take”
He’s had some good roles. He was _great_ as the inept elevator mugger on “The Dick van Dyke Show”. I seem to recall his own TV series as not too bad (He had a variety show circa 1970, and a sitcom “CPO Sharkey”).
---
### Author:  [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2002, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-don-rickles-ever-funny/140629/17 "2002-12-05T14:18:42Z")
Rickles, Alan King, Henny Youngman, Redd Foxx.
As a kid in the 60s and 70s, I loved them all.
What a great time for TV - with all the variety shows and specials, roasts, etc.
Never quite appreciated many of the 50s TV greats as much - Sid Ceasar, Uncle Milty, tho Jack Benny and George Burns killed.
But stretching back further, big fan of L&H, Marx Bros.
Now talking about non-funny comedians - what explains Bob Hope?
---
### Author:  [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2002, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-don-rickles-ever-funny/140629/18 "2002-12-05T14:28:54Z")
Hey!
Let’s not brush off 1950s comedy: Lenny Bruce, Elaine May and Mike Nichols, Ernie Kovacs, Carl Reiner, Mort Sahl—not to be sneezed at!
---
### Author:  [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2002, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-don-rickles-ever-funny/140629/19 "2002-12-05T15:40:44Z")
Eve - good thing I’ve got plenty of tissues ready! 😉
---
### Author:  [@thermalribbon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thermalribbon)
#### Post date: [December 5, 2002, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-don-rickles-ever-funny/140629/20 "2002-12-05T17:59:58Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Tuckerfan \*
> \*\*Other than in the _Toy Story_ movies? He’s shilling for trashbags, doing his Constipated Old Man[sup]TM[/sup] routine, and I just don’t find it funny. In fact, other than in the _Toy Story_ movies I have **never** found him to be funny. Is he like Buddy Hackett who sucked in most of the comedic roles he’s been given, but is hysterical in stand up? Or is he just one of those folks who somehow manages to have a career inspite of how untalented he is? \*\*
Maybe the question ought to be whether or not Tuckerfan has ever had a sense of humor?
Rickles is fucking hilarious. Same with Youngman, Dangerfield, Foxx, Hackett etc…
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-don-rickles-ever-funny/140629.md?page=2)