Alan King, 76; Comic Made Everyday Life’s Predicaments Funny

Alan King, the comedian, character actor, producer and author known for his wry observations on suburbia and life at large, died Sunday. He was 76.

King died in Manhattan’s Sloan-Kettering Medical Center of lung cancer.

With his sly smile and meticulously timed staccato delivery, King delivered sledgehammer blows to such institutions as insurance companies, airlines, the medical profession, politicians, New York’s Long Island Expressway -- which he dubbed 50 years ago as “the world’s largest parking lot” -- and his super-efficient wife, who could make the bed before he returned from a 5 a.m. trip to the bathroom.

Comedian Jerry Stiller, who knew King for more than five decades, described him for Associated Press on Sunday as “a Jewish Will Rogers.” King has also been called “the crabgrass comedian” and “an aggressive Jack Benny.”

Stiller said King “was in touch with what was happening with the world, which is what made him so funny. He always talked about the annoyances of life.”

King discussed the nature of his art in a 1998 interview with Catherine Crier on her Fox News Crier Report: “Comedy is a reflection. We create nothing. We set no styles, no standards. We’re reflections. It’s a distorted mirror in the fun house. We watch society. As society behaves, then we have the ability to make fun of it, to show you -- you’re laughing at yourself.... I think one of the big things about comedy is the ability for the audience to identify.”

With his jut-jaw, take-charge stage persona, King was so cheeky that the first time he was introduced to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, and she said, “How do you do, Mr. King,” he responded: “How do you do, Mrs. Queen.”

After beginning as a stand-up comedian in the Borscht Belt, King worked vaudeville as a warm-up act for such singers as Lena Horne, Billy Eckstine, Tony Martin and Patti Page. After he appeared with Judy Garland at New York’s Palace Theater, with Ed Sullivan in the audience, King became a familiar guest -- tallying 93 visits -- on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

Those appearances on television’s widely popular Sunday night variety hour proved a major breakthrough, King said in a 2002 interview on NBC’s “Today Show,” by providing national exposure and doubling the weekly pay he could command.

Over the next four decades, King appeared in some two dozen television specials and another two dozen motion pictures. He guest-starred on popular television series such as the game shows “What’s My Line?” and “I’ve Got a Secret” and served as guest host of “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.” He took a romantic role on the sitcom “The Golden Girls,” played God on “Murphy Brown” and appeared in dramatic series such as “Law & Order” and “Chicago Hope.”

King produced for film and television as well and is credited with, among others, the movies “Cattle Annie and Little Britches” and “Wolfen” in 1981 and the TV series “The Corner Bar” in 1972 and “The College of Comedy with Alan King” in 1997.

King was also a hit on Broadway as flashy gambler Nathan Detroit in a 1965 revival of “Guys and Dolls” and subsequently as a psychiatrist father in “The Impossible Years.” He co-produced major Broadway shows including “The Lion in Winter” and “Dinner at Eight.”

King also turned his comedy into books -- compiled primarily by authors assembling his tape-recorded anecdotes. The first, written with Kathryn Ryan, was “Anyone Who Owns His Own Home Deserves It” in 1962. Two years later, with Jack Shurman, he published “Help! I’m a Prisoner in a Chinese Bakery,” expanding his subject matter to 13 topics including marriage, doctors and pregnancy. One reviewer found the comments “as funny to read as they are to hear straight from this master comedian’s genial mouth.”

In 1985, King paired with Mimi Sheraton to produce an irreverent cookbook, “Is Salami and Eggs Better than Sex?”

Subsequent books include “Alan King’s Great Jewish Joke Book” and his memoir, “Name Dropping: The Life and Lies of Alan King.”

The comedian was the highly revered abbot of the New York Friars Club, particularly hosting its celebrity roasts, which have recently regained a national television audience through Comedy Central. In recent years, King performed his one-man show about the legendary movie mogul Sam Goldwyn off-Broadway and in London.

And he continued to be much in demand at major nightclubs in New York and Las Vegas. He frequently took the stage at Caesar’s Palace in the 1970s, working with other seasoned nightclub performers -- Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Carol Channing -- modestly introducing them with the line, “I take no chances. Whenever I work here I always have a big-name, big-talent co-star.”

King’s acerbic wit and machine-gun delivery, punctuated by gestures with his customary cigar, fit well in Nevada’s sin city. “I’ve been working here since 1949 because they pay more money here than any man is worth,” he’d say from the Caesar’s stage. “That’s my excuse. What’s yours?”

The eclectic entertainer’s resume shows no hint of failure. Yet despite repeated efforts, King was disappointed that he never landed his own sitcom.

Born Irwin Alan Kniberg, he grew up in the tough neighborhoods of Manhattan’s Lower East Side and Brooklyn’s Williamsburg, learning to defend himself with humor. Also interested in music, as a teenager he played drums and formed a group called Earl Knight and His Musical Knights.

Dropping out of high school, he began working as a stand-up comedian in small burlesque houses and the Catskills, quickly changing his surname to King. He found a mentor and friend in Milton Berle -- who caught the teenager as he walked offstage after imitating Berle. “Kid,” the elder comedian told him as he stuck a giant cigar in the youngster’s mouth, “if you’re going to do me, you better start smoking these things.”

King said he learned by watching a young Danny Thomas that he must talk to his audience rather than “at ‘em, around ‘em and over ‘em” as he had been doing. He switched his act from one-liners to carefully timed, short anecdotes based on personal experience -- mainly his suburban home and family.

He had been married to Jeanette Sprung since 1947, and together they reared three children, Robert, Andrew and Elaine Ray. His wife and children survive. Information was not immediately available on any other survivors or on services.

King credited his family with helping him curb a fondness for drinking and gambling that he developed in Las Vegas.

In the late 1960s, when King was at the height of his career, one son suffered from drug addiction. King blamed himself for spending too much time on his career and philanthropic activities and too little with his family.

“It’s not easy being a father,” he said at the time. “But I’ve been allowed a comeback. The greatest danger is that we see what is happening but we don’t want to see it.”

With King’s help, his son recovered.

But in the 2002 interview on “Today,” King was still answering the question of what he would do differently if he could repeat his life with: “As a parent I’d -- I’d be a better father.”