Rip Taylor

Rip Taylor
Taylor in the Green Room at the Marilyn Monroe Theatre after Jack Betts' performance in Barrymore in November 2010
Birth name	Charles Elmer Taylor, Jr.
Born	(1935-01-13) January 13, 1935 (age 82) Washington, D.C., US
Nationality	American
Years active	1961–present
Genres	Stand-up
Spouse	Rusty Rowe (div.)
Website	http://www.riptaylor.com/

Charles Elmer "Rip" Taylor, Jr. (born January 13, 1935) is an American actor and comedian. He is known for his exuberance and flamboyant personality, including his wild moustache and his habit of showering himself (and others) with confetti.

Taylor was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Elizabeth, a waitress, and Charles Elmer Taylor, Sr., a musician. As described in his 2010 one-man show It Ain't All Confetti, Taylor had a tough childhood, which included being molested while in foster care and having to deal with bullies in school. As a young man, Taylor worked as a Congressional page before serving in the Korean War while in the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

Rip Taylor's career in show business began after he joined the US Navy, where he started performing stand-up in clubs and restaurants abroad. Although a lot of his material were jokes stolen from acts he saw in USO shows, his signature piece would be to pretend to cry as he begged the audience to laugh. From there, he was able to land a spot on the Ed Sullivan TV show, making close to 20 appearances. According to Taylor, Ed Sullivan would forget his name but used to say, "Get me the crying comedian."

In addition to the Ed Sullivan Show, Taylor appeared on The Jackie Gleason Show in several guest appearances during the 1963-64 season as "the crying comedian."

He appeared in two episodes of The Monkees television series in 1968, as well as having a cameo in 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee in 1969. He continued to work as a voice performer in the 1970s NBC cartoon series Here Comes the Grump (as the title character) and in the second The Addams Family cartoon series (as Uncle Fester).

Throughout the 1970s, Taylor was a frequent celebrity guest panelist on TV game shows such as Hollywood Squares, To Tell the Truth, and The Gong Show, and substituted for Charles Nelson Reilly on The Match Game. He became a regular on Sid and Marty Krofft's Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, playing Sheldon, a sea-genie who lived in a conch shell. In addition, Taylor was also a regular on The Brady Bunch Hour, playing a role of neighbor / performer Jack Merrill. He also hosted a short-lived send-up of beauty pageants called The $1.98 Beauty Show created by Gong Show producer/host Chuck Barris, in 1978. Taylor appeared as a celebrity on the 1990 version of Match Game. In 1979, he was the voice of C.J. from the Hanna-Barbera TV movie Scooby Goes Hollywood. Other appearances include the television show The Kids in the Hall. He was referred to as Uncle Rip by one of the show's characters, Buddy Cole. He also appeared as himself in the movie Wayne's World 2, one of the special guests invited to "WayneStock" after being visited in a dream by Jim Morrison.