Dom DeLuise

The Uncontrollable Laughter of Brooklyn

Dom DeLuise was born in Brooklyn in 1933 and spent much of his childhood watching how food and humor held his Italian family together. Before breaking into film, he studied at the New York School of Performing Arts, but his first serious job was as an orderly at a psychiatric hospital.

That experience gave him a raw perspective on human behavior. In 1961, he made his stage debut in the play The School for Scandal and soon realized that his large frame was a precision tool for comedy.

Television quickly embraced him.

He appeared on Dean Martin's show, where he perfected the character of the clumsy magician who fails at every trick. In 1964, he took part in the series The Entertainers, and his knack for improvisation caught the attention of casting directors looking for supporting actors with real presence.

In 1970, he shot The Twelve Chairs under Mel Brooks's direction. It was the start of a partnership that led to roles in films such as Blazing Saddles from 1974 and Silent Movie from 1976. But his real strength lay in how he got the other actors to go off script because of his fits of laughter.

Career Chaos and Kitchen Adventures

The most lucrative professional partnership of his life was with Burt Reynolds. Together they made The End in 1978 and, shortly after, the hugely popular The Cannonball Run in 1981. In the latter film, he played Victor Prinzi and his alter ego, Captain Chaos, dressed in an orange cape and a flight helmet.

No one could film a serious scene with him.

The bloopers from his films with Reynolds became just as popular as the movies themselves. In 1984, he repeated the formula in Cannonball Run II, earning a salary that exceeded that of many leading actors of the era. But DeLuise did not want to be just the guy who fell off chairs.

And then he discovered that his voice was worth just as much as his face. In 1982, he lent his vocal cords to Jeremy the crow in The Secret of NIMH, and in 1986 he played the mouse Tiger in An American Tail. Don Bluth, the director of these animated films, said Dom was the only actor capable of giving humanity to a cartoon with nothing but his breathing.

Off set, his obsession was cooking. He published his first cookbook, titled Eat This It Will Make You Feel Better, in 1988. It was not a professional cookbook but a collection of anecdotes in which he explained that hunger is the best seasoning for comedy.

Voice Work Years and a Quiet Ending

During the nineties, his pace of live-action work dropped considerably. He preferred to retreat into sound recording studios. In 1994, he voiced a character in A Troll in Central Park and took on recurring roles in animated series such as All Dogs Go to Heaven: The Series between 1996 and 1998.

Despite his health problems, he never stopped working on small projects. In 2004, he lent his voice to an episode of Duck Dodgers, and in 2005 he took part in the comedy Girl Play.

And the bet on his voice paid off.

His last film role came in 2008, when he voiced a character in the movie Delgo. By then he was already suffering from severe breathing problems caused by his weight, along with a cancer diagnosis he had received some time earlier.

He died in his sleep on May 4, 2009 at a hospital in Santa Monica from kidney failure and complications from pancreatic cancer, at the age of 75 years old.