Rodney Dangerfield

The Aluminum Salesman Who Arrived Late

Jacob Rodney Cohen sold siding in New Jersey before becoming the guy who got no respect. He was 40 years old, with a sense of failure that showed on his face. It wasn't his first try in show business, since he had already tested his luck as Jack Roy, but the industry turned its back on him again and again.

In the late 1950s he decided to give it all up to support his family. He worked as a salesman and stayed off the stage for more than a decade. But the itch for comedy doesn't just go away.

In 1967, he appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, and the entire country watched a sweaty man nervously adjusting his red tie. Rodney Dangerfield didn't fake that anxiety. He knew audiences can smell desperation, so he decided to turn his own insecurity into a gold mine.

Comedy was a matter of survival.

He opened his own club in New York called Dangerfield's so he wouldn't have to depend on the decisions of other club owners. It was there that he perfected his style of short punchlines and quick comebacks. He wasn't after the long anecdote or clever humor. He wanted a direct hit right on the audience's jaw.

The Box Office Hit of the Eighties

Movies came calling late, but he crashed into the industry like a bull in a china shop. In 1980 he made Caddyshack and managed to steal the screen from Bill Murray and Chevy Chase. Nearly all of his lines were pure improvisation. Dangerfield was an outsider at the country club in the film, and that connected with the working-class audiences who paid their admission.

He was paid only $35,000 for that role. But the buzz around his character allowed him to demand million-dollar salaries for his next projects. In 1983, he wrote and starred in Easy Money, where he played an ordinary guy who had to give up his vices to inherit a fortune.

And the gamble paid off.

In 1986, he released Back to School, and the movie became one of the biggest box office hits of that summer. He played a self-made millionaire who enrolled in college to support his son. The script was packed with jokes that fired off like machine-gun bullets.

The audience was dying laughing.

Despite his image as a funny, bumbling man, Dangerfield had complete control over his material. He wrote his jokes on scraps of paper that he kept in his pockets. He was a master of the one-liner who didn't let a single word go to waste in his performances.

The Dark Turn and the Silence

Oliver Stone decided to break the actor's comedic image in 1994. He cast him as the abusive father in Natural Born Killers, and the result was disturbing for many of his fans. Dangerfield accepted the challenge because he understood human pain and misery better than any method actor in Hollywood.

In 1997, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences rejected him for membership, deeming that he lacked sufficient artistic merit. Dangerfield responded with his usual sarcasm and kept selling out theaters in Las Vegas. He never sought the approval of specialized critics, but rather the laughter of the everyday guy who spends his paycheck on a movie ticket.

In his final years, he took on minor projects and provided voices for animated films such as Rover Dangerfield in 1991. He kept working until his body said enough. In 2004, he was admitted to the hospital for heart surgery, and he took the opportunity to joke with the doctors about his health.

He spent 18 hours in a coma before passing away.

He died on October 5, 2004 at UCLA Medical Center from complications following heart valve replacement surgery. He was buried at Westwood Village Memorial Park with an epitaph that simply reads: Rodney Dangerfield. The neighborhood is there.