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Buddy Hackett — news, coverage & facts — IJR

Screen debut

Hackett's movie career began in 1950, with a 10-minute "World of Sports" reel for Columbia Pictures called King of the Pins. The film demonstrated championship bowling techniques, with expert Joe Wilman demonstrating the right way and Hackett (in pantomime) showing the wrong way. There was an anecdote that, because of this appearance, Hackett received an offer from Jules White, head of Columbia's short-subject department, to join the Three Stooges. (Curly Howard had suffered a debilitating stroke in 1946.) Some authors dismissed the Hackett offer as either untrue or unfounded, despite Hackett telling Johnny Carson that it was, in fact, true:

Did I mention that I was offered the job as the third Stooge once? What happened was, Curly was very sick and I was working Billy Gray's Band Box, and Jules White come in [sic] and asked me would I want to be the third Stooge. And I thought about it, and I didn't think that I could take a rake in the eye, you know, and a hammer in the nose and tongs up your nose. And when I see 'em once pull your tongue with the pliers, I said, boy, you're gonna miss a lot of ice cream that way.

Hackett would not return to movies until 1953, after one of his nightclub routines attracted attention. With a rubber band around his head to slant his eyes, Hackett's "The Chinese Waiter" lampooned the frustration and communication problems encountered by a busy waiter in a Chinese restaurant. The dialect routine was such a hit that Hackett made a recording of it, and was hired to reprise it in the Universal-International musical Walking My Baby Back Home (1953), in which he was third-billed under Donald O'Connor and Janet Leigh.

Hackett was an emergency replacement for the similarly built Lou Costello in 1954. Abbott and Costello were set to make a feature-length comedy Fireman, Save My Child, featuring Spike Jones and His City Slickers. Several scenes had been shot with stunt doubles when Costello was forced to withdraw due to illness. Universal-International salvaged the project by hiring Hugh O'Brian and Hackett to take over the Abbott and Costello roles, with Jones and his band becoming the main attraction.

Return to television

Hackett became known to a wider audience when he appeared on television in the 1950s and 60s as a frequent guest on variety talk shows hosted by Jack Paar and Arthur Godfrey, telling brash, often off-color jokes, and mugging for the camera. Hackett was a frequent guest on both the Jack Paar and the Johnny Carson versions of The Tonight Show. His regular guest appearances on Jack Paar's Tonight Show in the early 1960s were rewarded with a coveted appearance on Paar's final Tonight program on March 29, 1962.

He also appeared as a panelist and mystery guest on CBS-TV's What's My Line? and filled in as emcee for the game show Treasure Hunt. He made fifteen guest appearances on NBC-TV's The Perry Como Show between 1955 and 1961. He appeared with his roommate Lenny Bruce on the Patrice Munsel Show (1957–1958), calling their comedy duo the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players," twenty years before the cast of Saturday Night Live used the same name.

Hackett starred as the title character on NBC's Stanley, a 1956–1957 situation comedy which ran for 19 weeks on Monday evenings at 8:30 pm ET. The half-hour series also featured a young Carol Burnett and the voice of Paul Lynde. The Max Liebman-produced program aired live before a studio audience and was one of the last sitcoms from New York to do so. Stanley revolved around the adventures of the titular character (Hackett) as the operator of a newsstand in a posh New York City hotel.

Hackett appeared in two episodes on ABC's The Rifleman: "Bloodlines" (1959) and "The Clarence Bibs Story" (1961).

He appeared many times on the game show Hollywood Squares in the late 1960s and 1970s. In one episode, Hackett (who was Jewish) was asked which country had the highest ratio of doctors to populace; he answered "The country with the most Jews" -- Israel. Despite the audience roaring with laughter (and Hackett's own belief that the actual answer was Sweden), Israel was the correct answer.

Hackett appeared opposite Robert Preston in the film adaptation of The Music Man (1962). In It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), Hackett was paired with Mickey Rooney, with whom he had also recently made Everything's Ducky (1961), in which they played two sailors who smuggle a talking duck aboard a Navy ship. Children became familiar with him as lovable hippie auto mechanic Tennessee Steinmetz in Disney's The Love Bug (1968).

In 1964, he had a stint on Broadway, appearing with Richard Kiley in I Had a Ball.

In the 1970s, Hackett published a book of poetry entitled The Naked Mind of Buddy Hackett, made frequent appearances on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show until Carson's retirement in 1992, delivered a dramatic performance as Lou Costello in the television movie Bud and Lou opposite Harvey Korman as Bud Abbott, and narrated the Rankin/Bass Christmas special Jack Frost (1979). Hackett appeared regularly in TV ads for Tuscan Dairy popsicles and yogurt throughout this decade, with his most famous television campaign being for Lay's potato chips ("Nobody can eat just one!"), running from 1968 to 1971. In 1980, he starred in the film Hey Babe! and hosted a syndicated revival of the 1950–61 Groucho Marx quiz show You Bet Your Life until its cancellation one year later. Hackett also appeared on The Big Valley. The Love Boat, Murder, She Wrote, L.A. Law, and in two episodes of The Fall Guy. He guest-starred on the Space Rangers episode "To Be Or Not To Be" as has-been comedian Lenny Hacker, a parody of his stage persona. He also did uncensored stand-up comedy specials for HBO.

For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Hackett was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2000, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was dedicated to him.

In April 1998, Hackett guest starred in an episode of LateLine called "Buddy Hackett". The episode focused on a news broadcast paying tribute to Hackett following his death, only to discover that the report of his death was a mistake. Robert Reich and Dick Gephardt also appeared in the episode, paying tribute to Hackett, by singing along to Hackett's rendition of "Shipoopi" from The Music Man.

In his final years, Hackett had a recurring spot called "Tuesdays with Buddy" on The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn in which he shared stories of his career and delivered some of his comedic routines.

In 1999, he appeared in 13 episodes of Fox's Action TV series as a security guard and chauffeur named Lonnie Dragon.

In 2021, Hackett was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.