Henry Gibson

With an act he had perfected in college, Henry Gibson made his fame in the Sixties playing a stand-up poet reciting ironically inane free verse that parodied the apoplectic poesy of the Beat Generation. Discovered by Jerry Lewis and anointed as Hollywood's go-to odd little man, Gibson parlayed outré guest appearances on such popular television sitcoms as "The Beverly Hillbillies," "F-Troop" and "Bewitched" into a steady gig on the ABC sketch comedy revue "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In." Finding favor with iconoclastic filmmaker Robert Altman, Gibson was cast as little men who exerted a big influence in "The Long Goodbye" (1973) and "Nashville" (1975), while he contributed larger-than-life cameos to John Landis' "The Blues Brothers" (1980) and Joe Dante's "The 'burbs" (1988), playing, respectively, an Illinois Nazi hauptsturmfuehrer and Tom Hanks' sinister next-door neighbor. An in-demand voice artist in later life, Gibson gave speech to characters on a number of animated series and in features, most notably as crusty Texas newsman Bob Jenkins on Fox's "King of the Hill." He impressed the critics with his appearance as an aging, gay barfly in Paul Thomas Anderson's "Magnolia" (1999) and enjoyed semi-regular status as an unorthodox judge on the ABC courtroom drama "Boston Legal" shortly before his death from cancer in September 2009. Though he never fully slipped his early association with comedy, Gibson proved time and again that he was more than just a one-hit-wonder, emerging from the shadow of his "Laugh-In" persona as a character actor of surprising gravity and grace.