Ruth Buzzi, formerly best known from Laugh-In, hasn’t gone anywhere to be honest. She’s still around, still acting, and still loving life it would seem. She obviously hasn’t been quite as prominent as he use to be but let’s give the woman some credit, reading her filmography it would appear that she’s done more than enough to warrant a change of pace in the last couple of decades. She’s been a busy woman for much of her life and is still in the business, so you can’t really say much about her career other than the fact that it’s been quite impressive. Plus she’s in her early 80s now and hasn’t retired yet so there’s another huge mark in her favor. If you love what you do then retiring isn’t so much a release from it as it would be a removal from something that you can’t live without.
Buzzi attended the Pasadena Playhouse for the Performing Arts when she was just 17.
Do you get the idea that she knew what she wanted even back then? She was already determined and ready to go it would seem. She graduated from the school with honors and studied voice, dance, and acting, and even took classes in cosmetology. This is a woman that was thinking about every step she would need to take along the way it seems like, as the mix of interests wasn’t just by happenstance. It couldn’t be, not if she wanted to be an actor and have a fully-loaded stable of skills and talents. It seems that she knew what she was doing all along when she took each class, and eventually it would pay off.
She got her first job at the age of 19.
Ruth was selected to travel with singer Rudy Vallee for a live musical and comedy act during summer break. This allowed her to graduate with a union card with the Actors’ Equity Association. From that point she moved to New York after she graduated and was given a role off-Broadway, the first of many that she would perform on the east coast. She worked with other young and upcoming performers during her time including Barbra Streisand, Dom DeLuise, Carol Burnett, and several others. She was a part of several musical variety shows and even did commercials. She gained national recognition on The Garry Moore Show in 1964 as Shagundala the Silent, a bumbling magician’s assistant to her partner, Dom DeLuise. From that point on she had several other hilarious and memorable roles that continued to catapult her career forward as she rode the fame as much as she could.
The Steve Allen Show was her ticket to Laugh-In.
She appeared on every episode of the Steve Allen Show, which was another comedy-variety series that she took part in. This led to NBC hiring her on for Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, where she was eventually the only featured player to be around for every episode including the pilot and the TV special. She filled a lot of roles during the show from dowdy old women to tipsy drunks, and she always got a laugh with her material no matter who she was with.
She’s had continued success in film and TV as well over the years.
As it was already mentioned Ruth has been quite the busy lady over the years when it’s come to her film and TV careers and has been pushing just as much to keep her fame as she did back in the day. Her notoriety has gone down no doubt since she was part of an era that has long since passed, but the fact that she’s still around is very impressive and that she’s still entertaining people is even more so. It would be easy to say “at her age” and then add what she should be doing or should be considering, but it wouldn’t be accurate in her case. Ruth has been going at her own pace for so long that anyone trying to tell her what she “needed” at this point would be kind of ridiculous. Right now she’s still living and loving her life and is no doubt well accustomed to having it this way. Trying to force anything else on her would be kind of an insult.
Ruth has been one of the great influences in show business throughout the years and currently lives with her husband in Texas where they collect old automobiles and are involved in several charities. She’s even taken up oil painting, which she donates to charity rather than selling them. If you needed any more proof that this woman is as close to a saint as possible and is living life on her terms then you might need to talk to her one on one. Until that happens however, just know she’s still around.
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