Charles Elmer "Rip" Taylor Jr. (January 13, 1931 – October 6, 2019) was an American actor and comedian, known for his exuberance and flamboyant personality, including his wild moustache, toupee, and his habit of showering himself (and others) with confetti. The Hollywood Reporter called him "a television and nightclub mainstay for more than six decades" who made thousands of nightclub and television appearances.
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Early life
Charles Elmer Taylor Jr. was born in Washington, D.C., on January 13, 1931, the son of Elizabeth Sue Evans (1911–2000), a waitress and former government clerk, and Charles Elmer Taylor (died 1933), a musician. His father died when he was two years old. As described in his 2010 one-man show It Ain't All Confetti, Taylor had a tough childhood, which included being molested while in foster care and dealing with bullies in school. As a teenager he attended Capitol Page School. Taylor worked as a congressional page before serving in the Korean War; he was in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Although assigned to the Corps, he was sent to Special Services, the entertainment wing of the military, where he performed for the troops in Tokyo and Korea.
Career
Early career
Taylor's career in show business began when he joined the U.S. Army, where he started performing stand-up in clubs and restaurants abroad while also performing for the troops. After his military service, and back in the U.S., he focused on a nightclub career. His mainstay material was "pantomiming records"; his favorites were Yiddish folk songs and Spike Jones tunes. He said that ended one day when the record player broke, "I haven't shut up since." In the mid-1950s he worked the strip clubs all along the Eastern coast of the U.S. Although much of his material included jokes stolen from acts he saw in USO shows, his first signature piece would be to pretend to cry while begging the audience for laughs. He found he could get a bigger response that way.
As he got more upscale bookings, he played at winter resorts in Miami Beach, Florida, and in the summer resorts in Catskill Mountains. Taylor first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1961 and made about twenty subsequent appearances. Sullivan would forget his name, saying "Get me the crying comedian."
Television and film
In addition to the Ed Sullivan Show, Taylor appeared on The Jackie Gleason Show in several guest appearances during the 1963–1964 season as "the crying comedian". Taylor's signature confetti tossing gag came from an appearance in the 1960s The Merv Griffin Show where he was bombing as a stand-up comedian. "I did props and I was 'The Prop comedian.' I was dying like hell on Merv Griffin's show. The jokes were dumb, and I tore the five by eight cards, threw them up in the air and it became confetti," he recalled. "I knocked over his desk, walked up the aisle, went to Sardi's and said, 'Well, that's the end of my television career.' I went home that night. Their switchboard had lit up. They said, 'Get the guy that went crazy!'"
Taylor became somewhat of a fixture in Las Vegas. He was the opener for Eleanor Powell's dance-focused revue, and would go on to warm up audiences for headliners Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Ann-Margret, Debbie Reynolds, Frankie Laine, Judy Garland, and The Kingston Trio. In the 1970s he won Las Vegas Entertainer of the Year three times.
He appeared in two 1968 episodes of The Monkees as well as having a cameo in their 1969 special 33+1⁄3 Revolutions per Monkee. He continued to work as a voice performer in the 1970s cartoon series Here Comes the Grump as the title character, and in the second edition of The Addams Family cartoon series in 1992 as the voice of Uncle Fester.
Throughout the 1970s, Taylor was a frequent celebrity guest panelist on television game shows such as Hollywood Squares, To Tell the Truth, and The Gong Show, and substituted for Charles Nelson Reilly on Match Game. He became a regular on Sid and Marty Krofft's Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, playing Sheldon, a sea-genie who lived in a conch shell. In addition, Taylor was also a regular on The Brady Bunch Hour, playing the role of neighbor/performer Jack Merrill. He also hosted a short-lived send-up of beauty pageants titled The $1.98 Beauty Show, created by Chuck Barris, producer/host of The Gong Show, in 1978. Taylor appeared as a celebrity on the 1990 version of Match Game. In 1979, he was the voice of C.J. from the Hanna-Barbera television movie Scooby Goes Hollywood. Taylor's other appearances also include The Kids in the Hall, where he was referred to as Uncle Rip by Buddy Cole, the show's most flamboyantly gay character. He also appeared as himself in the movie Wayne's World 2, one of the special guests invited to "WayneStock" after being visited in a dream by Jim Morrison. Taylor made "dozens of mayhem-filled appearances" on both The Tonight Show and The Mike Douglas Show.
Live theatre
In 1981, Taylor appeared on Broadway when he replaced Mickey Rooney in the burlesque-themed musical comedy Sugar Babies. He was a frequent co-star with Debbie Reynolds in her live shows in Las Vegas; Reno, Nevada; and Lake Tahoe. Taylor performed frequently in Atlantic City as well. In 2010, he appeared in the one-man show It Ain't All Confetti in North Hollywood, where he shared personal stories about his life and career.
Personal life and death
In 2005, Taylor appeared as the grand marshal of the Washington, D.C., Capital Pride parade. When Taylor had been referred to as "openly gay" in a 2009 interview for "Ask the Flying Monkey", Brent Hartinger recalled receiving an email from Taylor stating, "You don’t know me to summarize that I am openly gay. I don’t know that you’re not an openly heroin user. You see how that works? Think before you write." Taylor was married for a number of years to Las Vegas showgirl Rusty Rowe, whom he divorced in the early 1960s.
Taylor was a close friend of entertainer Liberace. Taylor cut the ribbon at the Las Vegas estate auction of Liberace's belongings and personal effects in 1988.
According to his publicist, at the time of Taylor's death he was in a long-term relationship with Robert Fortney.
Taylor died on October 6, 2019, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, having been hospitalized for a seizure the week prior. His death certificate listed heart failure as a contributing cause. While Taylor often gave his birth year as 1934 or 1935, his death certificate and census records confirm he was born in 1931. His ashes were scattered at sea in Hawaii.
