Longtime comic and actor dies

He appeared 93 times on 'The Ed Sullivan Show.'
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Alan King, the comedian, character actor, producer and author known for his wry observations on suburbia and life at large, died Sunday. He was 76.
King died in New York's Sloan-Kettering Medical Center of lung cancer.
With his sly smile and meticulously timed staccato delivery, King delivered sledgehammer blows to institutions such as insurance companies, airlines, the medical profession, politicians, New York's Long Island Expressway, which he dubbed 50 years ago as "the world's largest parking lot," and his super-efficient wife who could make the bed before he returned from a 5 a.m. trip to the bathroom.
Comedian Jerry Stiller, who had known King for more than five decades , described him for the Associated Press on Sunday as "a Jewish Will Rogers." King has also been called "the crabgrass comedian" and "an aggressive Jack Benny."
Stiller said King "was in touch with what was happening with the world, which is what made him so funny. He always talked about the annoyances of life."
Comedy explained
King himself discussed the nature of his art in a 1998 interview with Catherine Crier on her Fox News Crier Report: "Comedy is a reflection. We create nothing. We set no styles, no standards. We're reflections. It's a distorted mirror in the fun house. We watch society.
"As society behaves, then we have the ability to make fun of it, to show you -- you're laughing at yourself. ... I think one of the big things about comedy is the ability for the audience to identify."
With his jut-jaw, take-charge stage persona, King was so cheeky that the first time he was introduced to Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, and she said, "How do you do, Mr. King," he responded: "How do you do, Mrs. Queen."
After beginning as a stand-up comedian in the East Coast's "Borscht Belt," King worked vaudeville as a warm-up act for singers Lena Horne, Billy Eckstine, Tony Martin and Patti Page. After he appeared with Judy Garland at New York's Palace Theater, with Ed Sullivan in the audience, King became a familiar guest -- tallying 93 visits -- on TV's "The Ed Sullivan Show."
Those appearances on "Sullivan" proved a major breakthrough, King said in a 2002 interview on NBC's "Today Show," by providing national exposure and doubling the weekly pay he could command.
Over the next four decades King appeared in some two dozen television specials and another two dozen motion pictures. He also guest-starred on TV game shows such as "What's My Line?" and "I've Got a Secret" and served as guest host of "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson."