Bob Saget

Bob Saget, Comic Who Starred in Sitcom ‘Full House,’ Dies at 65

The actor, who had also hosted “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” was found dead in an Orlando hotel room while on tour.

Bob Saget in 2008. In contrast to his squeaky-clean image on “Full House” and “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” he delighted in raunchy, profanity-laden stand-up routines.Credit...Dan Steinberg/R-STEINBERG, via Associated Press

By Jesus Jiménez and Alan Yuhas

Jan. 9, 2022

Bob Saget, the stand-up comic and actor who was known as Danny Tanner on the long-running sitcom “Full House,” as the host of “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and for his deadpan, ribald stage routines, was found dead on Sunday in Orlando, Fla. He was 65.

His death was confirmed by the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, which said that Mr. Saget was found unresponsive in a hotel room at the Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes. The cause was not known, but the sheriff’s office said there were no signs of foul play or drug use.

Mr. Saget, who was on tour, had performed on Saturday night at Ponte Vedra Concert Hall in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., southeast of Jacksonville. In a tweet early on Sunday, he thanked the “appreciative audience.”

“I had no idea I did a 2 hr set tonight,” he said. “I’m happily addicted again to this.”

Mr. Saget with, from left, Jodie Sweetin, either Mary-Kate or Ashley Olsen, Candace Cameron, Lori Loughln and John Stamos in a 1994 episode of “Full House.”Credit...ABC Photo Archives via Getty Images

 

On “Full House,” Mr. Saget played a widowed father who shared his house with his three daughters (Candace Cameron, Jodi Sweetin and, alternating as the youngest daughter, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen), his brother-in-law (John Stamos) and his best friend (Dave Coulier). The show, seen on ABC from 1987 to 1995, got consistently good ratings and made stars of Mr. Saget and his fellow cast members, including Lori Loughlin, who joined in the third season.

Robert Lane Saget was born on May 17, 1956, in Philadelphia. He graduated from Temple University in 1978 before finding his way into comedy clubs. In contrast to his squeaky-clean image on “Full House” and “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” he became known for raunchy, profanity-laden stand-up routines.

At Temple, Mr. Saget studied film, and in the year of his graduation he received a student Academy Award for documentary merit for his film “Through Adam’s Eyes,” about a nephew of his who had undergone facial reconstructive surgery.

But even then he was pursuing comedy. He told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2016 that he had won a local radio contest at 17 by singing a song about bondage, and that while he spent most of his time at Temple shooting film, he would also go to the University of Pennsylvania’s campus to do improv.

After graduating, Mr. Saget moved to Los Angeles and became a constant presence at one of the city’s main comedy clubs, the Comedy Store. “I lived in that room for seven years,” he said on the comedian Marc Maron’s podcast in 2010.

“I did jokes and some stories, but most of them were just silly — dirty silly,” he remembered. He said he had been drawn to jokes with foul language and raw anatomical references because he wasn’t supposed to talk that way in his youth.

“I stayed like a kid who just talked silly,” he said.

He added, deadpan and possibly sincere, “I don’t curse for the sake of cursing — that’s the actual truth.”

A handful of breaks changed Mr. Saget’s career. After a brief stint on “The Morning Program” on CBS and appearances on a few sitcoms, he was cast in the 1987 Richard Pryor film, “Critical Condition.” He was then offered the part on “Full House.”

He said to Mr. Maron in the podcast, “My joke is, ‘Ask me my favorite episode.’”

“What’s your favorite episode?” Mr. Maron responded.

“The last one,” Mr. Saget said. (But, he quickly added, “I’m the luckiest guy.”)

Mr. Saget in 1990, early in his tenure as host of “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”Credit...ABC Photo Archives via Getty Images

 

In 1989 also Mr. Saget became the first host of “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” a showcase for viewers’ homemade clips, many of which featured people getting hurt in unusual and farcical ways. While most of his commentary was in line with the character he played on “Full House” — funny voices and groan-inducing puns — his mordant wit sometimes slipped in.

In 1996, shortly after “Full House” ended and shortly before he left “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” Mr. Saget directed a television movie, “For Hope,” starring Dana Delany, which fictionalized the story of how his sister, Gay, had grown ill and died of systemic scleroderma, an autoimmune disease that can lead to hardening and tightening of the skin and connective tissues. (He later became a board member of the Scleroderma Research Foundation.)

He also directed “Dirty Work,” a comedy starring Norm Macdonald (who died in September) and Artie Lange. It was widely panned on its release in 1998; Mr. Saget later said it would have been much funnier if it hadn’t been cut to get a PG-13 rating.

Returning to the comedy circuit and mocking his wholesome TV alter ego, Mr. Saget developed a cult following as a comedian who could unleash torrents of scatological material.

In 2005, he was featured in “The Aristocrats,” a film about the history of a joke that A.O. Scott of The New York Times called both “a work of painstaking and penetrating scholarship” and “possibly the filthiest, vilest, most extravagantly obscene documentary ever made.” In 2010, Mr. Saget hosted a documentary series, “Strange Days With Bob Saget,” in which he spent time with pro wrestlers, bikers, Bigfoot hunters and others.

 

Survivors include his wife, Kelly Rizzo, and three daughters from an earlier marriage, Aubrey Saget, Lara Melanie Saget and Jennifer Belle Saget.

On “Jimmy Kimmel Live” in 2017, he remembered how Don Rickles, a longtime friend of his and Mr. Stamos’s, would describe Mr. Saget’s act. “He comes out like a Jewish Clark Kent,” Mr. Saget recalled Mr. Rickles saying. He then demonstrated how Mr. Rickles would break into a song about a dog and a monkey, repeatedly using a verb censored on network television.

But Mr. Saget never totally shed his family-man persona. Not only did he reprise the role of Danny Tanner on a sequel series, “Fuller House,” seen on Netflix from 2016 to 2020; he also spent nine seasons as the voice of the narrator on “How I Met Your Mother,” an older, wiser version of the show’s protagonist, Ted Mosby.

“My first thought was, Why can’t he do it? Or how much cigarettes and booze do you have to have to sound like me?” Mr. Saget told Larry King in 2014, referring to Josh Radnor, the actor who played Ted. But, he added, “I did it immediately because I read it. It was a love letter; it was a relationship show.”

-NYT