Hollywood Memorial

His first whirl with show business was in the 1940s appearing in the ‘Borscht Belt’ resorts in the Catskill Mountains where he wrote jokes, was a singing waiter and did a stand up act under the name of Jack Roy. He struggled until he decided to leave the business to earn a stable living as aluminum siding salesman and a house painter. He would later return in the 1960s at age 40 and his stand up act took off with various television appearances and comedy albums. The man who was famous for his signature phrase ‘I can’t get no respect,’ Mr. Dangerfield opened up the self-named comedy club ‘Dangerfield’s’ in New York City. There he helped the careers of Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Carrey, Roseanne Barr, Jeff Foxworthy, Tim Allen and the late Sam Kinison for who was like a son to him. His most famous movies include ‘Caddyshack’ and a dramatic role that drew rave reviews in ‘Natural Born Killers’ as the abusive father. He was a regular when Johnny Carson hosted ‘The Tonight Show’ and would appear frequently on ‘The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.’ One of his last appearances was on the television show, ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ just days before his hospitalization for heart valve replacement. Dangerfield underwent brain surgery to improve blood flow in preparation for that heart valve-replacement surgery. Upon entering the hospital, he uttered another one-liner of the type for which he was known: When asked how long he would be hospitalized, he said, ‘If all goes well, about a week. If not, about an hour-and-a-half.’ In September 2004, it was revealed that Dangerfield had been in a coma for several weeks. Afterward, he had been breathing on his own and had been showing signs of awareness when visited by friends. However, on October 5, 2004, he died at the UCLA Medical Center, where he had undergone the surgery in August. He was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. In keeping with his ‘No Respect’ persona, his headstone reads simply, ‘Rodney Dangerfield – There goes the neighborhood.’ His last wife, Joan Child (young Double D with a rock on her finger to match), held a memorial in which the word ‘Respect’ had been emblazoned in the sky, while each guest was given a live Monarch butterfly for a Native American butterfly-release ceremony. Farrah Fawcett was sculpting a life-size bronze statue of Dangerfield, which will be placed in Pierce Brothers Memorial Park.