Post by Richard Kimble on Jun 19, 2017 23:14:16 GMT
www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/bill-dana-dead-jose-jimenez-903436
Bill Dana, who created and starred as the earnest character at the center of the "My Name … Jose Jimenez" routine that made him one of America's most beloved comic performers of the 1960s, has died. He was 92.
Dana, who first appeared as Jimenez on The Steve Allen Plymouth Show, where he also worked as an Emmy-nominated head writer, died Thursday at his home in Nashville, Emerson College announced.
He and a fellow alumnus founded the American Comedy Archives at the Boston school, fulfilling a lifelong goal to honor the study and appreciation of the comedic arts.
Dana contrived the trademark "Would You Believe?" line of jokes that Don Adams employed as a standup and on the TV series Get Smart and penned one of the funniest episodes in All in the Family history — the one from 1972 in which Sammy Davis Jr. plants a kiss on Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor).
The nation was introduced to Jimenez in a comedy sketch on Allen's variety show in November 1959. Struggling to speak English, Jimenez appeared in a Santa Claus outfit as an instructor at a school for wannabe Kris Kringles and interviewed by "Man on the Street" Pat Harrington Jr.
"I said, 'My name … Jose Jimenez,' and the [live] audience laughed," Dana, a Massachusetts native of Hungarian-Jewish descent, recalled in a 2007 interview with the Archive of American Television. "I remember thinking, 'This guy just said his name and everybody [went crazy] …'
"It was the most amazing, B-movie type of thing, because [after the show aired] the phones started ringing [with viewers asking], 'Who is this guy that wandered into the studio?'"
Dana said he got the idea for the character and the accent after talking with a Puerto Rican local while on vacation years earlier.
Bill Dana, who created and starred as the earnest character at the center of the "My Name … Jose Jimenez" routine that made him one of America's most beloved comic performers of the 1960s, has died. He was 92.
Dana, who first appeared as Jimenez on The Steve Allen Plymouth Show, where he also worked as an Emmy-nominated head writer, died Thursday at his home in Nashville, Emerson College announced.
He and a fellow alumnus founded the American Comedy Archives at the Boston school, fulfilling a lifelong goal to honor the study and appreciation of the comedic arts.
Dana contrived the trademark "Would You Believe?" line of jokes that Don Adams employed as a standup and on the TV series Get Smart and penned one of the funniest episodes in All in the Family history — the one from 1972 in which Sammy Davis Jr. plants a kiss on Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor).
The nation was introduced to Jimenez in a comedy sketch on Allen's variety show in November 1959. Struggling to speak English, Jimenez appeared in a Santa Claus outfit as an instructor at a school for wannabe Kris Kringles and interviewed by "Man on the Street" Pat Harrington Jr.
"I said, 'My name … Jose Jimenez,' and the [live] audience laughed," Dana, a Massachusetts native of Hungarian-Jewish descent, recalled in a 2007 interview with the Archive of American Television. "I remember thinking, 'This guy just said his name and everybody [went crazy] …'
"It was the most amazing, B-movie type of thing, because [after the show aired] the phones started ringing [with viewers asking], 'Who is this guy that wandered into the studio?'"
Dana said he got the idea for the character and the accent after talking with a Puerto Rican local while on vacation years earlier.
