Heartbreaking News : Watermelon-smashing comedian Gallagher passed away at age 76.
The sledgehammer-wielding comedian Gallagher passed away on November 11 at his home in Palm Springs, California. He gained fame in the 1980s through his cable specials and relentless touring, putting on unusually interactive shows in which he smashed a watermelon into pulp and showered audience members with food scraps and a fountain of irreverent humour. He was 76.
According to Craig Marquardo, his former manager, the cause was multiple organ failure. He said that Gallagher had experienced “several” heart attacks, including one while performing live onstage in Minnesota in 2011. Gallagher was currently under hospice care.
Gallagher was a distinctively odd character on the American comedy scene with his thick moustache, hair styled like Ben Franklin, and preference for berets and striped shirts. He created a mystique by keeping his first name, Leo, a secret while also producing more than a dozen cable television stand-up specials for Showtime and claiming to have performed 3,500 live concerts, which is the equivalent of performing every day for almost ten years without a break.
Almost all of his presentations included strange wordplay and props, such a handgun that fired plastic hands (he referred to it as his “hand gun”) and a doll that was fastened to a piece of wood (“baby on board”). His standout routine included the Sledge-O-Matic, a gigantic wooden mallet that Gallagher claimed was made by “a subsidiary of Fly by Night Industries” and was a spoof of the kitchen tools sold by TV pitchman Ron Popeil.
He would place fruit on his homemade anvil and break it into pieces, asking, “Don’t you want to see how it works?”
After asking his audience if they wanted any wine, Gallagher would smash watermelons, oranges, beans, cottage cheese, pound cake, cheeseburgers, tubes of toothpaste, and video game controllers before slamming a bunch of grapes. People in the front rows either received ponchos as a gift or discovered the hard way that it was best to pack a raincoat. Additionally, venues took preventative measures by covering chandeliers in plastic to shield them from the spatter.
“I was the first to let a missile leave the stage and enter the crowd. In a 2009 interview with the A.V. Club, Gallagher claimed, “And I kind of take blame for the mosh pit. Major amusement parks now include splash rides that don’t even require riders to be there; you can get drenched while standing on a bridge. And I’m kind of at blame here, you know. However, it is at least part of my responsibility as an entertainer to stand out.
His prop comedy occasionally came out as inappropriate. At one of his concerts in California in 1990, a woman claimed that he launched a two-foot-tall water-squirting penguin doll into the crowd, injuring her head and neck. The woman sued Gallagher for $13,000 in medical costs, as well as $120,000 in damages and lost wages since the doll had a fire extinguisher in it.
Gallagher, to the horror of her attorneys, transformed the courtroom into a comedy club, making the jury and even the judge laugh.
In 1993, following the jury’s decision in favour of Gallagher, Judge William Froeberg told the Los Angeles Times, “I will say that in seven years on the bench, I’ve seen a lot of characters, but none more theatrical.” “It was enjoyable. It most certainly wasn’t dull.
Jim Stafford’s “Spiders & Snakes” vocalist Gallagher, a former chemist and tour manager, liked to refer to himself as “the smartest guy who was ever dumb enough to aspire to be a comedian.” He made his television debut in 1975 on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” and five years later, with the release of his first TV special, “Gallagher: An Uncensored Evening,” he acquired more notoriety. He quickly served as the opening act for singer Kenny Rogers and responded to those who did not understand how a watermelon.
Sometimes, when talking about his stand-up routine, Gallagher went lyrical. He previously remarked to a reporter that although “you can get a chuckle merely by inserting your finger up your nose,” “I want to do more. In order to feed the brain, I want to say something.
However, many audience members found his topical and political jokes to be ineffective, and by the 2010s, critics claimed his routine had turned into a bombardment of racist, sexist, and homophobic jokes.
By heckling his openers—amateur comedians whom je lambasted for their posture, punchlines, and attire—Gallagher also alienated several of his contemporaries. He was equally harsh when it came to other comics, calling out Jim Carrey’s and Robin Williams’ “embarrassing” comedy and their “C-level jokes.” He was forthright about his displeasure when Comedy Central placed him at No. 100 on their list of the greatest comedians of all time.
On July 24, 1946, Leo Anthony Gallagher Jr. was born in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and raised in Florida. In the Tampa region, where his father ran a skating rink, Gallagher honed his speed and freestyle skating skills, which he later used in his stage performance as he raced around on roller skates with a balloon tail.
At the University of South Florida, Gallagher majored in chemistry and minored in English, earning a bachelor’s degree there in 1970. Later, he disclosed to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he had worked in Chicago for Allied Chemical, written an unpublished book, accepted a position as a night manager at a restaurant, and delivered his first stand-up routines at a steakhouse and a topless bar in Tampa. He was not invited back to either place.
Stafford and he once shared an agent, who permitted Gallagher to perform his stand-up routine at events. Early in the 1970s, Gallagher immigrated to Hollywood and claimed that the Comedy Store in Los Angeles is where he first learned that “by shattering a watermelon, I got a major draw.” This is where he perfected his sledgehammer gag.
Later, with Gallagher’s OK, his younger brother Ron took the stage and delivered an almost identical comedy act in local bars. But the original Gallagher became annoyed when Ron started acting as “Gallagher II,” misleading spectators who believed they were watching Gallagher I. In 2000, a judge banned Ron Gallagher from performing with “the use of a sledgehammer or other similar weapon to crush watermelons, fruits, food or other products of any kind” after he sued his brother in federal court.
According to his manager, Gallagher was married and divorced at least once. Two grandchildren as well as Barnaby and Aimee’s two children remain. On the surviving, more information was not immediately available.
Late in his career, Gallagher appeared in a Geico commercial to perform his melon-smashing routine, and in the 2013 film “The Book of Daniel,” he played an astrologer. Paul F. Tompkins played him in the recently published biography spoof “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story,” starring Daniel Radcliffe as artist Weird Al, and he carried on touring until the start of the coronavirus outbreak.
Gallagher believed that one of the reasons his career was so successful was that he was adept at reading people and anticipating their reactions. He told the A.V. Club that comedians “ought to be compassionate.”
He continued, “I don’t say what I want to say on stage; I say what I think the audience wants to hear and would enjoy. You are the audience’s servant. I attempt to surprise the audience and don’t always follow their requests. However, it is still a service industry, and I believe that the fact that I am still in operation 30 years later demonstrates that this is the correct perspective.