Donald Jay Rickles (May 8, 1926 – April 6, 2017) was an American stand-up comedian and actor. Best known as an insult comic, his pudgy, balding appearance and pugnacious style led to few leading roles in film or television; his prominent film roles included Run Silent, Run Deep (1958) and Kelly's Heroes (1970), and beginning in 1976 he enjoyed a two-year run starring in the sitcom C.P.O. Sharkey. He received widespread exposure as a popular guest on numerous talk shows, including The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and Late Show with David Letterman, and later voice roles in films notably included playing Mr. Potato Head in the Toy Story series. He won a Primetime Emmy Award for the 2007 documentary Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project. Rickles died on April 6, 2017, of kidney failure, in his home in Los Angeles. Don Rickles, the acidic stand-up comic who became world-famous not by telling jokes but by insulting his audience, died on Thursday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 90.
Rickles was born Donald Jay Rickles in the New York City borough of Queens on May 8, 1926, to Max Rickles (1897–1953), who emigrated in 1903 with his parents Joseph and Frances Rickles (Richters) from Kaunas, Lithuania (then in the Russian Empire and known in Jewish society as "Kovno"), and Etta (Feldman) Rickles (1901–1984), born in New York to immigrant parents from the Austrian Empire. His family was Jewish and spoke Yiddish at home. Rickles grew up in the Jackson Heights area.
After graduating from Newtown High School, Rickles enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served during World War II on the motor torpedo boat tender USS Cyrene (AGP-13) as a seaman first class. He was honorably discharged in 1946. Two years later, intending to be a dramatic actor, he studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and then played bit parts on television. Frustrated by a lack of acting work, Rickles began performing stand-up comedy in clubs in New York, Miami, and Los Angeles. He became known as an insult comedian when he responded to his hecklers. The audience enjoyed these insults more than his prepared material, and he incorporated them into his act.
When he began his career in the early 1950s, he started calling ill-mannered members of the audience "hockey puck[s]". His style was similar to that of an older insult comic, Jack E. Leonard, though Rickles denied Leonard influenced his style. During an interview on Larry King Live, Rickles credited Milton Berle's comedy style for inspiring him to enter show business.
