Buddy Hackett

 Buddy Hackett, born Leonard Hacker (August 31, 1924 – June 30, 2003)

His best remembered roles include Marcellus Washburn in The Music Man (1962), Benjy Benjamin in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), Tennessee Steinmetz in The Love Bug (1968), and Scuttle in The Little Mermaid (1989). Hackett's movie career began in 1950 with a 10-minute "World of Sports" reel for Columbia Pictures called King of the Pins. Hackett was an emergency replacement for the similarly built Lou Costello in 1954. Abbott and Costello were set to make a feature-length comedy Fireman, Save My Child, featuring Spike Jones and His City Slickers. Several scenes had been shot with stunt doubles when Lou Costello was forced to withdraw due to illness. Hackett became known to a wider audience when he appeared on television in the 1950s and '60s as a frequent guest on variety talk shows hosted by Jack Paar and Arthur Godfrey, telling brash, often off-color jokes, and mugging at the camera. Hackett was a frequent guest on both the Jack Paar and the Johnny Carson versions of The Tonight Show. According to the board game Trivial Pursuit, Hackett has the distinction of making the most guest appearances in the history of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. He continued to appear on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show until Carson left the series in 1992. In 1979, Hackett was the voice of the groundhog "Pardon Me Pete", and the narrator of the Rankin/Bass Christmas special Jack Frost (1979). He starred in the 1980 film Hey Babe!. That same year, he hosted a syndicated revival of the 1950–61 Groucho Marx quiz show You Bet Your Life which lasted for one year.

Throughout the 1970s Hackett appeared regularly in TV ads for Tuscan Dairy popsicles and yogurt. But his most famous television campaign was for Lay's potato chips ("Nobody can eat just one!") which ran from 1968 to 1971; Hackett had succeeded Bert Lahr as Lay's spokesman. On June 12, 1955, Hackett married Sherry Cohen. They lived in Leonia, New Jersey, in the late 1950s, and were married until his death. Hackett died on June 30, 2003 at his beach house in Malibu, California at the age of 78. He was diabetic, and had recently suffered a stroke, which probably led to his death.