Ruth Buzzi, the Lady With the Handbag on ‘Laugh-In,’ Dies at 88

Ruth Buzzi, who was so hilarious as the lonely spinster Gladys Ormphby, the lady who swung her handbag as a lethal weapon, on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, has died. She was 88.

Buzzi died Thursday night in her sleep at her home in Texas, her family announced. In July 2022, her husband, actor Kent Perkins, revealed that she was “bedridden and incapacitated” after suffering a seres of strokes.

Buzzi appeared in the original Broadway production of the musical comedy Sweet Charity, played Marlo Thomas’ pal Margie “Pete” Peterson on ABC’s That Girl, starred opposite Jim Nabors on a Saturday morning kids show, The Lost Saucer, and spent many years on Sesame Street.

Early on in her career, Buzzi had a comedy act with Dom DeLuise in which he played the incompetent magician Dominic the Great and she his assistant, Shakuntala.

Buzzi was one of producer George Schlatter’s first hires for Laugh-In in 1967 and remained with the show for its entire run through March 1973. She played many characters — drunk Doris Swizzle, gossip columnist Busy Buzzi, hooker Kim Hither and silent movie diva Laverne Blossom — but it was her Gladys that remains unforgettable.

Covered from head to toe in drab brown and sporting a bun hairdo covered by a hairnet knotted in the middle of her forehead, Gladys could be found on a park bench, where dirty old man Tyrone F. Horneigh (Arte Johnson) would sidle up to her and make an off-color, insulting remark. Gladys would then respond by bashing Horneigh with her handbag. (It looked dangerous but actually was filled with old pantyhose and cotton.)

The pint-sized comedian received three of her five career Emmy nominations for playing the character, including one for an appearance on a Dean Martin Celebrity Roast in 1974. (She also showed up as Gladys in “Weird” Al Yankovic’s 1995 music video Gump.)

“So many people ask me to hit them with my purse,” Buzzi told Nick Thomas in 2016. “In fact, a few years ago we were at a Beverly Hills party and in walked Elton John. He immediately made his way over to me and said, ‘For God’s sakes, Ruth, please hit me with your purse. That’s been on my bucket list for years!’”

She was born on July 24, 1936, in Westerly, Rhode Island, and raised in Connecticut. Her father was a sculptor. When she struggled during a dance class but made light of it, her instructor offered to teach her something different — a “funny ballet,” she recalled in a 1983 interview with Orange Coast Magazine.

” ‘All the other girls will do it straight and you’ll be a little off,’ ” the teacher told her. “Well, I did it, and it was a big hit. That’s what started me [in comedy,] and I continued to do funny dances and funny this and funny that through high school.”

At age 18, she boldly moved across the country to enroll at the Pasadena Playhouse, where her classmates included Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman, and then appeared opposite Rudy Vallee in a San Francisco production of Jenny Kissed Me.

Buzzi then starred in the Broadway revue Misguided Tour, where she improvised several characters and The New York Times remarked that she had “the quality of a young Nancy Walker.”

In 1961, when she was playing the secretary Agnes Gooch in a production of Auntie Mame in Pennsylvania, she over-emphasized the schlumpiness of that character, and that would serve as the template for Gladys.

Later, she voiced Granny Goodwitch on the cartoon Linus! The Lion Hearted and did TV commercials before appearing on The Garry Moore Show in 1964 and with DeLuise on the variety show The Entertainers, hosted by Carol Burnett and Bob Newhart, a year later.

In January 1966, she began an 18-month stint with the Bob Fosse and Neil Simon musical comedy Sweet Charity, starring Gwen Verdon, then left that for a gig on The Steve Allen Comedy Hour, a summer replacement for the Smothers Brothers’ program. While working on that, she was approached to join Laugh-In.

When she auditioned for Schlatter, instead of bringing along glossy 8-by-10 photos, she showed him shots of Gladys standing in a garbage pail.

Buzzi and Nabors played time-traveling androids on the 1976 ABC series The Lost Saucer, produced by Sid and Marty Krofft. She later appeared as Screech’s (Dustin Diamond) mom on Saved by the Bell and starred on a Western for Italian television, Lucky Luke.

On Sesame Street in the ’90s, Buzzi portrayed Ruthie, the owner of the Finders Keepers store, then reprised the character in The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland (1999). She also voiced the character Suzie Kabloozie on the show.

Buzzi also had big-screen roles in Freaky Friday (1976), The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again (1979), The Villain (1979) and Chu Chu and the Philly Flash (1981).

Survivors include her husband, whom she married in December 1978. The couple left Hollywood 15 years ago to live on a 600-acre cattle and horse ranch in Erath County, about an hour’s drive from the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

Donations in her memory can be made to the Alzheimer’s Association.

“Ruth Buzzi brought a singular energy and charm to sketch comedy that made her a standout on Laugh-In and the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts,” National Comedy Center executive director Journey Gunderson said in a statement. “Her characters, especially the unforgettable Gladys Ormphby, captured the delightful absurdity of the era. We remember her with admiration and appreciation for the joy and laughter she brought to generations of fans.”