RIP Carson writer/actor Pat McCormick

He's quite sweet in Altman's "A Wedding" ... and played Grover Cleveland in "Buffalo Bill and the Indians."

Pat McCormick, 78, Comedian and Writer for 'Tonight Show,' Dies
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN

Pat McCormick, a comedian known for his unruly appearance and his immaculate one-liners, died on Friday at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Los Angeles, according to a hospital spokeswoman. He was 78.

He had resided at the hospital since suffering a stroke in 1998.

Mr. McCormick was enthusiastically admired by other comics, including Johnny Carson, who used him as a writer and had him as a frequent guest on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson." He composed antic, sometimes surreal material for Jonathan Winters, Lucille Ball, Henny Youngman, Phyllis Diller, Merv Griffin, Red Skelton, Jackie Gleason, Bette Midler and Steve Martin. In The New Yorker, the critic Kenneth Tynan once described him as "one of the most inventive gagmen in the business."

A typical Carson-era line went, "If you want to clear your system out, sit on a piece of cheese and swallow a mouse." Another favorite was, "Beethoven was so hard of hearing, he thought he was a painter."

He wrote or performed on "Candid Camera," "The Gong Show," "The Danny Kaye Show," "The Don Rickles Show" and "The New Bill Cosby Show." For radio, he wrote and voiced hundreds of commercials.

Mr. McCormick appeared in broadly comic movie roles in Robert Altman's "Buffalo Bill and the Indians" and "Wedding" and three "Smokey and the Bandit" movies.

Born on June 30, 1927, in Lakewood, Ohio, Mr. McCormick served in the Army from 1946 to 1948. After attending Harvard and Harvard Law School, he moved to Cleveland, where he briefly sold advertising space for magazines. Eventually he met Mr. Winters, who helped him get a job writing for "The Jack Paar Show."

Mr. McCormick is survived by his son, Ben McCormick, and a grandson, Patrick Benjamin McCormick.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company