Bob Einstein, ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Co-Star and Super Dave Osborne, Dies at 76
2019 is not off to a great start. First Mean Gene Okerlund dies and now Deadline reports that Bob Einstein has passed away as well. Like Okerlund, he was just 76 years old. Per Deadline, he had “recently been diagnosed with cancer.”
Younger audiences probably know Einstein best as Marty Funkhouser, one of Larry David’s close friends (although it’s Larry David, so he’s more like a frenemy) on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Here is just one of the many examples of Einstein’s unbelievably funny work on Curb (he made over 20 appearances on the series):
“Liquids are okay.”
Einstein, who was the older brother of filmmakers and comedian Albert Books (real name Albert Einstein, and that is not a joke), broke into the business as a writer on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. After a long stint writing on The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, Einstein then became famous as Super Dave Osborne, a droll parody of the extreme stuntmen who became celebrities in the 1970s like Evel Knievel. As Osborne, Einstein had his own live-action and animated series, and made countless appearances on talk shows and variety shows like Late Night With David Letterman:
Most of my memories of Super Dave are from Letterman and similar shows, where he rarely did (or pretended to do) dangerous stunts. But you can find plenty of that stuff on YouTube — and it is also really funny, years and years before similar shows like Jackass:
That is an A+ wrecking ball gag.
Einstein was so funny and still a great part of the Curb Your Enthusiasm cast as recently as a year ago; the show won’t be the same without his appearances. Let’s get a handle on the year fast, 2019. I’m really not liking how things are starting out.