Harvey Korman has died at UCLA Medical Center, at age 81. He had been recuperating after an abdominal aortic aneurysm four months ago. At six foot four and with easy access to an attitude of sneering, haughty disdain for what was going on around him, he sometimes seemed to be demonstrating the answer to a question that nobody asked: what if John Cleese were American and joined the Shriners to get away from his wife? After a stint in the navy, Korman studied theater in Chicago before going to New York hoping to make it as an actor. He didn't have any luck and, he said later, he finally decided to move to Hollywood so that "at least I'd feel warm and comfortable while I failed." For three years he grabbed whatever work he could get while selling cars and performing other odd jobs to get by, until he became a regular on Danny Kaye's TV series in 1963. That led to plenty of work guesting on other shows, including his iconic voice work as the Great Gazoo on The Flintstones. As a movie actor, he appeared in Lord Love a Duck (1966), The April Fools (1969), Americathon (1979), and Radioland Murders (2004), but found his steadiest employment in films as part of Mel Brooks's stock company. He first worked for Brooks in Blazing Saddles, playing the villainous Hedley Lamarr, then returned in High Anxiety, The History of the World, Part I and Dracula: Dead and Loving It.
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