Comedian Gallagher smashes strawberry syrup and flour on the finish of his efficiency on the Five Flags Theater in Dubuque, Iowa, on Nov. 18, 2006.

Jeremy Portje/Telegraph Herald by way of AP, File

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Jeremy Portje/Telegraph Herald by way of AP, File

Comedian Gallagher smashes strawberry syrup and flour on the finish of his efficiency on the Five Flags Theater in Dubuque, Iowa, on Nov. 18, 2006.

Jeremy Portje/Telegraph Herald by way of AP, File

NEW YORK — Gallagher, the long-haired, smash-’em-up comic who left a path of laughter, anger and shattered watermelons over a decadeslong profession, has died at age 76.

Craig Marquardo, in a press release figuring out himself as Gallagher’s “longtime former manager,” mentioned that he died Friday at his residence in Palm Springs, California, after a quick sickness. Gallagher had quite a few coronary heart assaults over time, together with one proper earlier than a scheduled present in Texas in 2012.

With a beret on his head and some easy props, from a can of oil to a bull whip, the person born Leo Anthony Gallagher Jr. constructed a nationwide following within the Nineteen Seventies and ’80s, showing on the “Tonight” present with Johnny Carson and starring in quite a few Showtime specials. His act included observational humor (“What about Easter? Whose idea was it to give eggs to an animal that hops”), political commentary (“They don’t call a tax a tax. They call it a revenue enhancer”), invented sports activities (synchronized Ping-Pong) and his trademark Sledge-O-Matic destruction.

“Ladies and gentlemen! I did not come here tonight just to make you laugh. I came here to sell you something, and I want you to pay particular attention!” he would name out in his greatest rapid-fire impersonation of a late-night tv pitchman. “The amazing Master Tool Corporation, a subsidiary of Fly-By-Night Industries, has entrusted who? Me! To show you! The handiest and the dandiest kitchen tool you’ve ever seen.”

Sledgehammer in hand, he would then apply his full muscle to apples, grapes, lettuce and different produce, most famously the inevitable watermelon, with viewers members in entrance showered in meals bits.

Gallagher was a Fort Bragg, North Carolina, native who began out in 1960 as street supervisor for the comic/musician Jim Stafford and shortly started performing himself, honing his act on the Comedy Store and different golf equipment. He was not the one funnyman within the household: His youthful brother Ron grew to become a comic, acquired Leo’s preliminary blessing and regarded and acted sufficient like his better-known sibling that some audiences have been uncertain who that they had come to see. Leo Gallagher finally secured a court docket injunction barring his brother from utilizing his routines.

The elder Gallagher grew to become more and more controversial in recent times, chastised for racist and homophobic remarks. Gallagher even minimize brief an interview in 2011 with Marc Maron after the WTF podcast host confronted him about his statements.

“I’m the problem?!” Gallagher mentioned at one level. “Do you think when I’m dead, gays will finally have an opportunity in America? Have I really been holding them down?”

In 2003, Gallagher was amongst greater than 100 candidates working within the recall election for California governor, received by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Over the previous decade, Gallagher appeared in a Geico industrial and within the film “The Book Of Daniel.”