Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Bob Einstein passed away at age 76

Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Bob Einstein has passed away at the age of 76 after a recent cancer diagnosis.

Bob Einstein, comedic actor and Emmy-award-winning comedy writer, is dead at the age of 76. He is survived by his younger brother, actor Albert Brooks.

While many fans perhaps know him best as Larry David’s “best friend” Marty Funkhouser on Curb Your Enthusiasm, Einstein has had a long and prestigious career in the world of comedy, starting with his work on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

It was as a writer for this show that he won his first Emmy and premiered a character called Officer Judy who famously gave Liberace a speeding ticket for playing too fast.

Bob Einstein as Super Dave Osborne

Einstein’s most successful and enduring character is stuntman Super Dave Osborne, who is usually either performing dangerous stunts that go terribly wrong or seriously performing stunts that are completely mundane.

One of my favorite examples of the latter is a stunt in which Dave is strapped into a metal capsule and propelled along a specially designed track — after much talk building up the stunt, he is joined by several children and a nun on what turns out to be a rollercoaster.

Super Dave made his first appearance on The John Bryner Comedy Hour in 1972 and went on to appear for years on several variety and late night talk shows, including Late Night with David Letterman.

He even eventually got his own variety show called Super Dave (1987-91) and went on to make a movie called The Extreme Adventures of Super Dave (2000).

What makes Einstein’s characters particularly funny, in addition to the actual writing and situations, is his extreme deadpan delivery. It makes all of Super Dave’s stunts seem deadly serious and any deadly disaster hilariously underplayed.

During one of Super Dave’s stunts, he accidentally got crushed repeatedly with a wrecking ball but kept up his commentary about how the stunt went wrong.

He usually ends up regretting any stunt he performs, but only after a long-winded, deadpanned set up to the actual stunt, and always emphasizing safety first. His catch-phrase is straight and to the point: “I’m in pain.”

Bob Einstein on Arrested Development

Of course, I know him mainly as Larry Middleman from Arrested Development, the professional surrogate hired by George Bluth (Jeffery Tambor) to repeat his words remotely from prison.

His deadpan delivery is perfect as he robotically parrots the words said to him through his headset. They completely lack the tone and emotion imbued by their source, which often leads to hilarious misunderstandings.

While Curb Your Enthusiasm has been renewed for a tenth season, we don’t know yet whether Einstein’s Marty Funkhouser will appear in it.

In the meantime, his friends and family have been posting their tributes to social media while fans have been commenting their own tributes to old Super Dave videos on YouTube.

Source: CinemaBlend