Fred Willard: The Funniest Straight Man A Fond Farewell. He was that rare kind of actor who, whenever he turned up, always made you think: "This is gonna be good!"
He was the best part of the Christopher Guest movies imo. My favourite line of his "You know what they say about blind prostitutes? You really have to hand it to them!"
Just to be clear, Fred is not the “straight man” in these roles. In comedy, the straight man is the “serious” one while the other guy is all the funnier for it. In the Smothers Brothers, Dick was the straight man.
You should have added in some Fernwood 2-Nite stuff. He was a master of dead-pan... he had a line once where he said something like, "During World War 2, you could kill as many Germans as you liked... but boy, you do that nowadays and you're in a lot of hot water." He says it so innocently that it's 100 times funnier.
