Brushes with death, family tragedies, box office flops and divorce drama — the late
Bob Saget went through a lot on his path to becoming "America's Dad."
In his 2014 memoir "Dirty Daddy," Bob describes the trauma that his parents,
Benjamin and Rosalyn Saget, had suffered just two years before his birth. In 1954,
Rosalyn gave birth to twin boys, named Robert and Faith, at the hospital in the family's
hometown of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. What the family didn't know at the time, however,
was that the hospital was dealing with an outbreak of dysentery, which proved fatal
to the twins within days of their birth and which took the lives of several other newborns.
Bob also explains that he didn't enjoy the typical perks of a traditional father-son
relationship growing up. Benjamin began his career as a butcher in a supermarket before
working his way up into management, smoking six packs of cigarettes a day in the process.
When Bob was 6, his father suffered a massive heart attack and had another one six months
later that almost killed him. As such, though his father was a constant presence in his life,
his health issues meant he and Bob didn't share typical father-son pastimes.
As Biography details, Saget didn't perform particularly well at school,
with his low grades becoming even worse after his family relocated from Pennsylvania to California,
though the Sagets soon returned to their home state. Saget graduated high school,
and, though he had harbored dreams of being a doctor, he was encouraged to pursue a career
in a creative field after enrolling at Philadelphia's Temple University.
There he studied film, and he won an award for a documentary short he made in 1978.
While he was then accepted into graduate school at
the University of Southern California, the future comedian soon dropped out,
later citing his own vanity for his lack of motivation. But as he explained in an
interview with the Saturday Evening Post in 1990, a sudden brush with death changed his mentality.
"I was a cocky, overweight 22 year-old. Then I had a gangrenous appendix taken out,
almost died, and I got over being cocky or overweight."
In his memoir, Bob Saget suggests two ways in which comedy has worked as a survival tactic
throughout his life. To begin with, Saget describes both his childhood at home and at
school as "survival of the wittiest," and that while he wasn't a tough kid, being ready with
a smart comeback could work as an effective rebuttal against bullies — though Saget does
recall getting bloodied in fights that broke out after he was the subject of anti-Semitic remarks.
But Saget also saw comedy as a mechanism by which to turn suffering into something joyous.
In his memoir, Saget claims that he inherited his sense of humor from his father, writing,
"Like me, my dad dealt with death and all the hardships in life through humor. Sick and weird
humor. [...] Not always funny, but always some kind of metaphysical release from the pain."
What emerges is the idea of off-color humor as a release valve for coping with life's tragedies,
which Saget would have to deal with throughout his life. Elsewhere, Saget writes,
"It was this part of my DNA that allowed me to lose two of the most important
people in my life and push even harder to pursue a career in making people laugh."
The two important people that Bob Saget lost tragically young were his beloved older sisters,
who both died in their parents' lifetimes in heartbreaking circumstances.
Saget wrote in his book,
"I loved my sisters, Andi and Gay, very much. [...] They were both
schoolteachers. Really good ones. Which means they were underpaid and loved to
impart as much wisdom and goodness as they could on their students."
Andi died at the age of just 34, from a brain aneurysm,
while Gay died at 47, just a few years after being diagnosed with systemic scleroderma,
a chronic autoimmune disease that hardens and tightens the skin and connective tissues.
Following the deaths of his sisters, Saget committed to fundraising, becoming a board member
of the Scleroderma Research Foundation and raising awareness of the disease. Following Gay's death,
Saget also directed a TV movie, "For Hope," which was based on the story of her life.
Around the time of the birth of his first daughter,
Bob Saget was beginning to make steps towards a career on the small screen.
As he writes in his memoir, Saget's first major TV role was as a "sidekick" on a CBS
show called "The Morning Program," with Saget hired to provide the show with a comedic edge.
"Hi! It's time now for 'This Week in History.'"
However, Saget lasted only six months in the role and was let go amid concerns that his
performance wasn't a match for the show's audience — a major setback for a comedian
with a young family in the early stages of his career. Saget later claimed, per Biography,
"The affiliates were upset — I was considered too 'hot' for the morning, whatever that is."
"Awww. I hope you don't get hare-pes. It's a hare! It's a hare, and—"
"Did you hear that?"
Thankfully, he soon landed what would prove to be his most iconic role: that of Danny Tanner,
the lead in the long-running sitcom "Full House," which would make Saget a household name.
Despite the lewd material of his stand-up shows, Bob Saget has always been known as a devoted
family man, whose private life mirrors that of his most famous onscreen roles.
But the comedian's love life wasn't always straightforward.
Though Saget and his high school sweetheart Sherri Kramer would go
on to have three daughters together following their marriage in 1983,
their relationship disintegrated in 1997, as the Sun Sentinel reports,
with Kramer citing "irreconcilable differences" in the court documents.
However, Saget and Kramer remained in contact,
with the comedian getting in touch with his ex-wife to get her permission to
include details of their life together in his memoir. In an interview with Parade,
Saget expresses the joy that the children they had together brought to his life, saying,
"The best thing I've done, the highest thing in my whole life is my daughters.
If everything in my life is raised to the level of how great they are,
then that would be a great thing to have achieved."
Saget finally remarried in 2018, to Kelly Rizzo, telling Closer Weekly at the time
that after his divorce more than two decades earlier, he never expected to find love again.
Despite his many successes in front of the camera, Bob Saget still harbored the
same filmmaking ambitions that he did as a student, and throughout his career was
on the lookout for opportunities to put his directorial abilities to the test.
One such opportunity came in the late 1990s, when he was approached by his
friend Norm MacDonald — who had recently become a major star thanks to his role
on "Saturday Night Live" and his singular anchoring of the show's popular "Weekend
Update" segment — to direct a movie the comedian had written: 1998's "Dirty Work."
In his memoir, Saget describes directing the movie as the "wildest experience" of his career.
But while the movie came to be loved by both its creators and the comedians' fans,
"Dirty Work" was a disappointment, both critically and commercially.
"There's two kinds of people in this world. Those who get
stomped on, and those who do the stomping."
Despite this, numerous sources claim that a sequel was in the works,
with Norm MacDonald tweeting in 2019 that he had finished writing the script at Saget's behest.
On the final page of Bob Saget's 2014 memoir, an author's note reads,
"As the book went to press, I lost my loving mother at the age of eighty-nine.
A beloved wife, mother, grandmother, aunt, and friend, she touched countless lives
through the generations and will always be remembered. This is for you, Mom."
Shortly after publication, Saget suffered another loss, after his friend,
the beloved comedian Robin Williams, was found dead at the age of 63. Saget told Culturated,
"I took his loss very hard. I met him when I was 21, and he is mentioned throughout the book.
How he left us is obviously not how I will remember him."
But just as Saget always turned to comedy as a way of dealing with loss,
the death of Williams also gave him a new sense of perspective and motivation
to pursue his craft and to make the most of the time he had left. He continued,
"I can't waste time on things I used to as a younger man,
just going crazy about things that I had no control over.
It's time to really enjoy my work and my craft, and just go out and do it well."
In the final months of his life, Bob Saget was to suffer one more tragic loss: Norm Macdonald,
who sadly died in September 2021 after suffering with leukemia privately for many years.
The two comedians were more than colleagues. As discussed on Macdonald's "Quarantined" video
series in March 2020, Saget was the first comedian that the aspiring 15-year-old Macdonald saw live.
"And then I afterwards, like an idiot, went up to you at the bar.
Like people do, like as if they're part of the act. I'm like, 'Hey, should we talk?"
The two struck up a friendship, and it was this encounter that Macdonald recalled when
looking for someone to direct "Dirty Work." The two maintained a strong friendship,
with Macdonald providing a memorable performance during 2008's "Comedy Central
Roast of Bob Saget" and Saget later appearing on Macdonald's podcast, "Norm Macdonald Live."
Following news of Macdonald's death, Saget published an emotional dedication
to the late comedian, describing the loss of Macdonald as, quote,
"a knife in the heart for all of us who were close to him and all of you who loved him."
In a statement to the Hollywood Reporter,
Bob Saget's family confirmed his death on January 9, 2022:
"We are devastated to confirm that our beloved Bob passed away today.
He was everything to us and we want you to know how much he loved his fans,
performing live and bringing people from all walks of life together with laughter."
The suddenness of his death was deeply shocking. In his final Tweet,
Saget shouted out the crowd who saw his final performance,
calling them "an appreciative audience," and said he was "happily addicted again" to doing stand-up.
Saget's wife, Kelly Rizzo, had spoken to him just hours before his death,
with a source telling People magazine that he, quote,
"sounded really happy" and he was scheduled to fly home the next day.
As news of the sudden and tragic death of Bob Saget made headlines around the world,
countless celebrities took to social media to pay tribute to their friend
and to share their memories of a gregarious and caring colleague.
Among them were Saget's co-stars on his career-defining show, "Full House,"
including John Stamos, who had maintained a close friendship with Saget since first
portraying the lead character Danny Tanner's brother-in-law, Jesse, in 1987. Stamos Tweeted,
"I am broken, I am gutted. I am in complete and utter shock. I
will never ever have another friend like him. I love you so much Bobby."
Dave Coulier, who played Tanner's best friend Joey, said in a tweet:
"My heart is broken. I love you, Bob."
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, who together portrayed Saget's onscreen daughter,
described Saget as a "loving, compassionate, and generous man" while co-stars Andrea Barber
and Candace Cameron Bure also shared their shock and pain on learning of Saget's death.
The following day, the cast and crew of "Full House" reunited online in tribute to Saget.
A statement posted on Stamos' Instagram read:
"Thirty-five years ago, we came together as a TV family, but we became a real family.
And now we grieve as a family ... He was a brother to us guys,
a father to us girls and a friend to all of us. Bob, we love you dearly. We ask in Bob's honor,
hug the people you love. No one gave better hugs than Bob."