Louie Anderson, Iconic Stand-Up Comic and ‘Baskets’ Star, Dies at 68
Louie Anderson, the big-hearted everyman who rose to fame as a stand-up comic, then channeled the spirit of his late mother for his Emmy-winning turn as Christine Baskets on the FX series Baskets, has died. He was 68.
Anderson died Friday in a Las Vegas hospital of complications from cancer, his longtime publicist Glenn Schwartz told The Hollywood Reporter. Anderson had been undergoing treatment after being diagnosed with a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
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Mentored by legendary stand-up Henny Youngman, the gap-toothed Minnesota native was named one of “100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time” by Comedy Central in 2004. He also co-created Life With Louie, the Saturday morning animated series in which he played a version of his 8-year-old self and hosted a revival of the game show Family Feud.
For his first big part, Eddie Murphy picked Anderson to portray Maurice, an upward-striving employee at McDowell’s, in Coming to America (1988), and he returned for the 2021 sequel.
“You know, I started on clean-up just like you guys,” he tells Murphy and Arsenio Hall’s characters in the original. “But now, see, I’m washing lettuce. Soon I’ll be on fries, then the grill. In a year or two, I make assistant manager, and that’s when the big bucks start rolling in.”
Baskets, created by Louis C.K., Zach Galifianakis and Jonathan Krisel, starred Galifianakis as Chip and Dale Baskets, one a struggling circus clown, the other his obnoxious identical twin. Yet it was Anderson, as their melancholy yet optimistic single mom, who stole the show during its four-season run (2016-19).
When Galifianakis began describing Christine’s voice to his Baskets‘ co-creators, both immediately thought of Anderson to take on the part. The comic related to the character, who he said was just like his mother, who died in 1990.
“I’m pretty sure my mom orchestrated it from the great beyond,” Anderson told the Los Angeles Times in 2017. “I mean, how would that come up otherwise? She always could have been a star herself, so she’s finally getting a chance to act.”
Anderson’s portrayal of Christine earned him his Primetime Emmy in 2016, the first of three straight years with a nomination.
“Mom! We did it!” he exclaimed after making his way to the podium on Emmy night. “I haven’t always been a very good man, but I play one hell of a woman. This is for my mother, Ora Zella Anderson, who I stole every nuance, shameful look, cruel look, loving look [and] passive-aggressive line from.”
“In its first year, Baskets laid the groundwork to prove that having ’80s stand-up icon Anderson playing the mother to the main characters played by Galifianakis was not a stunt,” THR chief TV critic Daniel Fienberg wrote in 2017.
“Honestly, it never felt like one, and in episodes like ‘Easter in Bakersfield,’ Anderson made Christine into a character of subtle complexity, exactly the sort of quiet, spotlight-shy work you wouldn’t expect from a former game show host who put himself and his autobiography at the center of much of his material. Anderson’s investment was always in honoring Christine as a person, not in getting attention for oddball casting.”
Courtesy Prashant Gupta/FX/Courtesy Everett Collection
Louie Perry Anderson was born on March 24, 1953, in St. Paul, Minnesota. The second-youngest of 11 children (six boys and five sisters), he grew up poor in the Roosevelt Homes housing project. He blamed his father, Louis, an abusive failed musician who battled alcoholism, for the family’s woes and praised his mother for filling the household with love and hope.
Anderson, who said he had a “lifelong food addiction,” claimed his weight problem was the result of the turmoil at home, and he told People magazine in 1987 that he ate to escape.
After graduating from Johnson Senior High School in St. Paul, Anderson spent several years counseling troubled youngsters.
While attending a comedy show at Mickey Finn’s in Minneapolis in 1978, Anderson noted the lack of laughs and thought he’d take a crack at stand-up. “I signed up next week, my mom and dad came down, my family came down, my co-workers,” he said. “And I did three minutes, and I felt like I did good.”
Anderson mined his early material from his family life, his oversized frame and his love of eating. Two early jokes: “Let me move the microphone so you can see me” and “I was the first kid on the block voted most likely to become a group.”
In 1981, Anderson took first place in the Midwest Comedy Competition, hosted that year by Youngman, who hired him as a writer and helped shape him as a performer.
“His work ethic had the biggest influence on me,” Anderson told the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2019. “He said, ‘Just do your jokes.’ But I was more of a person who wanted to tell stories. I didn’t want to just present jokes. But I did have a bunch of one-liners when I started my act each time. I got that from him and his work ethic.”
Anderson’s breakthrough came in November 1984 when he made his national TV debut on The Tonight Show. True to form, his 5 1/2-minute routine was mostly made up of fat jokes, starting with, “I can’t stay long, I’m in between meals, so bear with me.”
A few months later, Anderson was featured alongside Bob Saget, Rita Rudner and Sam Kinison on HBO’s ninth annual Young Comedians special.
Anderson made his film debut as a taxi driver in Cloak & Dagger (1984), then showed up in the 1986 films Quicksilver, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Ratboy. In 1988, he starred with Richard Lewis and Richard Belzer in The Wrong Guys and had his memorable cameo in Coming to America.
Paramount execs wanted someone white to be in that movie, Murphy recalled in March 2021 on Jimmy Kimmel Live!
“The whole cast is black — and this was back in the ’80s — so it was like, ‘We have to have a white person! There has to be a white person in the movie.’ What?” he said. “So it was, ‘Who’s the funniest white guy around?’ And Louie, we knew, we was cool with him. So that’s how Louie got in the movie.”
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TV stardom beckoned when Anderson was picked to play Larry opposite Bronson Pinchot’s Balki on the sitcom Perfect Strangers. A pilot was filmed in 1985, but he was replaced by Mark Linn-Baker, and the show became a hit that lasted eight seasons.
He voiced his younger self as well as his father on 1994-98’s Life With Louie, winning two acting Daytime Emmys along the way. The series also collected three Humanitas prizes.
In 1996, Anderson headlined the CBS sitcom The Louie Show, playing a Minnesota psychotherapist alongside Bryan Cranston and Paul Feig, but it lasted just six episodes.
Anderson headlined several comedy specials over the years and performed often on the Comic Relief fundraisers. His TV résumé also included guest spots on Grace Under Fire, Chicago Hope, Touched by an Angel, Scrubs, Joey, Young Sheldon and Twenties. He hosted the syndicated Family Feud from 1999-2002.
In 1989, Anderson published Dear Dad: Letters From an Adult Child, a series of emotionally charged letters he wrote to his late father that explored the sense of shame and insecurity he felt growing up and how it fueled his comedy. Next came a tribute to his mom, 2018’s Hey Mom: Stories for My Mother, but You Can Read Them Too.
He also wrote 1994’s Goodbye Jumbo … Hello Cruel World and 2002’s The F Word: How to Survive Your Family.
Anderson wed his high school sweetheart in 1985, but their marriage lasted four weeks. Survivors include his sisters, Lisa and Shanna Anderson.
In his Union-Tribune interview, he said he always tried to “laugh with my audience. I try to say, ‘Hey, aren’t we all pathetic?’ I just put myself out there as the main pathetic person: ‘I can’t stop eating, but I have to because I’ve already eaten everything.’ I’m laying it out there.
“That’s the Richard Pryor effect. If you’re honest enough about it all, it’s really rewarding. It is healing. I feel very good out there onstage.”
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