Comedian John Regis died last night at the age of 94. He'd been living for some time at the L.A. Veterans Home and he recently took a bad fall there. I'm told John had a very distinguished military career — he was in the Air Force for nine years — but I never heard him talk about it. He did however have an endless stash of anecdotes about performing in dives, dumps and Playboy Clubs. I never saw him work but he had a rep as a guy who could sing, dance, tell jokes, play an array of musical instruments and so on. Whatever it took to please a crowd.
John was one of those performers who for a long time just worked wherever he could — clubs, cruises, Vegas, industrial gigs, wherever. I don't think he got on TV very often but a lot of folks can make a decent living without that. He did sometimes talk about how his income plunged as those Playboy Clubs closed. I think that's where I first saw his name: In ads for a Playboy Club. He said that for a long time, he just went from one to another, working eventually at every one of them.
I knew him mainly from Yarmy's Army, the social group for comedians, comedy writers and other funny people. The last few times I saw him at meetings, maybe five or six years ago, he had some sort of medical shuttle service bring him over from the Veterans Home and then take him back there after he shared food and jokes with a lot of his friends. Nice man.