Dick Shawn was, of course, one of the major players in my fave film, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. At the time it was made, he had not yet quite attained the stardom of most of the other major players but he was so good in it, that didn't matter. I have talked about this movie with hundreds of people over the year and there seems to be a consensus that the three greatest performances were given by Jonathan Winters, Phil Silvers and Shawn. In a movie packed with professional scene-stealers, that's quite an accomplishment.
Here's Mr. Shawn with Johnny Carson and Burt Reynolds on The Tonight Show for November 11, 1986. That was just a few months before Shawn passed away during the intermission of a one-man show in which he was performing. The video also ends abruptly but what comes before is very funny and very typical of this man's unique, tethered-to-his-own-reality sense of humor. No one else was quite like him and it's unlikely anyone ever will be…