Ruth Buzzi’s Garage

Golden Globe Award winner Ruth Buzzi is famous for her self-created character Gladys Ormphby, a hairnet-wearing, handbag-wielding spinster who put people in their place with a whack over the head on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. The actress-comedian and her husband of 32 years, Kent Perkins, divide their time between three North Texas properties, including a ranch near Fort Worth, where a plump black cat named Ratso Rizzo holds court. “You should see him on a four-wheeler,” says the 74-year-old. Sharing space with Rizzo are 5 cows—Buzzi treats them to slices of white bread—40 chickens, 25 ducks, 2 swans, and 8 guinea fowl. Behind the cow pasture a 2,400-square-foot garage holds a silver 1958 Rolls-Royce, a 1969 Jaguar XK-E, an assortment of furniture, and hundreds of cataloged boxes of Hollywood memorabilia that will soon be moved to a new home in Erath County.

Items in Ruth Buzzi’s Garage

• That’s my suit from a celebrity challenge Jeep race. I was the first person to ever burn out brake lights.

• Laugh-In had a magazine. Hugh Hefner was great.

• That’s my Playboy centerfold.

• I did a two-hour special in Seoul, South Korea, with Rolf Harris. He used to appear on The Tonight Show.

• These are the clippers I use to cut Kinky Friedman’s hair. I am able to trim his hair because my father taught me how to trim bushes when I was a kid.

• The only reason all these awards are in my garage is because of the move.

• This is a cast picture with Tiny Tim and John Wayne.

• That was the Dean Martin roast in Vegas. I was beating up Muhammed Ali along with Howard Cosell and Freddie Prinze.

• These are my notes from my club act, probably around 1975 or ’76.

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For dozens of Laugh-In and Dean Martin Celebrity Roast videos featuring Ruth Buzzi, search her name on youtube.com.