Grammy Award-nominated stand-up comedian, T.V. host, director, and beloved sit-com patriarch Danny Tanner from Full House, Bob Saget has passed away in a hotel room in Orlando Florida at age 65. TMZ was first to report his passing and the Orlando County Sheriff’s Office confirmed with a tweet:
Saget had been touring the country, with many dates throughout the state of Florida, including Orlando, which began in September and had scheduled appearances across America and Canada through June, 2022.
The night before his passing, he performed in Jacksonville at the Ponte Vedra Concert Hall and he shouted out the crowd shortly after midnight, Sunday morning in a tweet:
REELated: Academy Award winner, film director, Sidney Poitier has passed at age 94
Robert Lane Saget was born in Philadelphia, PA on May 17, 1956, and graduated from Abington Senior High School in 1975. Saget originally intended to become a doctor, but he was encouraged by his Honors English teacher to pursue a career in film.
Saget attended Temple University’s film school, where he created Through Adam’s Eyes, a black-and-white film about a boy who received reconstructive facial surgery and was honored with an award of merit in the Student Academy Awards. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1978.
From there, he went to California where he intended to take graduate courses at the University of Southern California, but quit a few days later.
After a short stint as a member of CBS’ The Morning Program in early 1987, Saget was cast as Danny Tanner in Full House opposite stars John Stamos, Dave Coulier, not to mention his TV daughters, Candace Cameron, Jodie Sweetin as well as Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, who swapped the duties of portraying Michelle. The show became wildly successful with family viewers and filled the 8:00 pm time slot on ABC’s TGIF programming block and delighted fans from 1987-1995.
Saget began as the host of America’s Funniest Home Videos, and held onto the role until 1997. During the early 1990s, Saget worked both on Full House and AFV simultaneously. In 2009, he returned to AFV for the 20th-anniversary one-hour special co-hosted with Tom Bergeron.
From the ’90s through the 2000s and into the 2010s, Saget both directed and appeared in multiple projects. He directed the now cult classic, but critically panned film Dirty Work, starring Norm Macdonald and Artie Lange.
In 2008, Saget’s comedy contributions were put on full display in his memorable Comedy Central roast, where a ton of his longtime comic buddies eviscerated him kiddingly and with love. He proved to be a good sport, taking his licks from the likes of Gilbert Gottfried, Norm Macdonald, Greg Giraldo, Jon Lovitz, Jeff Ross, Brian Posehn and others.
Saget’s other notable acting credits include a recurring role on Entourage, where he played an exaggerated version of himself, the narrator’s voice of How I Met Your Mother, another sitcom he starred in called Raising Dad, one of the penguins in Farce of the Penguins, the lead in Surviving Suburbia, and a standout cameo in Half Baked as a recovering crackhead.
Saget’s 2014 comedy album, That’s What I’m Talkin’ About, was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album.
In 2016, Netflix rebooted the sugary family-friendly hit we all know and love called Fuller House, which reunited almost the entire cast with the exception of the Olsen twins to continue the story of the Tanner family in their San Francisco home. The show was a huge hit that allowed parents to share their love of the sitcom with their own children for 5 years until the show ended in 2020.
In 2020, Saget also launched a podcast titled Bob Saget’s Here For You with Studio71 and he also competed in season four of The Masked Singer as “Squiggly Monster”, appearing in 3 episodes.
Saget was a board member of the Scleroderma Research Foundation. In an interview with Ability Magazine, Saget discussed how his sister was diagnosed with scleroderma at 43 and died at 47 from the condition and inspired the ABC television movie called For Hope, which Saget directed. He disclosed in the interview that It starred Dana Delany and was based on his sister, Gay.
Hollywood friends and colleagues quickly flocked to Twitter to remember Saget:
Saget is survived by his wife, Kelly Rizzo, and daughters, Aubrey, Lara and Jennifer.
