G
Gallagher
Identification American stand-up comic and
entertainer
Born July 24, 1947; Fort Bragg, North Carolina
Thanks to manic performances that revitalized conven-
tional stand-up comedy, a tireless touring schedule, and a
savvy use of cable programming, Gallagher became one of
the decade’s most recognized comics.
Emerging during a time when stand-up comedians
such as David Letterman, Jerry Seinfeld, Gary Shand-
ling, and Jay Leno routinely offered wry commentar-
ies on quirky everyday experiences, Gallagher ener-
gized his stage show by incorporating physical
comedy into his performances. Taking a page from
Lily Tomlin’s book, Gallagher performed on a stage
designed to resemble a children’s room, with over-
sized furniture and toys whose scale suggested that
Gallagher himself was a child. He engaged his audi-
ence while seated at a massive Big Wheel or in a huge
high chair. His performance roots were in rock and
roll (he was a roadie for several groups in the early
1970’s), giving him a taste for the outrageous.
Sporting what would become his signature outfit,
loud suspenders and a bowler with tangles of red
stringy hair, Gallagher used comedy to reveal the hy-
pocrisies of American materialism; the superficiality
of the television generation; the perplexing implica-
tions of gender; the incompetence of politicians;
and the paradoxical nature of language itself. A
graduate of the University of South Florida in 1969,
he admitted the influence of the counterculture on
both his look and his avant-garde show.
Although his show’s prevalent themes reflected a
long tradition of using comedy as a vehicle for social
and cultural criticism, Gallagher’s outrageous use
of props, most notably food, gave his shows a hip, sub-
versive feel. Indeed, he became best known for whack-
ing objects with an oversized wooden mallet, dubbed
the Sledge-o-Matic, a bit that parodied kitchen prod-
ucts sold through television infomercials. In this rou-
tine, Gallagher positioned on a slab objects ranging
from Big Macs to dead fish to computer parts and
then gleefully smashed them, a not-too-subtle com-
mentary on the materialism of America’s culture. As
the routine became his signature, audiences nearest
the stage would be provided protective gear in antici-
pation of flying refuse—most notably from his inevi-
table closer, a watermelon.
Because of his reliance on props and the appar-
ently juvenile nature of his act, critics often dismissed
his comedy as anti-intellectual. He was seldom asked
to appear on late-night network television. Rather, he
earned his living touring, and at his peak in the mid-
1980’s, he performed more than one hundred shows
per year. Moreover, his inability to a find a place on
broadcast network television led Gallagher to be-
come one of the first comedians to embrace the lucra-
tive possibilities of cable television, producing more
than a dozen specials for the premium channel Show-
time during the decade.
Impact Gallagher’s unapologetic use of props, his
interactive stage show, and his edgy development of
visual comedy as part of a stand-up stage show created
a defiant counterargument to the laid-back stylings of
most of the decade’s comedians, who, in intimate
club surroundings, would share understated, acerbic
insights. Gallagher’s comedy, though, had a point:
His playful antics—especially his gargantuan sense of
overstatement drawn from rock and roll, vaudeville
slapstick, and the visual silliness of classic cartoons—
raised unsettling questions about the shallowness and
hypocrisy of Ronald Reagan’s America.
Further Reading
Double, Oliver.Getting the Joke: The Inner Workings of
Stand-Up Comedy. London: Methuen, 2005.
Gallagher: Comedy Legend. http://gallaghersmash
.com.
Limon, John.Stand-Up Comedy in Theor y: Or, Abjection
in America. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press,
2000.
Joseph Dewey