Illness and Death
Silvers suffered a stroke during the run of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in August 1972. He was left with slurred speech. Despite his poor health, he continued working, playing Harry Starman in the 1974 "Horror in the Heights" episode of The Night Stalker starring Darren McGavin. His guest appearances would continue into the early 1980s including co-starring in 1977's The Chicken Chronicles,an appearance on Fantasy Island as an old comic trying to reunite with his old partner, and on Happy Days as the father of Jenny Piccolo (played by his daughter Cathy Silvers).
A frail Silvers, interviewed shortly before his death, revealed one of his secrets: "I’m an impatient comedian. And I feel the audience is as impatient as me."
Silvers died in his sleep on November 1, 1985 in Century City, California. "Mr. Silvers's family said he died of natural causes." He was interred at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.
Read more about this topic: Phil Silvers
Famous quotes containing the words illness and/or death:
“Man is not merely the sum of his masks. Behind the shifting face of personality is a hard nugget of self, a genetic gift.... The self is malleable but elastic, snapping back to its original shape like a rubber band. Mental illness is no myth, as some have claimed. It is a disturbance in our sense of possession of a stable inner self that survives its personae.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“O Lord, methought what pain it was to drown,
What dreadful noise of waters in my ears!
What sights of ugly death within my eyes!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)