Personal Life
He was twice married to Joyce Indig, with whom he had a son, Brian, and a daughter, Melanie. He asked international platform speaker Dr. Cody Sweet to marry him in 1970, but she turned him down, respectfully. From 1993 to his death, he was married to Joan Child. He and comic Sam Kinison were also very good friends.
The confusion of Dangerfield's stage persona with his real-life personality was a conception that he long resented. While Child described him as "classy, gentlemanly, sensitive and intelligent," people who met the comedian nonetheless treated him as the belligerent loser whose character he adopted in performance. In 2004, Dangerfield's autobiography, It's Not Easy Bein' Me: A Lifetime of No Respect but Plenty of Sex and Drugs (ISBN 0-06-621107-7) was published. The book's original title was My Love Affair With Marijuana, a reference to his smoking material of choice for 60 years.
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