I love comedy and there have been many great stand up comedians over the years but there are a few that you will always remember. Everyone has their favorites and this is my opinion, but I think these are the 5 best comedians that are no longer with us. I am sure many will disagree with some of them but these were comedians that I always remembered, and there are many bits that they did that make me laugh just thinking about them to this day.
Unfortunately these comedians are dead now, and a couple were taken way before their time but their comedy will always live on. I know there are many more comedians that people will name but many of them were before my time so I am not very familiar with them. One of the best things about these 5 guys is that their bits still hold up to this day and seem to never get old.
5 – Mitch Hedberg (February 24, 1968 – March 29, 2005)
4 – Sam Kinison – (December 8, 1953 – April 10, 1992)
Pentecostal Preacher Turned Comedian
3 – Richard Pryor (December 1, 1940 – December 10, 2005)
2 – George Carlin (May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008)
1 – Bill Hicks (December 16, 1961 – February 26, 1994)
{ 48 comments… read them below or add one }
WHERE IS BERNIE MAC??
George Carlin should have been #1
He’s dead. He was funny, but nowhere near the caliber of the others mentioned in the article.
Where is Rodney Dangerfield? John Belushi? I hope they’d make the top 10.
What about Rodney Dangerfield? No list is complete without him.
Hey ‘eh’, I guess they just meant the funny ones…
Sam Kinison? You left Phil Hartman off this list for Sam Kinison? Seriously?
i agree with the people on the list but i think 3 2 and 1 should be flipped
Mitch Hedberg is my favorite comedian of all time, not just out of my favorite dead ones. Just saying. lol
why the hell isnt chris farley up there.
@eh Where is your sense of taste…
Bernie Mac is on the list of people who can’t be understood without subtitles…
in the toilet where he belongs…he wasn’t funny even once in his life.
Might as well put Artie Lange on the list and get it over with early
Yeah, I guessed 4 of the 5. Hedberg threw me, I was thinking Lenny Bruce.
I was going to be mad if you left out mitch hedberg, george carlin, or bill hicks. But you had them all.. I dont completely agree with your list, but its a wonderful top 5. And all of them are worthy of being in the 10.
Robin Harris should be here his Bebe’s Kids routine was the funniest ever.
I was happy to see Bill Hicks make the list. Goat boy and Charlie Hodge bits are classic. Andy Kaufman would have been a good one too. Farley and Belushi where comic actors. This list seems to be more stand up comedians.
“WHERE IS BERNIE MAC??”
While I was all for his death, I think the list is supposed to represent the top five FUNNY dead comedians. Good list, btw. Totally agree with Hick’s being number one. Kinison’s early stuff was outstanding, but his later stuff, not so much.
John Candy!!!!!!
None of the above would have been able to reach any success if it wasn’t for Lenny Bruce. Bruce’s material is brilliant, intelligent, relevant and most importantly ground breaking. Without Bruce, all comedy would be anecdotal and/or light cocktail comedy like Alan Sherman.
Big Omission!
Lenny Bruce was great, but he died 10 years before I was born. This is a list of my fav comedians I grew up with. I said in there that I knew people would bring others up, like Lenny Bruce, but he was before my time.
Okay here’s it goes:
Why can’t someone make a list without other going off on it and then to make it worse totally miss the point of the list? This list is his Top 5 favorite Comedians…. Not funny Actors.
Andy Kaufman…… Not a Stand Up Comic and don’t even bring up when he created his alter ego
John Belushi (I’m a huge Fan)…… Not a Stand Up Comic, as close to stage performance outside of SNL he ever did was as The Blues Brothers
Phil Hartman….. Not a Stand Up Comic, enough said
Chris Farley……. Not a Stand Up Comic!
Hey maybe some one should do a list of funny ACTORS & that way you can add the ones that are missing from this list.
P.S.
Dangerfield & Farley were not all that funny & Andy Kaufman was only funny on Taxi!!!!!
Peace Out
Thank you for that comment, I appreciate it! I even said some of that in the 2 paragraphs I wrote before the vids, but I think most people just watched the vids and did not read anything on the page. I guess I should have labeled it as “stand up comedians” since that is exactly what they all are. I definitely think Farley only had a couple moments where he was actually funny and Dangerfield I just found goofy and creepy even though he had his moments too.
The other thing that gets me is people bringing up all these comedians that were before my time, such as Lenny Bruce, Groucho Marx etc. I never said I don’t find what I have seen of them funny, they are just before my time so they are not on my list. It is so frustrating when I say all this before the vids and noone reads before they comment.
@El Chubby Bouricua
You’re overlooking Belushi’s work with National Lampoon, pre-SNL I’m afraid. Look up Lonely at the Bottom from the Lemmings Roadshow on YouTube. He was doing stage routines and singing long before Blues Brothers.
Spot-on right about this being about dead comedians and not dead actors, though.
@ShortAttention
Well said about Groucho and Lenny, if the list were about dead comedians in general people could just start bringing up obscure Greek or 19th century writers but I grew up with all of these guys myself and as big of a fan as I am of the Marx Brothers films I find Carlin, Kinison and Hedberg a lot more personally relevant.
Where the F*** is Chris Farley?
El Chubby Boricua,
Im sorry but i cannot find where the paragraph stated in the begining said anything about stand up comedians. If you see it written anywhere let me know? Chris Farley should have been somewhere on this list, No affense to the poster. A lot of people loved him and thought he was hilarious. hands down is one of the greatest comedians of all time.
Remember to let me know if you see any thing about a stand up comedian below
I love comedy and there have been many great comedians over the years but there are a few that you will always remember. Everyone has their favorites and this is my opinion, but I think these are the 5 best comedians that are no longer with us. I am sure many will disagree with some of them but these were comedians that I always remembered, and there are many bits that they did that make me laugh just thinking about them to this day.
Unfortunately these comedians are dead now, and a couple were taken way before their time but their comedy will always live on. I know there are many more comedians that people will name but many of them were before my time so I am not very familiar with them. One of the best things about these 5 guys is that their bits still hold up to this day and seem to never get old.
I did not label it “stand up comedians”, but that is what it is and it is just my opinion. I am not a big fan of Chris Farley, he had his moments but all in all I do not think he even compares to these guys. I know a lot of people loved him and thought he was funny but I am not one of them. I do not like anyone that has come from SNL in quite a while, the last was Mike Myers.
I think Belushi did some very funny stuff for sure, and I have seen a lot of it, but like you said in the closing of your comment, he wasn’t personally relevant to me because he died when I was 6 years old.
I would disagree with many of your choices, but my point of reference is different (I’m an old fart), but I would still agree that all your choices are very good at their craft. My number 1 would have to be Carlin, though.
The one thing I would strongly disagree with is within the comments – saying that Andy Kaufman did not do standup is just plain wrong – most of his standup routines can be found on youtube. Many might debate that “Taxi” was his best work – in fact, from what I have read anyway, Kaufman did not care at all for Taxi. Personally though, I found much of Kaufman’s comedy to be far too out there for me to “get”.
Ok, carlin should be #1, Pryor #2, dangerfield #3… and the rest can work themselves out
I never was a big Dangerfield fan, he had moments. He is scary looking to me, he has that pedo look, and Natural Born Killers made that even worse in my eyes.
Great list man, love all these guys, but Lenny Bruce should be on the list for no other reason than he inspired Kinison, Hicks and Carlin for sure.
Thanks man, I totally agree that Lenny Bruce was a huge inspiration to all these guys and if he didn’t die 10 years before I was born I am sure he would have been more personally relevant to me and on this list.
ABSOLUTELY PERFECT LIST !
Hicks is without a doubt the greatest “stand – up” ever to pick up a mic and walk on a stage…Just ask Denis Leary…or any of the other thousand comics who picked that dude’s ‘bits’ dry after he died. Because they knew he was just under the radar enough for no one to notice. It’s a shame…
I mean, the guy was selling out comedy clubs @ 15, for christssake…
For my money it just doesn’t get any better or feel more tragic to not have him around anymore…
Thanks, it is nice to see another person with great taste in stand up!
This only proves that if you label someone a comedian people will laugh at what they say. If Mitch Hedberg was introduced on stage as a man that states random observations and no one was expected to laugh, i.e. not at a comedy club, you would smile a few times but you would not laugh out loud. It’s like most sitcoms, turn off the sound (the laugh track) and turn on the subtitles. Almost everything you would have laughed along with you won’t find funny because it generally isn’t. See how many deaf people watch sitcoms. Very few.
The standards for what passes as comedy have slipped so far that the average person will laugh at almost anything.
lenny bruce made all of them possible.
Yes, I have said that many times on Digg and here but considering he died 10 yrs. before I was born he is not personally relevant to me, and therefore not on my list.
Nice list…you nailed it. I’d go the exact same order, but sub in Lenny Bruce for Hedberg…for now anyways…I’m not terribly familiar with Hedberg’s material yet. And to all the clowns who suggest Chris Farley, Hartman or Bernie Mac etc, I think you’re missing the point. Sure they’re funny, but that’s not what this list is about.
And to everyone thinking that Hicks shouldn’t be up that high, pay attention. He was as much as a visionary as he was a comic; way more than just taking the mic to lay down some good jokes. We could use more people to speak as much truth as he did, never mind in such a comedic manner. To the King!
Nice posting
You left off Jim Norton. It is sad that he could only wear a robe and eat broth for the last month. Godspeed Nordin.
He is still alive I believe.
@ShortAttention: Great list!! I loved all five of these guys!
And to those that keep mentioning Lenny Bruce, umm, do you not even read comments before you post? How many times does SA need to say that, if he hadn’t died 10 years before he was born, and was more relevant to him growing up, he probably would have listed him?
Just don’t understand why people keep posting the same things. PLEASE read comments!!!
Again, SA, great list!! Thanks for the laughs!
Thanks Joey, and I am glad you like the list. The people that dont read the comments and keep saying the same stuff drive me out of my mind!
Just an aside – I think the list is fine (and it’s obviously your prerogative to select whomever you want), but usually it’s a bad idea to rely on saying “that was before my time” about anything having to do with art. It’s like compiling a list of best films of all time and saying nothing counts before I was ten years old. Realizing stand up comedy is a bit different because access to full routines aren’t as easy, one can read about and see many clips of stand-ups from the 1930s/40s on. Personally, my own response would be – well, I never saw Lenny Bruce, and he was dead before I was born, but from what I have seen of him in clips he wasn’t the slightest bit funny.
Hicks and Hedberg were (still are) my favorites. I would put Hartman on my top five list.
Bill Hicks never really moved me, oh yeah I know this list is terribly old buy…
George Carlin though? MAN! I can watch this guy forever. Brilliant intelligent worked the crowd and above all of that funny as all hell. RIP GC.
Gilda Radner!
Brittany,
This too funny, but I’ll bite. It’s not written anywhere, but the fact that it’s implied and then backed up with pics and videos of Comedians (not actors) makes it about Comedians (Stand Up Comics) and not Actors (Funny People).
As for Andy Kaufman, it is what it is. What made them all great “Comedians of the Past” is that they did get out there and left everything had on stage and did for many years against all odds. I would love to see an actor do it and see what happens (can anyone say Charlie Murphy or Michael Richards).
Just Saying,
Peace Out
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