Dom DeLuise, the portly actor-comedian whose affable nature made him a popular character actor for decades with movie and TV audiences as well as directors and fellow actors, has died. He was 75.
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DeLuise died Monday night, son Michael DeLuise said Tuesday. The comedian died in his sleep after a long illness.
Dom DeLuise’s local connections:
• He was friends with Burt Reynolds and taught classes at the Burt Reynolds Institute for Theatre Training while he was in town on vacation in 1996, and appeared, along with Mayor Nancy Graham and Bob Cuillo, at the May 1996 news conference revealing that Cuillo was the guy who loaned the institute the $1 million to buy the former Florida Repertory Theatre on Clematis Street.
• He was in Sewall’s Point filming a B.L. Stryker episode with Burt Reynolds in Sept. 1989.
• In 1986 DeLuise directed his sons Peter and David in Brighton Beach Memoirs at the Burt Reynolds Jupiter Theatre.
• He was in Palm Beach to work on the script and choose south Florida locations for the movie Gizmo in 1983. He directed and appeared in the movie. He stayed at the Breakers.
• In 1980 DeLuise directed Butterflies are Free and Same Time, Next Year (starring Burt Reynolds and Carol Burnett) at Burt Reynolds’ Dinner Theater.
• He owned a condo in Jupter in the 1980s.
• He directed and appeared in the movie Hot Stuff (starring Suzanne Pleshette and Jerry Reed) in Miami Beach in 1978.
More: Burt Reynolds: ‘I’ll miss Dom very much’
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Dom DeLuise will be sorely missed. I had the pleasure of working iwth him on Smokey and Bandit 2,The End and at the old BR Dinner Theater. He kept us constantly in stitches. I remember one time in a hotel in Jupiter during the shooting of Smokey 2 that he stopped and decided that he would entertain the passers by in the lobby of the hotel. When he walked out to get into his car a few minutes later, everyone in the lobby was crying, it was so funny! Men were bending over holding their stomachs from laughing. He did it all on the spur of the moment and with no prompting. He had the great gift of making any situation funny. I never heard him say a negative thing against anyone.
Years later, my wife and I ran into Dom and Carole on the streets of New York in the middle of a snowstorm in December. It was as if we hadn’t seen each other for 3 weeks! That was the kind of man he was. Everyone liked to be around Dom. He was the consummate funny man.
Dom DeLuise was truly an original. He made us laugh!!