RIP Henry Gibson

Mary got her mention in the Morning News, but a moment’s silence for Henry Gibson, the multifaceted comic actor who got his big break reciting joke poetry on Laugh-In, earned raves in one of the centerpiece roles in Robert Altman’s classic Nashville, and was most recently seen in a recurring role on TV’s Boston Legal, who died this week at age 73.

From the Los Angeles Times obit:

Gibson was still known as Jim Bateman in the early ’60s when he was living in New York City, where his roommate was another struggling young actor—Jon Voight, whom he had met when they were both students at Catholic University. Voight recalled Wednesday that they developed a small comedy act that they performed at a couple of auditions featuring two naive hillbilly characters. Voight said he came up with the names: Harold and Henry Gibson, the latter a derivative of playwright Henrik Ibsen’s name.

RIP Henry Gibson, who to me will always be Nashville’s Haven Hamilton. Here’s a song Gibson wrote and performed in the 1976 film, a crap-country spoof so good it’s become beloved by crap-country lovers who don’t realize it’s satire.