Arte Johnson, Master of Hilarious Characters on 'Laugh-In,' Dies at 90

Arte Johnson, the comic best known for the hilarious characters he created for the 1960s NBC smash hit Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, has died. He was 90.

The 5-foot-4 Johnson, a master of ad libs, double-talk and dialects who was content to be a "second banana," died Wednesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of heart failure following a three-year battle with bladder and prostate cancer, his family announced.

Johnson cracked up Laugh-In audiences with his portrayal of Wolfgang, a former German storm trooper who muttered "Verry interesting" to the most cracked proposals (or, "Verry interesting … but stupid&quot . He said he got the idea for the character while watching Errol Flynn and Ronald Reagan battle the Nazis in the 1942 movie Desperate Journey.

Outfitted in a comic combination of Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein — walking stick, bad suit, frizzy hair, odd top hat — Johnson also was delightful as Tyrone F. Horneigh, a dirty old man who propositioned the spinster Gladys (Ruth Buzzi) on a park bench. After his suggestive mutterings, she would swat him with her oversized purse.

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