Early Life
Willard's birth year has been erroneously reported as 1933. He grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio. His father, also named Fred Willard, worked at the financial department of a bank. His father died in 1951. Willard is a former U.S. soldier, having graduated from the Kentucky Military Institute. He also graduated college from the Virginia Military Institute. After his tour in the Army, Willard auditioned alongside Robert Klein for The Second City, which consisted of a nightclub manager and his employee. The audition helped the two secure the job. He is an alumnus of The Second City. He starred off Broadway Jules Pfeiffer's "Little Murders", directed by Alan Arkin. He was a founding member of the improvisational comedy group Ace Trucking Company. Fellow members of Ace included Bill Saluga and Patti Deutsch, among others. They appeared regularly on This is Tom Jones.
Read more about this topic: Fred Willard
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“They circumcised women, little girls, in Jesus’s time. Did he know? Did the subject anger or embarrass him? Did the early church erase the record? Jesus himself was circumcised; perhaps he thought only the cutting done to him was done to women, and therefore, since he survived, it was all right.”
—Alice Walker (b. 1944)
“It is a momentous fact that a man may be good, or he may be bad; his life may be true, or it may be false; it may be either a shame or a glory to him. The good man builds himself up; the bad man destroys himself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)