Ruth Buzzi - Early Life

Early Life

Buzzi was born at Westerly Hospital, Westerly, Rhode Island, the daughter of Rena Pauline and Angelo Peter Buzzi, a nationally recognized stone sculptor. She was raised in Wequetequock, Connecticut, in a rock house overlooking the ocean at Wequeteqouck Cove, where her father owned Buzzi Memorials, a business still operated by her older brother, Harold. Her father was born in Arzo, Switzerland, in the Italian-speaking canton of the Ticino, a few miles from the Italian border. He carved the marble eagles at Penn Station in New York designed by artist Adolph A. Weinman (who also designed the Standing Liberty Eagle half dollar for the U.S. Mint), the granite Leif Erikson memorial in Providence, Rhode Island, the animals seen in relief on the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and made thousands of tombstones. He was asked to work on the carving of the Presidents on Mount Rushmore but declined, out of a fear of heights. Her mother was born in the United States to immigrants from northern Italy.

Buzzi attended Stonington High School where she gained experience as head cheerleader performing before crowds at athletic events. At 17, she enrolled at the Pasadena Playhouse for the Performing Arts and graduated with honors. She studied voice, dance, and acting, and took courses in cosmetology in case the acting career failed to attain success. Before graduation from college however, she was a working actress with a union card in musical and comedy revues. Her first job in show business was at the age of 19, traveling with singer Rudy Vallee in a live musical and comedy act during her summer break from college; it allowed her to graduate with a treasured union card with Actor's Equity Union. She moved to New York after graduation and was hired immediately for a lead role in an off-Broadway musical revue, the first of 19 in which she performed across the East Coast. Classmates at Pasadena Playhouse included legendary actors Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman.

In musical and comedy revues from Provincetown, Massachusetts to the Catskills of New York, to off-Broadway, she worked alongside other young, talented performers just beginning their careers at the time, including Barbra Streisand, Joan Rivers, Dom DeLuise, Bernadette Peters and Carol Burnett.

Buzzi's first national exposure came when she teamed up with Dom DeLuise in a comical magic act in which he played an incompetent magician and Buzzi was his "sidekick" named "Shakuntala" who never spoke but always sported a wide grin. Audiences demanded more of the two and they played several major nighttime television variety shows including The Garry Moore Show, The Entertainers with Carol Burnett, and Your Show of Shows with Imogene Coca.

She was hired by Bob Fosse to perform with Fosse's then wife Gwen Verdon in the hit Broadway Musical Sweet Charity. It was during the run of Sweet Charity that she auditioned for and received a permanent place in the comedy series Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, which was the top rated show on NBC for more than five years.