lit a candle 1d agoWatched him host America's Funniest Home Videos with my wife for years. Clean, kind, real laugh every time. You don't forget that.
Their story
Robert Lane Saget was born on 17 May 1956 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, into a Jewish family. His mother, Rosalyn, worked as a hospital administrator and his father, Benjamin, was a supermarket chain executive. Benjamin had lost four siblings, and four of Bob's own siblings also died prematurely, a family history…
Robert Lane Saget was born on 17 May 1956 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, into a Jewish family. His mother, Rosalyn, worked as a hospital administrator and his father, Benjamin, was a supermarket chain executive. Benjamin had lost four siblings, and four of Bob's own siblings also died prematurely, a family history of grief that later shaped his insistence that humor could carry people through dark times. The Sagets moved early to Norfolk, Virginia, where Bob briefly attended Lake Taylor High School and later said his sense of humor sharpened as a rebellious student at Conservative synagogue Temple Israel. He returned to Philadelphia for his bar mitzvah, lived for a time in Encino, Los Angeles (where he met Larry Fine of The Three Stooges), then finished high school at Abington Senior High School near Philadelphia. He planned to become a doctor until an Honors English teacher urged him toward acting.
At Temple University's film school he made Through Adam's Eyes, a black-and-white student film about a boy after reconstructive facial surgery, earning a Student Academy Award of merit. He graduated with a BA in 1978, rode the train to New York comedy clubs such as The Improv and Catch a Rising Star, briefly tried graduate work at USC, and survived a near-fatal gangrenous appendix crisis around age 22. By the mid-1980s he was building a dual reputation: clean enough for network television, fearless enough for late-night clubs.
After a short stint on CBS's The Morning Program in early 1987, Saget was cast as widowed sportscaster Danny Tanner on ABC's Full House (1987-1995). The sitcom became a family-viewing staple and later returned him as Danny for fifteen episodes of Netflix's Fuller House (2016-2020). From 1989 to 1997 he was also the original host of America's Funniest Home Videos, working both shows at once through the early 1990s and returning for a 2009 twentieth-anniversary special. Off camera he directed the 1996 TV film For Hope, inspired by his sister Gay Saget, who died of scleroderma, and later served for years on the board of the Scleroderma Research Foundation. Feature directing included Dirty Work (1998) with Norm Macdonald and Artie Lange. He starred in the short-lived WB sitcom Raising Dad (2001-2002), hosted NBC's 1 vs. 100 (2006-2008), appeared as a parody of himself on HBO's Entourage, narrated future Ted Mosby for nine seasons of How I Met Your Mother (2005-2014), and kept releasing stand-up specials including HBO's That Ain't Right (2007) and Bob Saget: Zero to Sixty (2017). His 2014 album That's What I'm Talkin' About earned a Grammy nomination for Best Comedy Album. Memoir Dirty Daddy (2014) framed the same contrast audiences knew: America's wholesome TV dad who, on stage, pushed blue, observational, and musical comedy without apology.
Known professionally as Bob Saget, and legally as Robert Lane Saget, he pronounced the surname SAG-it, first syllable like "sadge," not like Zagat. Years active ran from 1977 to 2022. Pop culture treated the clean dad and the dirty comic as one walking punchline, from Comedy Central's Roast of Bob Saget to the song "Rollin' with Saget" and an Aristocrats-adjacent club persona. He competed on The Masked Singer as Squiggly Monster, launched the podcast Bob Saget's Here for You, and saw a Sardi's caricature unveiled on 4 January 2008 during his Broadway stint in The Drowsy Chaperone. He also directed the mockumentary Farce of the Penguins and made a cameo in Half Baked. No major criminal scandal attached to his name. Documented flashpoints were the blue stand-up versus family-TV branding he often framed himself, mixed-to-poor contemporary reviews for Dirty Work, and a 2022 family court effort that permanently blocked release of additional graphic investigative materials after the medical examiner ruling. That fight was about privacy, not a dispute over the manner of death.
He married Sherri Kramer in 1982. They had three daughters, Aubrey, Lara, and Jennifer, and divorced in 1997. In October 2018 he married television presenter and writer Kelly Rizzo. On the morning of 9 January 2022, after a nearly two-hour set at Ponte Vedra Concert Hall near Jacksonville, he posted gratitude to the crowd and pointed fans to tour dates on BobSaget.com. That afternoon he was found unresponsive in his room at the Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes, in Orange County, Florida, and pronounced dead at the scene at age 65. The Orange County Medical Examiner later ruled the death the result of blunt head trauma most likely from an unwitnessed fall. Toxicology showed no illicit drugs or alcohol. COVID-19 was present on testing but was not listed as the cause. He was buried at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles near his parents and sister. ABC interrupted America's Funniest Home Videos to announce the news. Castmates including John Stamos, Dave Coulier, Candace Cameron Bure, and Jodie Sweetin led public mourning. Netflix later released the tribute Dirty Daddy: The Bob Saget Tribute. Donations flooded the Scleroderma Research Foundation in his memory. A final podcast episode with Dane Cook was released posthumously on 31 January 2022.
Biography adapted from EN Wikipedia; Orange County ME statement 2022-02-10; CNN; NYT; People; CBS News; Hollywood Reporter; Wikiquote; bobsaget.com..
In their own words
“I am very proud of the life I have led so far. I have a lot of love in my life. And a lot of laughs. And I wish that for you all. I wish that even for the guy in the audience with his arms folded.”
Closing reflection in Dirty Daddy (2014), via Wikiquote.
“People ask me what my favorite episode of Full House is; it was the last one!”
Bob Saget: That Ain't Right (2007) special, via Wikiquote.
“In my career I've had the fortune of being able to work continually in radically diverse creative worlds.”
Introduction to Dirty Daddy, describing family TV by day and club comedy by night.
“I'm always amazed when I go to do stand-up dates and the ad in the paper says, 'For Mature Audiences Only.' Nothing could be more immature than my stand-up.”
Dirty Daddy, chapter 12, via Wikiquote.
“Loved tonight's show... I had no idea I did a 2 hr set tonight. I'm happily addicted again to this [stuff]. Check BobSaget.com for my dates in 2022.”
Final public X/Twitter post, early morning 2022-01-09, after the Ponte Vedra Concert Hall show.
Photos
6Bob Saget headshot after the Comedians as Authors panel, 21 September 2014. The Full House comedian, not a namesake.
Sept 2014
by People Forever
Bob Saget after the 2014 Brooklyn Book Festival Comedians as Authors panel. Full-length frame of the same comedian. Same Commons image as File:9.21.14BobSagetByLuigiNovi1.jpg.
Sept 2014
by People Forever
Actor and comedian Bob Saget, Behind The Velvet Rope TV interview still (2015-era). This is the Full House and America's Funniest Home Videos comedian (1956-2022), not a namesake.
by People Forever
Bob Saget at the Opie and Anthony Traveling Virus Comedy Tour, 2007. The Full House comedian, not a namesake.
by People Forever
Exactly. He owned it instead of apologizing for it.