Bob Einstein arrives at the Los Angeles premiere of Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind, at the TCL Chinese Theatre, on June 27, 2018.Chris Pizzello/The Associated Press
Bob Einstein, whose career as a comedy writer took a quirky turn into television acting as the hapless daredevil Super Dave Osborne and later as a friend of Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm, died on Wednesday at his home in Indian Wells, Calif. He was 76.
His manager, Lee Kernis, said the cause was cancer.
On Curb Your Enthusiasm, Mr. Einstein played Marty Funkhouser, a pal and occasional antagonist of Mr. David in his long-running HBO series, set mostly in Los Angeles.
As Super Dave, Mr. Einstein was a witless, deadpan parody of bravado-fuelled stuntmen such as Evel Knievel. Dressed in a mostly white jumpsuit and crash helmet, Super Dave attempted perilous stunts that invariably flopped and appeared to have caused him great bodily harm.
“I deal out of a reality that isn’t real,” Mr. Einstein said in an interview with The New York Times in 1995. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what that means. I don’t really know what I do.”
Mr. Einstein had been on the writing staff of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour television show in the 1960s. He first appeared as Super Dave on an episode of The John Byner Comedy Hour on CBS in 1972.
The character returned on another television series hosted by Mr. Byner, Bizarre, in the eighties, and continued through various other TV incarnations, including Super Dave’s Vegas Spectacular in 1995 and Super Dave’s Spiketacular in 2009.
Stewart Robert Einstein was born on Nov. 20, 1942, in Los Angeles. His father, Harry, was a comedian who was known professionally as Harry Parke; he also had a comic alter ego, a Greek character named Parkyakarkus. Mr. Einstein’s mother, Thelma Leeds, was an actor. His younger brother, Albert, eventually changed his name to Brooks and became a renowned comedian and filmmaker; a second brother, Cliff, is an advertising executive.
“A brilliantly funny man,” Mr. Brooks wrote on Twitter. “You will be missed forever.”
Bob Einstein recalled his youth as a battle of wits between he, his father and Albert.
“It was a funny way to grow up,” he told The New York Times in 1995. “There weren’t too many complete dinners in that house. If you get that kind of example, you’re either going to make your life humour, or you’re going to reject everything you’re living with.”
He did not go into show business immediately. After graduating from Chapman College in California, where he played basketball, he joined an advertising agency, where he wrote and directed TV commercials. That led him to an appearance on a talk show in Los Angeles, where he was cast in a sketch as the man responsible for putting the stars in the sidewalk on Hollywood Boulevard – a task that made him susceptible to bribery.
Mr. Einstein’s dry delivery piqued the interest of Tom Smothers, who offered him a job on the series that he hosted with his brother, Dick. Mr. Einstein wrote for The Summer Brothers Smothers Show in 1968 and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour from 1968 to ′69. While there, he occasionally played Officer Judy, a no-nonsense cop who once rode a motorcycle onstage to give Liberace a ticket.
“Do you know how fast you were playing?” Mr. Einstein asked.
Mr. Einstein won two Emmy Awards, the first in 1969 for writing for The Smothers Brothers (on a staff that also included Steve Martin and Mason Williams) and the second in 1977 for outstanding comedy-variety series, for Van Dyke and Company, a short-lived variety show starring Dick Van Dyke.
He also won a CableAce Award in 1992 as the star of the Showtime series Super Dave.
He leaves his wife, Roberta; his daughter, Erin Einstein Dale; two grandchildren; and his brothers.