Gallagher, watermelon-smashing comedian, is dead at 76

Gallagher, who became one of the most recognizable comedians of the 1980s for an outrageous act that always concluded with him smashing a watermelon with a sledgehammer, died Friday at his home in Palm Springs, California. He was 76.

His death, from organ failure after “numerous heart attacks” over the course of his life, was confirmed by his longtime former manager, Craig Marquardo.

The self-proclaimed “Wizard of Odd,” Gallagher — his first name was Leo, although for many years he refused to reveal it — said his job was to “yell at the world.” To the thousands of his front-row fans who were honored, or at least not visibly offended, by being splattered with cantaloupes, cottage cheese and all manner of groceries, Gallagher offered himself as an exuberant release from life’s strains.

Adorned with a mustache and shoulder-length hair, he spoke of people’s worries about money, family and responsibilities in a 1984 interview with The Miami Herald. “If you make fun of it, the people laugh,” he said. “They release the tension and are somehow healed — a bit.”

In addition to reaching the rarefied position of going by just one name like Cher or Madonna, Gallagher was the star of more than a dozen one-man specials on Showtime and a series of Budweiser commercials, including one in which he used a watermelon as a bowling ball. He played more than 100 concert dates a year for more than 30 years, obliterating more than 15,000 melons.

He wrote his own jokes and carried 15 footlockers of props. One was a “handgun” that fired plastic hands.

In the 1980s, researchers at Loma Linda University in Southern California studying laughter took blood samples from 10 medical students while they watched Gallagher in action, United Press International reported in 1987. Not only did they laugh uproariously; their white blood cells increased. The comedian, the scientists said, appeared to have boosted the subjects’ immune systems.

Gallagher named his celebrated sledgehammer the Sledge-O-Matic, a play on the Veg-O-Matic, the gadget for slicing and dicing fruits and vegetables in one stroke that was ballyhooed in countless television commercials in the 1960s and ’70s. His message: “Why don’t you hit it with a hammer if you want it in little pieces?”